On January 19, any writer who kills would not
be worth her curare-tipped blow dart if she didn’t lift a glass of happy
birthday amontillado to Edgar Allan Poe. Very few literary figures have endured
like our Goth poet laureate, who is credited with inventing the detective story.
In his stories of C. Auguste Dupin, Poe drew the template for an entire genre.
Arthur Conan Doyle called Poe “the father of the detective tale” and noted that
Poe “covered its limits so completely that I fail to see how his followers can
find any fresh ground which they can confidently call their own.”
Yet writers and artists of all kinds continue
to find fresh ground not only in Poe’s work, but also in his life story. In a
sign of Poe’s uncanny appeal, English teachers tell me that his work is
actually read by their teenage students. His stories have been adapted to film
and television and his work is celebrated worldwide (this past weekend saw the
Poe Festival in Richmond, Virginia).
But many writers are celebrated. Many
literary figures have their own coffee mugs and t-shirts, but how many American
poets inspire their own line of press-on nails? NEVERMORE - The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe officially opens on Broadway January 25. Baltimore’s professional football
team is called the Ravens in Poe’s honor. People tattoo Poe’s poetry on their
shoulder blades.
He has over 3 million likes on Facebook.
Is our enduring fascination with Poe due to
the hypnotic power of his poetry? His enthralling storytelling? Or it is
because of our obsession with the dark, the macabre? Do we remember Poe because we never got over
the shock of discovering that he married his 14-year-old cousin, Virginia? Is
it those eyes, dark, melancholy portals to God only knows what delicious
horrors?
Variety just reported that Idris Elba is
producing a film based on Mark Olden’s 1978 novel Poe Must Die. In the story, Poe and “bare knuckle fighter” Pierce
James Figg join forces to stop a Satanist from finding the Throne of Solomon
and unleashing its power on the people of earth.
Like the television show The Following, which is about student followers of a Poe scholar
who orders them to kill (seriously, how many professors can even get their
students to turn off their cell phones during class?), many modern works miss
what is essential about Poe. Contrary to the facile mad genius trope they
embrace, Poe was a prodigious talent who didn't just exploit horror, melancholy,
and madness but also explored them on the page and endured them in his life. Poe rests in his grave in
Baltimore (or does he?) while his work
still chills, captivates, and inspires. His own fever mad passions touch
something fever mad within us.
“how would you describe the poem The
Raven
i'm
trying to write an essay about the poem The Raven By Edgar Allen Poe, and i
don't know what to say about it i'm stuck so that's why i came to you guys for
help”
Freakoutnow
gave the perfect answer: “haunting.”
What do you think accounts for Poe’s
enduring, and it seems, ever growing popularity?
