Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore”

January 21st, 2010

How not to make money and remain poor
A mysterious visitor who each year leaves roses and cognac on Edgar Allan Poe’s tomb in Baltimore, Maryland, failed to show up Tuesday for the first time in 61 years. “He didn’t appear this morning,” said Jeffrey Savoye, secretary of the 380-member Poe society. Each year since 1949, the 100th anniversary of Poe’s birth, this mysterious individual has left a bottle of cognac and a few roses at the foot of Poe’s tomb, usually at night, in tribute to the legendary poet. “Occasionally he came early, like 11:00-11:30 the evening before. But normally it’s between midnight and 5:00 am.”

The Poe Society waited
Around 50 people waited in vain from Tuesday night to watch the “Poe Toaster,” as the visitor has been dubbed. Many travelled from across the United States for the 201st anniversary of Poe’s birth. “As far as we know, they have not missed a year until now,” Savoye said of the Poe Toaster. The original yearly visitor apparently died in 1998, but left the pilgrimage up to his two sons. “We were left a note some years ago saying that the original toaster had died. We interpreted the message that the torch will be passed. We assumed that two sons of this person have been carrying it on,” he said.

A poet’s life
Imagine trying to eke out a living by writing poetry. Knocking out a living by writing anything is no breeze but it is possible, especially with the World Wide Web at one’s fingertips. But poetry? Who pays for poetry? Poe wrote many stories and I have a 700 page book of them but by all accounts, Poe, who died at the tragically young age of 40, had no money and made little. Yet the man was a genius with a pen in his hand and 160 years after his death his works are pulling in millions of dollars by way of books and movies. He saw nothing of that and remained poor.

A mysterious figure
Poe was the father of the mystery story and he himself was a mysterious figure.
For over 150 years, legions of scholars, literary people, journalists and Poe devotees have tried to capture Edgar Allan Poe’s complex personality and enshrine it in paper and ink. They have chased every conceivable source to fill in the details of his life. Every person who met Poe and was still alive after 1875 was coerced to recall any scrap of fact or insight, no matter how trivial or vague. After these people had passed on, their children and even grandchildren were asked to repeat anything they had heard about Poe.

An eternal mystery
Poe would have enjoyed the mystery he created out of himself. His letters, notes, photographs and newspaper cuttings have all been collected, catalogued and interpreted, but Poe has fooled us all and remains to this day an elusive quarry. He left behind many mementoes – but no money.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 9:27 am and is filed under Employment, Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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