How many authors’ names are conjured by a single word? “Rapping”… there, does an author come to mind? Perhaps the word must be repeated to summon the name from the folds of memory…”rapping, rapping”… surely most have caught at least a glimpse of the name or the man’s face.
If not, I will introduce you to the poet who heard the rapping (and tapping) at his window, once upon a midnight dreary. It was Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote of a raven that came a tapping, while he was nearly napping. Poe’s poem “The Raven” was published in 1845.
The poem brought Poe popularity, but alas, not financial profitability. Monetary deficiencies were not the only inadequacies that plagued Poe’s life. Born to traveling players in the theater, Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe, Jr., in Boston, on January 19, 1809, Edgar, would never really get to know his parents, because his father left the family when he was a toddler, and tuberculosis took his mother when he was only three.
Young Edgar Poe was separated from a brother and sister, and sent to live with John and Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia. As a teen, Poe was discouraged from pursuing his passion for penning poetry. John Allan, a successful tobacco merchant, wanted his foster son to follow him in the family business.
Edgar Allan Poe resisted his foster father’s wishes and instead enlisted in the army under the name E.A. Perry and published his first book of poems, “Tamerlane and Other Poems” by A Bostonian. Poe did not want to remain in the army, and after his foster mother died he reconciled for a while with his foster father, John Allen, who arranged for him to enroll at West Point.
Poe’s gambling, drinking and deliberate neglect of his duties led to his dismissal from West Point after only 6 months. Edgar Allan Poe and John Allan would nevermore have much of a relationship, other than Edgar’s sporadic requests for money from Allan.
Edgar Allan Poe’s life was a strange one. He had been engaged at age 17 to a young lady in Virginia where he had attended university, but her father did not approve of Poe and ended the engagement.
When Poe was dismissed from West Point, and alienated from his foster father, he went to live in Baltimore with his aunt on his father’s side and his cousin Virginia, who he married when she was thirteen and he was twenty-seven. Virginia was sickly for many years, and died from tuberculosis in 1847, at the age of twenty-four.
Edgar Allan Poe, was regarded as a talented writer, but his quarrelsome ways, punctuated with drinking bouts did not earn him friends. He earned some money as an essayist, proofreader and book reviewer. His poem, “The Raven” written in 1847 brought him fame, but not fortune. His readings of the poem were popular, but did not bring monetary wealth.
Poe’s Gothic stories such as “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and “The Fall of the House of Usher” are well known today over 150 years after his death, as are his poems, “The Raven”, “The Bells” and “Annabel Lee.”
He is often referred to as “The Father of the Detective Story” because of the structure of his tales “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Roget” and “The Gold Bug”, where reason and logic must be used to unscramble the mystery.
An enigma that has remained puzzling is Poe’s own death. He was found nearly dead on the streets of Baltimore in 1849 at the age of 40. Poe was at the time once again engaged to the woman in Virginia he had been engaged to at age 17. He was on a mission to retrieve his aunt in Baltimore to bring her to his wedding back in Virginia.
Poe was found injured, dirty, in clothes that were not his own and extremely ill. One theory is that it was Election Day, and a common practice was to ply people with drink and have them vote over and over again. That may have been Poe’s fate ‒ after being given an never ending flow of booze, he may have been beaten and abandoned. Another theory was that his bride-to-be’s brothers had followed Poe and ended his chances of becoming their new brother-in-law… remember, Poe had not been a welcomed betrothed decades earlier.
The mystery of Poe’s death may never be solved. He died in the hospital, four days after he was found. Some say his last words were “Lord, help my poor soul.” But, even that is not confirmed.
Edgar Allan Poe’s words were however, not doomed to the status of “nevermore”, as a Raven once crowed…and on October 5, 2014, a life-sized statue of the poet, traveling with a companion, non-other than the subject of his most famous poem, was placed at Edgar Allan Poe Square in Boston, the place of his birth. Poe is carrying a briefcase, which the Raven has opened, and trailing behind, amidst papers bearing his words is a beating heart…
Diana Erbio is a freelance writer and author of “Coming to America: A Girl Struggles to Find her Way in a New World”. Read her blog series “Statues: The People They Salute” and visit the Facebook Page. Subscribe to her Substack Newsletter.