Do music artists share the same characteristics of Poe?

Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, short story writer, and one of the best known critics of all time. Many people know him for his writings such as Annabell Lee, The Fall of the House of Usher, and A Tell-Tale Heart. Poe’s thrilling tales examining the depths of the human mind earned him much fame during his lifetime and after his death. http://www.online-literature.com/poe/ Everyone also knows him for inspiring other authors, but not many people know that he also inspired music artists.


One of the artists that Poe has inspired is Eminem. In his lyrics he is somewhat similar to Poe because he explains his life experiences in a wild and deranged way. http://www.artistdirect.com/entertainment-news/article/top-ten-artists-influenced-by-edgar-allan-poe/9255931Edgar's poems have encouraged Eminem to write creative lyrics in a way that explains his life and major points in his life that made him the way that he is today. For example, Eminem's "97 Bonnie & Clyde" can be compared to Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" because they both portray the image of revenge and murder.

Below is Eminem's "97 Bonnie & Clyde. If you listen to the lyrics he explains the events that have happened during his life just like Poe did in his poems.

Someone else that Poe inspired and could compare to are the Beatles. Yes; even the Beatles were inspired by Poe's work. U could tell that they were inspired by him because he is on their album cover of the famous album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." He is in the top middle on the album cover which is dispalayed at the top of the paragraph. They also showed that they were inspired by Poe because they used his name in their song "I am the Walrus." The famous line states, "Man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe." http://www.houseofusher.net/songs.html

Below is the song "I am the Walrus" with the lyrics also. If you fast forward to the 3:04 mark you can see where it shows the famous line with Poe's name in it.

What affect did Washington Irving have on the naming of the New York knicks?

The late Washington Irving was an early 19th century biographer, essayist, and author.  Many people remember him for his two most famous writings "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle." When you first opened this blog I bet that you thought that you would be reading some sort of summarizing of romanticism or something about who inspired Irving to write these stories. While doing some searching and reading up on Mr. Irving, I learned that one of his writings helped form the name of what we now know them as the "New York Knicks." You may be asking yourself, "Well how did he manage to do this?" Well let me tell you!

In 1809 Irving"s first book was called, "A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty." At the end of the story Irving uses the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker. Later on the book introduced the name "Knickerbocker" to tell if someone was from New York. http://www.nykfp.com/history/knickname.php In the late 19th and early 20th century, New York's symbol was a "Knickerbocker which is the picture displayed at the beginning of the blog.


In 1845 the world got its first dosage of the word "Knickerbocker" when the Manhattan baseball team called themselves the "New York Knickerbockers." Years later in 1938 the term "Knickerbocker" had been used all around New York from Jacob Ruppert's Knickerbocker Beer to other things like plays such as the Broadway musical Knickerbocker Holiday. http://www.nba.com/knicks/history/whatsaknickerbocker.html In the summer of 1946 the NBA granted the city of New York its own basketball team. It was aid that the legendary Ned Irish mad the final decision to name the team the "Knickerbockers." The late Fred Podesta said that they each put a name in a hat to determine the name of the team and most of them came out Knickerbockers.

All of this goes to show that Washington Irving not only had an impact on what people thought of New Yorker's back then, but also on what we now know as the famous New York Knicks. Sorry that I couldn't find any videos related to the subject!

What was the North Star?

Everyone knows Frederick Douglass for being a famous orator and also for his famous writings, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. People very seldom talk about his famous newspaper the North Star. This newspaper contained alot of material on Douglas's analysis on the Constitution and many other conflicts that were going on at the time.



Many people may ask, "How did Douglass come about publishing the North Star." On October 27, 1847 he wrote a letter to a fellow abolitionist Amy explaining his plan to publish his newspaper. The letter stated, "My Dear Amy, I have finally decided on publishing the North Star in Rochester and to make that city my future home." http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=2524  Douglass moved to downtown Rochester, New York where he was to start printing his weekly newspaper. The first copy of the North Star was printed on December 3, 1847. The North Star had a slogan that said, "Right is of no Sex--Truth is of no Color--God is the father of us all, and we are all Brethren." http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trr085.html The slogan was to tell people the meaning of the newspaper which was to cover his analysis on the Constitution, women's suffrage, and emancipation.

The North Star was sent to over 4,000 readers in the United Sates, Europe, and West Indies. In June of 1851 the paper merged with the Liberty Party Paper of Syracuse, New York. When the two papers combined they changed the name of the North Star to Frederick Douglass' Paper. http://www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/douglass.html Even though those numbers sound good for that time period, that was not enough subscribers to help support the financial status of the newspaper. The paper kept publishing for another 10 years until it was forced to close because of its financial status.

This video shows a reading of one of the articles in the North Star.