My Summer Lair Chapter #272: Do You Stay Or Leave When The Music Is Just Getting Good?
If I ask you about what comes to mind when I say Edgar Allan Poe you’ll probably conjure up Goth images…an obsession with death and darkness, black cats and ravens.
And sadly, that’s not a correct Poe shorthand, rather that’s an inaccurate perception.
Okay, yes he wrote The Tell-Tale Heart but Poe also wrote science-fiction as well as lots of journalism and essays for literary journals and periodicals. In his time he was known for his own style of literary criticism. Poe was Rotten Tomatoes; the go-to-guy for criticism on books and writing.
Poe also wrote a substantial number of satires, hoaxes and humorous pieces. Yeah, Poe wrote comedy! (Perhaps that’s the inspiration for the Raven’s “Nevermore” quote? #RimShot!)
None of those Fun Facts fits with our conventional image of Poe…the guy who stayed up all night listening to The Cure and writing The Fall of the House of Usher by creepy candlelight.
I kept circling back to Poe and that flawed public perception as I sat down to talk to poet Alicia Cook.
Sure, maybe that’s good branding or the profitable benefit of owning a niche: perhaps that whole Poe image works more than it hinders.
The thing is Edgar Allan Poe is gone…we can only get to know him through his work, now. Thankfully, Alicia is here and it turns out she’s more than her work.
Alicia Cook is a writer and poet from New Jersey. (A State with a long tradition of poetry: from Bruce Springsteen to Allen Ginsberg to Jon Bon Jovi. Livin’ On A Prayer is profoundly and poetically moving as you hear Tommy and Gina grapple with their harsh fate.)
The Music Was Just Getting Good is the third and final book of her poetry mixtape trilogy: it follows Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately and Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back.
In her writing and work Alicia’s themes are grief…death and loss. (Death can mean the loss of a relationship like when you break up with someone as much as a physical demise.) She also eloquently writes about addiction and the jarring impact it has on family and friends.
These are dark and heavy topics…you’d believe she would be going on road trips with Edgar Allan Poe. They’re both intense poets, right?
It turns out like Edgar Allan Poe, Alicia Cook is funny. And charming.
In this My Summer Lair conversation she shares one of her favourite comedies, that was a movie I was not expecting her to reveal but I’m so glad she did. It cracks me up, as well. Cook’s got taste!
So yeah, let’s hear what the poet who wrote The Music Was Just Getting Good has to say about life and death and karaoke and comedy and string cheese.
Alicia Cook @ W • T • F
Host Sammy Younan
Recorded: Tuesday February 13, 2024 at 12:30 pm (EST)
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