Chasms of Poe's Brain

Whose head is swinging from the swollen strap?
Whose body smokes along the bitten rails,
Bursts from a smoldering bundle far behind
In back forks of the chasms of the brain,--
Puffs from a riven stump far out behind
In interborough fissures of the mind . . . ?
***
That last night on the ballot rounds, did you,
Shaking, did you deny the ticket, Poe?
--Hart Crane, The Bridge

A new theory of what killed Edgar Allan Poe: brain tumor.


Poe’s Mysterious Death: The Plot Thickens! The New York Observer