You know there are many things I love about Maud Newton, not least among them her meticulously curated sidebar. Today I leapt from it to a "link" in which we find Poe saying he's written the greatest poem ever in the history of the world and his friend replying, "Have you? That is a fine achievement." This reply pleases me, putting me in mind somehow of the one thing James Joyce ever said to Proust ("Yes, I am very fond of truffles"), or Jesse James, Jr.'s remark to his grandmother: "Here comes the man who killed my father." It contains also the appealingly flat matter-of-factness displayed by Milton Cross on the outré subject of Scriabin: "As a child he showed his affection for the piano by kissing it, as if it were an animated being, and by expressing anguish when it was repaired, tuned, or moved."
