Mind Inclined

I invite you to listen to my recitation of “The Raven” before you listen to this episode. Listen to "The Raven" here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/markcanadaphd/episodes/The-Raven-recited-by-Mark-Canada-e2qd169

I invite you to listen to my recitation of “The Raven” before you listen to my final episode of “Poe-logue to Halloween.” I hope you enjoy learning about the genius and legacy of “The Raven.”

Poe seems to have made special use of his "right brain." Listen to this episode to hear the evidence and draw your own conclusions.

One of America's most influential authors, Poe not only inspired countless authors and artists, but also invented one of our most popular genres.

There's much more to Poe's work than meets the Evil Eye. Use these keys to unlock doors to Poe's meaning and effect.

Poe's works, such as "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart," are known around the world, but how much do you know about the man behind them?

If you want my October Poe-casts to be sent to your email inbox, subscribe to Mind Travel here: ⁠http://eepurl.com/iRSioc

You're invited to attend a Zoom lecture at 7 p.m. on October 29 for a free live presentation, "Puzzling Poe: America's Dark Genius." Learn more and register here: https://forms.gle/FaaGxNYipJjnFk256

You have goals--things you want to do or be. How do you bridge that gap from "wanting" to "doing" or "being"?  That's the focus of this episode.

It starts with a SMART goal, precommitment, and time management. I explain these concepts and provide more practical strategies and mindset shifts to make real progress on your goals.

How you express yourself through language involves more science -- and fun -- than you'd expect.

Writing is a kind of one-way conversation. Writers articulate their thoughts, perhaps even pour their hearts out, and then . . . silence.

This column is starting to sound like a complaint or a plea for responses, but I can assure you it is not. I enjoy writing, and I am pretty sure I would be doing it even if I were alone on a desert island. Still, sending messages into the void is clearly something that has provoked thought, and, I suspect, even anxiety among some far greater writers than I.

This is my letter to the World

That never wrote to Me--

So begins a poem by Emily Dickinson, who composed some 1700 poems and managed to publish only a handful of them. Other writers have made the point less explicitly.

Does this experience sound familiar?

You're chattering away about something--regaling your friends with a captivating story, perhaps, or plumbing the depths of the human condition with a like-minded sage--and you can't think of a word to express something.  If you were writing alone in your garret, you could take some time to fill this lexical gap, but your audience is hanging on your every word--and now you don't have the right one!  You can't very well stop the conversation so that you cook up an acronym or toss a few words in the blender and see what comes out.

What did you do?

Well, I wasn't there. (I mean, I would remember that fabulously regaling story or that mind-expanding discourse, right?)  Still, I'll bet I can tell you what you did.  You reached into your vast storehouse of affixes, tacked one onto a familiar word, and created a new word that fit fairly neatly into your sentence.  Then you probably said something like "Is that even a word?"  People laughed, and you went on with your story or your conversation.

How do I know what happened?  I have heard this kind of thing happen over and over again, and there's a good reason.

You remember affixation from last week's column, right?  (By the way, AI clearly doesn't remember.  When I tried to type that word in the last sentence, it tried to tell me I meant "a fixation."  Unlike me, AI apparently does not have a fixation on affixation.)