Poets are crazy

All my thinking about poetry reminded me about one of my favorite famous people Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I feel a little bad because he is not a favorite of mine because of a poem he wrote or a painting he did. It is because when his wife Lizzie died of a laudanum overdose...

( The survival rate for wives and girlfriends of poets is abysmally low so dating a poet is a very bad idea. On the bright side you will get a beautiful poem written about your unfortunate demise: For example look at the entire body of work by Edgar Allan Poe)

...he in a beautiful and touching gesture, had quite a few of his half finished poems buried with her at Highgate Cemetery. I Imagine representing a part of his heart or some such notion.

But get this, later on he thinks
"Oh wait, those poems were actually pretty good and I kind of want them back now"

So the guy goes and actually digs up his dead wife's grave to get the poems back!

And THAT is why he is one of my favorite people. Because him becoming a grave robber really makes me laugh. It's like a teenage girl who deletes her Facebook and then makes a new one two days later.

I read a lovely short story based on Rossetti's Grave digging exploits. In it the guy goes to dig up the grave to retrieve the poems and wakes the vengeful ghost of his girlfriend who then proceeds to haunt him until he writes her the perfect poem.
Sounds a lot like an episode of Supernatural, except no one died.

Look at Dante's face-----------------> It doesn't LOOK like the face of a grave robber. Granted this painting is a self portrait so I have serious doubts as to it's accuracy. Poets tend to hold themselves in high esteem. Either that or they hate themselves. Or both. (Again for an example see all the works of Poe)