The Poem Which Haunts My Soul

Welcome to the cKotch.Com blog. I’m Christopher Kotcher, and this is the poem stuck in my mind forevermore.

Words on Stage

My old high school St. Mary’s has an annual tradition called the Oratorical.

Students recite great works and make the words come alive for their peers. Some years focus on poetry, others on prose. Prizes include scholarships and literature anthologies.

At the start of Oratorical season, students receive memorization assignments in their English classes. These assignments are the first round of auditions for the big show. Most students are motivated by promises of extra credit for participation and victory in the Oratorical.

A second round of auditions is often held with the head of the English department. He makes clear the Oratorical’s purpose. You recite words not for yourself but for the school. This is a grand event, not just one more assembly to get everyone out of class.

In my freshmen year, the Oratorical focused on poems. My English teacher assigned our class to find, memorize, and recite poems three minutes in length.

The search for a suitable poem was rough. Most I found were simply too short or too long. I was so annoyed by the search that I just picked the first suitable poem I found.

This poem was called “The Haunted Palace.” It was written by that American master of the dark, Edgar Allan Poe. The piece told of a radiant palace which fell to ruin thanks to “evil things in robes of sorrow.” The palace was once a shining beacon of joy and happiness. Now it was an ugly place filled with hideous forms. Only misery and madness remained there.

The Poem Takes Root

I went to work memorizing “The Haunted Palace.”

Every day focused on a different portion of the poem. My parents read the lines, and I recited them back.

The trickiest line was right near the end. I kept adding the word, “flow,” to the line, “While like a ghastly rapid river.” It just seemed odd to not have any sense of action in that line.

After memorizing the words, I reread the poem to check its punctuation. The Oratorical was about both memorization and performance after all. The poem’s commas, periods, and dashes would give the best hints of when to allow pauses both brief and long.

With a few more days of practice, I was ready to recite “The Haunted Palace” to my class.

Putting the Poem on Hold

I earned full credit on the memorization assignment.

My teacher recommended me for the Oratorical. I had done well, my poem was a good length, and it was something by Poe not as well-known as “The Raven.”

I considered moving to the next round of auditions. But I eventually decided against it.

I had never seen anything like the Oratorical. I wanted to see it at least once before being a part of it. “The Haunted Palace” was thus laid dormant for a while.

In my sophomore year, I did the Oratorical when it focused on prose. I selected a speech from Shakespeare’s play Pericles, Prince of Tyre because one of my friends was already doing something from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

I do not remember a single word of the piece I recited that year. It meant little to me compared to the poem memorized my freshmen year. I could not wait for the chance to recite that piece to the school.

Little did I know, my reunion with “The Haunted Palace” would be sooner than expected.

The Poem Returns

Junior year arrived, bringing class rings, a football state championship, and AP American Literature.

Around October, AP American Literature covered some of Poe’s short stories. One of these stories was “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

The tale told of a man gone to see his old friend Roderick Usher. Poor Roderick suffered from morbidly acute senses. Light hurt his eyes, and sound hurt his ears. During the main character’s visit, strange happenings began to signal the end of the Ushers, long doomed for their twisted sense of purity.

One day, Roderick sang “The Haunted Palace” to his guest. Apparently, Poe had included the poem in this short story published only a few months later. The very poem I had memorized freshmen year. Roderick sang it in his dreary, broken mansion once a place of joy and happiness.

As I read Roderick’s song, the poem came back to me. The whole thing flashed through my mind before I could finish reading the passage which held it. I was amazed the thing was still ingrained in me.

Everything Comes Together

Junior year’s Oratorical arrived, and the focus was back to poems.

Now the school could hear the poem first learned my freshmen year. I only required a few days’ practice to prepare “The Haunted Palace” once more. I also crafted an introduction which mentioned the poem’s presence in “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

During the performance, I included a false finish between the poem’s fifth and sixth stanzas. This move served two purposes:

1. It served as a moment of silence. The palace had just fallen in the fifth stanza. I was mourning for the loss of such a radiant place.
2. It gave extra weight to the poem’s final words. The sixth stanza is the only one to describe the palace after it falls. Separating this part of the poem from the rest emphasizes this difference.

The experience was a rush of energy two years in the making. I finally did everything with “The Haunted Palace” that I had wanted to do.

The Poem Lingers

I did not crack the top three that year at the Oratorical. Though I did later learn I got close with fifth place.

I would do the Oratorical one more time for my senior year. The focus went back to prose, so I did one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s speeches from the Great Depression. Much like Pericles, that piece did not stick with me.

However, “The Haunted Palace” was now firmly glued to my brain. I had memorized it twice, and I remember the rush of finally reciting it to the school. To this day, I can recite it off the top of my head.

The poem has also become a good running gag. Whenever someone mentions my good memory, I recite the poem etched into my soul. It’s always good for a couple laughs and a few groans.

More practically, “The Haunted Palace” has helped me as both a student and a writer.

• As a student, the poem has served as a good examination table for poetic tools. I can comb through the poem for examples or create examples by temporarily adjusting my mental picture of the poem. My practice with memorizing the poem also made memorization easier when studying for exams.
• As a writer, the poem helped me delve into darker writings in my constant search for inspiration. This is why I grabbed a collection of Poe’s works after finishing The Divine Comedy. Though I do not specifically write horror, pulling elements from this genre can be helpful. These have included ways to build tension or create powerful villains.

So, I suppose I am happy “The Haunted Palace” refuses to release me from its clutches.

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For those who wish to read the poem which haunts my soul, you can find it here on the Poetry Foundation website. This is the same page where I first encountered “The Haunted Palace.” Maybe it can glue itself to your mind as well.