Epigraph of the Month (1st place)

This is the epigraph that Edgar Allan Poe chose for "The Murders in the Rue Morgue":

"What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions are not beyond all conjecture." -- Sir Thomas Browne, Urn-Burial

Formidable and fascinating in its own right, the sentence is perfectly apposite to the story it heads.

Poe's example makes me want to compose a succinct ode to the art of the epigraph, which involves not only a cunning eye for a great and somewhat out-of-the-way quotation but also a determination to build on the quoted material -- to use it to quicken a new work into being.

T. S. Eliot was terrific at the game. Examples will follow on the first of every month. 

-- David Lehman

Comments

[DAVID SHAPIRO]

a SP[ECIUOUS OR IMPLIED OR SUPPRESSED EPIGRAPH

iN MY OWN POEM oN A TENNIS COURT THE IMPLIED EPOIGRAPH IS FROST'S 'FREE VERSE IS
LIKE PLAYING TENNIS WITHOUT A NET" THE
WHOLE POEM BEING MY DISCOIVERY 9WITH MY SON0 THAT PLAYING WITHOUT A NET IS WONDERFUL
AND VERY GOOD FOR ONE'S SENSE OF POETRY1
NOW NAME TEN IMPLIED EPIGRAPHS1