Most people likely associate Edgar Allan Poe as a writer of some of the world’s scariest horror stories. His most famous poem, “The Raven,” creates moods of terror as the hapless narrator begs the dark bird to bring back his lost love, Lenore. However, the raven can only taunt him and endlessly repeat, “Nevermore, Nevermore.” Many readers have been terrified as they thought about the idea of a chopped-up man and his beating heart under the floorboards in the “Tell-Tale Heart.” As horrifying as Poe’s tales are, I am not frightened by them. On the contrary, I am inspired. How he used his life setbacks to fuel his writing has been a significant inspiration for me as I try to find increasing purpose from my life setbacks. I have increasingly felt his direct and indirect presence since I became involved with Poe and the world Poe community.
A few years before I “retired” from my full-time job, my wife and I hosted an international exchange student, Aurora, from Bologna, Italy. Subsequently, she lived with us for a year, attended her senior year of high school with my youngest daughter, and participated in our family and cultural experiences. Soon after she settled here, she asked if I would take her to the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond. I was surprised to hear that visiting this museum was even more important to her than seeing the Confederate statues all around town, our war battlefields, or the nearby home of Thomas Jefferson. However, none of those was her first option. She told me many people in Italy consider the Poe Museum to be Richmond’s most notable feature. To me, this seemed like an unbelievable claim. I conceded that I had never been there before and knew only a little about the writer. Our first visit was exciting and informative, as she asked most of the questions of our tour guide. The year was productive and inspiring for our family and our new Italian daughter. She bonded well with our daughter, graduated from James River High School with honors, and returned to Italy in the late summer. In the subsequent years, we have visited her and her family several times. More on that later.
After she returned home, I started reading more of Poe’s stories and getting interested in both his life and what he had to write about. Although I was never an orphan, the fact that Poe’s father left his family and was never seen or heard from again made a mark since my mother abandoned me as a lad. I was profoundly disturbed to read that young Poe sat in a small and dark room of a boarding home to watch his mother slowly suffer and die from tuberculosis. Several of Poe’s other loved ones, including his wife, also died from this dreaded disease. It was then easy for me to understand how events like these likely inspired his dark poems and horror stories. After his natural parents were gone from his life, he became a foster child who was never legally adopted or well-cared for by them. Their callous slights of him disturbed me even more than reading any of Poe’s subsequent horror stories. I was also distraught to learn that his foster father enrolled him and then refused to pay for Eddie’s college expenses at the University of Virginia, forcing him to drop out. Thus, when they were among the wealthiest families in Richmond, they disowned and stopped all support for young Poe.
In 2012, at age 62, I decided to take a significant step forward and try to find a new direction for my life after being forced to retire. There would be no battlefields for me either. Instead, I enrolled as a graduate student in English Literature at Virginia Commonwealth University. I needed a research topic for my class on English Scholarships, so I thought about conducting research at the Poe Museum. My studies were supported and guided by Poe Museum Curator Chris Semtner. By 2015, I had completed a Thesis on Poe and Science and graduated from VCU with an MA in English Literature. This whole sequence of events changed my life significantly and gave me a new purpose and direction. Afterward, I served seven years on the Poe Museum Board, and nine years later, I still serve there as a volunteer and tour guide. My inspiration from Poe’s writing also motivated me to read fiction by other great writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I was an Associate Professor in English at Richard Bland College until 2023. With this enthusiasm for great literature, I started the RVA Classic Book Club in 2017, which is still active today. I have also taught over a dozen classic literature classes at Osher and other lifelong learning institutes.
Added Note: Aurora revisited us in the summer of 2023 to attend my daughter’s wedding. My wife and I also attended Aurora’s wedding banquet in Italy in July 2024. We were surprised and honored to be placed at her family’s head table with about 10 of her closest relatives from all over Italy. Her parents told those seated there that my wife and I had significantly inspired the direction of their daughter’s life and career choices. I responded that she had also helped influence my life’s direction after she asked me to take her to the Poe Museum.
Can you picture this? Some of Tuscany’s most beautiful mountain ridges were in the clear view from where we sat. Of all the possible topics to consider, Aurora’s relatives chose to discuss the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe. At that moment, I felt we were all momentarily connected to a worldwide community of this great visionary. Even I could hardly believe this was real. But, as Poe wrote:
“All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.”
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