Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Remembering Edgar Allan Poe, January 19, 1809 - October 7, 1849

Edgar Poe
January 19, 1809(1809-01-19)

Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Died October 7, 1849(1849-10-07) (aged 40)

Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
More on the author here

"The mysterious annual visitor to Poe's grave a no-show for the second year in a row. Details here  Sometime in the 1940s, it seems, an anonymous man began the annual tribute at Poe's grave. It was first referenced in print in 1949 by The Evening Sun of Baltimore."


"Those who have glimpsed the "Poe toaster" always saw him dressed in black, wearing a white scarf with a wide-brimmed hat. Jerome has kept watch over the vigil since 1978, watching from inside the Presbyterian church while Poe fans peered through the locked gates of the cemetery . Telltale hearts beat with anticipation during a rainy, midnight dreary and beyond, hoping the mysterious visitor to Edgar Allan Poe's grave would return after a one-year absence.


Four impostors came and went. The real one never showed. Around 5 a.m., the dozen Poe fans who were left began to wonder if the eerie ritual is indeed nevermore, so they walked to Poe's tombstone and performed their own tribute by leaving roses and drinking a cognac toast.

A fascinating tradition that ran for some 60 years and was never fully explained appears to have ended. An unknown person who left three roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac at Poe's grave on the anniversary of the writer's birth failed to appear Wednesday, the second straight year he's disappointed those who stake out the downtown Westminster Hall and Burying Ground.


I think we can safely say it's not car trouble, and he's not sick," said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum. "This doesn't look good."


"It would be an ending befitting of the legacy of Poe, the American literary master of the macabre who was known for haunting poems such as "The Raven" and grisly short stories including "The Tell-Tale Heart," ''The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Pit and the Pendulum." He is also credited with writing the first modern detective story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." He died in 1849 in Baltimore at age 40 after collapsing in a tavern."

Poe's time in NYC seemed largely spent in Mnahattan near Publishers Row downtown  and eventually at a cottage in the Bronx , now a NYC historical landmark. Although one can imagine that Poe met with Whitman in lower Manhattan, I could not find any direct links to Brooklyn. Although his mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, stayed with a "poetess who had obligations to Poe" according to Kenneth Silverman, a wonderful writer and specialist in American Romantism I studied with at NYU, while Poe headed on the road to Baltimore, and then later returned to Brooklyn after the death of her daughter. Virginia Clemm Poe, and Poe's death (which she learned about later), there was no clear indication of his residence in the Borough of Kings.


El Dorado by Edgar Allan Poe




Gaily bedight,
A gallant night
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of El Dorado.

But he grew old --
This knight so bold --
And -- o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like El Dorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow --
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be --
This land of El Dorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied --
"If you seek for El Dorado."

Donovan performing El Dorado here

A Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe here


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