Happy Halloween from Bryan the Writer and Edgar Allen Poe

Welcome to this week’s show and welcome to Halloween in a year that has been definitely one of the annals of human history. 

This year I thought maybe it might be kind of fun to inject a little Poe back into everyone’s life. So instead of doing something about writing, I thought it could be fun to recite a couple of my favorite works by Edgar Allen Poe. 

Edgar Allen Poe, or Poe as we call him, was born on January 18th 1809 in Boston. In 1811, the family moved to Richmond, Virginia and forever he would be associated with that city. As a matter of fact, if you go to Richmond Virginia today you can visit the Poe museum. 

In 1826 he began his studies at the University of Virginia where he studied ancient and modern languages. He would eventually join the Army and you can see a small display to him at the casemate museum at Fort Monroe. You can visit the entire fort today. I remember having to go the Fort Monroe when it was still an active installation.

Poe wrote and had several positions in magazines and literary journals. Always having issues with gambling, he was constantly in debt. Though he still managed to amass quite a stable of literary pieces while alive. 

On October 7th 1849, he passed away. And although many people had provided accounts of his last days, no one is really sure how he died.

If you ask me what pieces of his work I love the best, I would have to tell you the poem the bells and the story, A Cask of Amontillado are my favorite.

The Bells is one of his works which was not published in his lifetime. Published in November of 1849 (one month after his passing), it is evocative of the movement through life. Each of the stanzas gets longer until the reader gets to the final tolling of the bells, so to speak.

Speaking of bells, did you catch the bells at the end of The Cask of Amontillado? They are jingling on the hat of a jester which is supposed to be a source of merriment. You have to ask yourself if the bells were Fortunato’s true character or was it just a disguise and Montresor murdered someone who did him little harm? 

Speaking of symbols, the Cask of Amontillado certainly has tons of it. Published in 1846 in the magazine Godey's Lady's Book, it is dripping with irony. 

It chronicles the murderous intentions of Senior Montresor and his adversary, Fortunato. Fortunato was said to have caused him a thousand insults. 

Thank you very much for listening. Happy Halloween everyone! This is Bryan the Writer, signing off.

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