Poe's "The Raven"

Suzanna's fourth-grade teacher requires the students to memorize poetry each month. This past week Suzanna came home with the first stanza of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" to memorize. Pre-Halloween is a perfect time for this poem! Today we gathered around a warm computer to read the entire poem while listening to British actor Basil Rathbone's narration of it. We stopped after each stanza to double-check that the girls knew what was happening in the "plot" of the poem, and let me tell you, our ten- and eight- and six-year-old children did a better job of comprehending and translating Poe's 150-ish-year-old language into contemporary words than have hundreds of high school students with whom Susan and I have read/taught the poem over the years!

Wanna experience the timeless spookiness of this classic American Gothic poem yourself? Here's what you've got to do:

1. Light a Halloween-themed candle and set it near your computer.


2. Close the shades and turn out the lights in your computer room.


3. Go to this site and choose a version of "The Raven" to read.


4. Click here to launch Basil Rathbone's reading of the poem and listen to him as you follow along in the text of the poem from the other site.


5. Don't get hung up on words or phrases or allusions that you don't immediately "get." Just go with the flow and let yourself get "into" the poem and the spooky mood and the creepiness of the raven and what he says and what effect it has on the poem's speaker.


6. Invite someone else to share in the experience, and repeat the steps above with him/her/them!