Hey, Tintinnabulators and Fellow Tra-la-la-ers!
Ring ‘dem bells! For it would be appro-POE —Today being MAY 16 as I write this. Happy Anniversary Eddy and Virginia Poe!
How the hell am I going to get the author of The Bells in on a music blog — just because I love him so? Indeed, I love him truly. Madly. Virginia would understand, as would most Poe fanatics.
It is a most irrational love for a man who made ratiocination a household pastime in the form of every Private Dick and hairy, scary detective novel and intriguing TV show and movie from Monk to House to (no s__t) Sherlock Holmes.
Eddy has also inspired many a musician with his “word music” and pure and applied metaphysical approach to literature. Don’t make me list his influences on musicians. OW! My arm! Okay, I’ll do it. Briefly —- Leonard Bernstein to Lou Reed. Yeah, okay — Rachmaninoff — and — the Beatle’s Sgt. Pepper cover and lyric inI Am The Walrus — Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Allan Parson’t Project — Blues Traveler, Mr. Bungle, Bright Eyes, Siouxie and The Banshees, and Bobby Dylan all mention him, Michael Jackson loved him, and Britney Spears even (excuse me, cough, cough…HACK, HACK…I must have something in my throat…apparently lip-synchers like him, too) used him in on her 2001-2002 Dream Within A Dream tour — to name only a few, because I CAN go on and on.
BUT— Mrs. Poe — Virginia was a singer in her own right. Yes. She was known to have a beautiful voice, silenced, unfortunately by a broken blood vessel (Hey, it happened to Caruso, too.).
[BTW — Eddy’s mom was a fairly well known musical actress in her time. She sang her stage hit, Nobody Coming To Marry Me to very appreciative audiences. His dad was a Baltimore actor who abandoned his mother and siblings and disappeared when Poe was a wee one.]
And need I remind you again all of the musicality inherent in Eddy’s verse? They RAVED about his Poetic Principle, invoking a certain bird and the “nom de plume” of our own Charm City’s football team. (Before you say — EDGAR ALLAN POE and sports? Know this — Eddy was a pretty darn good athlete when he was a kid. He was known for being able to swim the James River in Richmond — so much for a pasty, fey poet.)
T. S. Eliot said of Eddy: “It will seem puzzling that, with such a narrow range of emotion, such a lack of ordinary human passion and sympathy, the author of so few poems should be more than a minor poet. But, in the first place, his poetry is original. That is to say, his vision of life, though limited, was peculiar and coherent and his idiom unmistakable. He takes you into a world different from that of any other poet…once his poems have become part of your experience, they are never dislodged”. That translates to “this guy kicks it.”
Need I go into detail about Eddy A. Poe for the edification of those of you who have no obsession for the good Mr. P? Yes, of course, I must! The power of The Imp of The Perverse compels me. FIRST — A is for for Allan. His foster parents’ surname, by the way – he was never adopted – part of the whole bonding problem that permeated his life and literature.
Eddy. Mark my words, he was a man of great extremes. He was by no means ordinary, but he was a man. Capable both of depth and pettiness, horror and humor unparalleled, and so intrinsically focused on the analytical was he, but with such great sensitivity to the psychology of the human condition — Yeah, man! Who else could rivet you with a pulsing heart under the floorboards, the pearly whites of Berenice, or the adventures of Psyche Zenobia and her little poodle in a clock tower? My man was a nervous wreck, but, such a lovely, refined nervous wreck whose invisible antennae firmly implanted on his alabaster pate gave him heightened sensibilities and an instantly recognizable countenance (okay, when push comes to shove, some might get him mixed up with a morose looking Charlie Chaplain). A critic and cryptographer who made his share of enemies for his incisive critical surgery and scant approval for “puffers” – those who had no idea what the hell they were talking about when it came to writing — and, even for those who did – he did not suffer fools or ingrates — maybe because he himself suffered so much for his art. That is no exaggeration. He knew the toll exacted from having high standards. He paid handsomely for his efforts (I didn’t say he was paid handsomely. Au contraire. Oh, yeah. The French loved him… is that so wrong?)
Virginia. Oh, I don’t want to hear that thing about her being a child bride — LALALALALA –- I’ve got my fingers in my ears — ULALALALALALUME. Eddie and Virginia and Muddy were a family. If you ever, ever wanted the love of a family for support and security, then you can begin to understand them (Yes. I know she was his cousin.). Virginia died when she was 24. We always think of her as a 13 year old bride a la Jerry Lee (Lewis) — yes (they lied on the marriage certificate, and said she was 21) — BUT – NO — this is the beautiful, unearthly ANNABELL LEE — felled by consumption better known as TB — a disease that afflicted many of the women in EA’s life: A happenstance that haunted him. (His mother when he was three, a mentor when he was an adolescent, his step-mother, and his wife – all succumbed to tuberculosis.) Virginia loved Eddy, and Eddy loved her. It was widely speculated that this was a love not consummated. It was borne more from a mutual understanding than of a carnal, cultural norm. She vowed to be his guardian angel in death, just as she was in life. A friend noted how profoundly he was affected by her death, Many times, after the death of his beloved wife, was he found at the dead hour of a winter night, sitting beside her tomb almost frozen in the snow.*
A couple of tidbits about EA: He was, actually, the first American author to say — HEY! I am going to write for a living (HA!). I’m going to follow my muse wherever she takes me… right into the gutter…? Okay, fine…well, then. And that’s where they found him in the end, under mysterious circumstances, still undetermined — rabies being one of the most recently attributed causes.
His fellow West Point cadets actually financed one of his early books of poetry. Yes, he went to West Point… for a while.
Let’s see…I’d call him an early feminist, in some ways, for publicly championing women poets, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
And let’s get this out of the way. He wasn’t an opium addict. If you don’t believe me, investigate it yourself. It’s a misnomer. Opium was medicine in those days, but it wasn’t his drug of choice. Alcohol? Yeah, he imbibed. But — he couldn’t drink, and he knew it (that’s why there are so many theories of his being diabetic). He did anyway, when he was distraught. According to his friends, it didn’t take much. One down, and he was under. When he self-medicated (and it wasn’t on a consistent basis, as is widely believed) it was to blunt the intensity of a melancholy (maybe bipolar) made more potent by the adversity he frequently encountered. Poe was an unlucky SOB. He just was. Talent does not = luck. Eddy was 100% living proof of that axiom, and 1000% artist.
While I’m at it… allow me to rightfully pin most of the responsibility for the Poe myth on a Rufus Griswold voodoo doll. A most everlasting betrayal on the part of a vitriolic opportunist, who might have been a contemporary, but was never Poe’s peer. Griswold, who had the privilege of writing EA’s obituary, twisted and reamed and ir-redeemed a most complex, gifted artist. Griswold might mean “from the grey forest”, but he obviously couldn’t see it for the trees. Griswold. Bad taste and a poisonous pen that forever blackened his former friend’s reputation. Poe had his demons, but Griswold made a caricature out of him — one that persists to this day.
So, anyway NYC’ers— I know it’s too late today, but head out to Fordham Cottage in the Bronx sometime soon to say HEY! To the memory of a happy couple who’s little family managed with just a worn military coat for a bedspread, a kitty named Cattarina, and Muddy (Maria Clemm), their beloved “mummy”.
For those of us down here in Bmore., visit them in Westminster graveyard – literally — at the corner of Fayette and Greene. That’s where they are buried. Thanks to a kind Poe biographer, William Gill, who gathered Virginia’s bones from Fordham cemetery when it was being destroyed. He kept “her” under his own bed in a box (how very Poe-tic) until she could be properly laid to rest with her Eddy and mummy. Yeah. The truth is no stranger than Poe’s own fiction.
Have a little tea (and a toast) and sympathy for a genius and his Annabel Lee.
To Eddy and Virginia. SKOAL! (or, SKULL! For the truly macabre*)
*Charles Chauncey Burr
*Otis