From the Inkwell, From the Vein.....

.... Edgar As in.... Allan Poe The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? ---Edgar Allan Poe The Cardinal Okay, so this is a bit of a cheat since Poe should actually fall under letter "P", but I have something else I'd like to use for "P" and this is my blog, so I'll cheat if I want---- Besides, we all know that when the morbid and the macabre is being discussed, there is no way that Edgar Allan Poe won't make an appearance at some point, especially as he's given me the header quote for each day's post. This will most likely be a tribute post more than a "how does Poe relate to the world of all things morbid", since there's probably only a ridiculously small handful of people who don't know Edgar Allan Poe and what he's done for the world of horror/mystery/Gothic specialties. Orphaned at a young age, los...

A favorite of Romantic-Era poets, opium is the dried latex of the opium poppy fruit. The poppy fruit is scored, allowing the milky latex to ooze out. Once it dries, the darkened substance collected is raw opium. The latex contains codeine and up to 12 % morphine, which is frequently processed to produce heroin. For the collection of Romantic poets, there was a belief that opium heightened the senses, allowing the poets to recreate vivid scenes and images that presented themselves while the poet relaxed in a dream-like stupor. Coleridge's Kubla Khan  was said to have been written after one such experience. Novelists and other literary figures of the time, paint opium in a far less favorable light. Edgar Allan Poe thrusts his narrator in the short story, Ligeia , into such a distraught stupor that he can no longer distinguish fantasy from reality. Other nineteenth century writers feature the drug and its use in connection with crime and lower class foreign immigrants ...