Times flies and is truly transcendent. Several months ago, in a colder time, I went over to Jersey City where Annabel Lee currently lives in a beautiful apartment that is yet too small to contain all she does and is. There I recorded her reading her new poem, “Oracular Transcendentalism,” a labor of love conceived in a time of pandemic, of death, and grief and sorrow. It is a redemptive poem that gets its inspiration from an older New England when Emerson, Fuller, and Thoreau lived. But I could see as I edited it that it remains relevant. In this epic, Annabel Lee lets the past instruct the present as her words reimagine our place in nature and contemplate, among other things, saving the planet.
In the Vimeo Annabel Lee reads the poem.
Here is a PDF of the poem. Click on it and read along. Enjoy:
Margaret Fuller
Henry David Thoreau
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Annabel Lee