Museum News

Here is the final schedule for the first Positively Poe Conference to be held next week, June 24-26 at the University of Virginia. Click here or write conference organizer Alexandra Urakova for more information.

PPConferencePROGRAM BOOK

Thank you to everyone who submitted to our poetry contest last month, held in honor of National Poetry Month. We received some great poems from all over the world. The following three poems were chosen by our editorial staff for first, second, and third place.

First Place

“Family Portrait”

By Ryan McLellan

Your bonnet rots and my time piece stopped a long

time ago.  We became a faded image on a mantel.

My father posed like his father before him, a stone

expression and thumbs in his belt loops.  His wife –

not my mother – stood still and did not speak.  My

uncle twisted his mustache like a man hatching some

sinister plot.  You must have been so uncomfortable

in that corset, bound, while the men wore the billowy

suits and smoked the cigars.  How many of these

dreadful photographs did you have to pose for?  I

can’t see through the sepia anymore; cataracts are

brown and grey.  A group-shot taken the last time we

got together; a funeral.  We all die young in this family.

We look away from the lens like we can’t be bothered

with beauty yet we all put a hand on our hips, puff

up our chests and stand still when told to do so.  We

died in these frames, lived out our last days under

dust in forgotten parlors but we knew we could be

immortal if we struck the right pose.

About the Author

Ryan McLellan is a teacher, singer/songwriter, nationally touring poet, Buffler fellow and editor from Waltham, Massachusetts.  The author of five collections of poetry and the spoken-word album Last-Second Changes to the Set List, his work has been published widely in journals such as The Subterranean Quarterly, The November 3^rd Club, Lower East Side Review, Bird’s Eye reView, Concise Delight, Cosmopolitan Review, OVS Magazine as well as the anthologies Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse and the2010 Poets’ Guide to New Hampshire.  He is the only three-time recipient of the Esther Buffler Poetry-In-Schools Fellowship from the Portsmouth (NH) Poet Laureate Program and has presented workshops around the country to a wide range of audiences.  He is a semi-finalist and four year veteran at the National Poetry Slam and his full-length collection, Plenty of Blood to Spare, was published by Sargent Press in 2012.  He lives in Portland, Maine and teaches in Dover, New Hampshire.

Second Place

“RVA Storm’s A Brewing”

by Gonjoe Winn

Richmond billows and blows wild wind vines

thru the thousand tiny pebble pressed streets

striped light with three inch thick white lines,

pedestrian hair flocks frantic

like dune reeds in a winter storm—

skirts flirt towards ladies’ noses—

traffic lights sway like strung up strawberries,

autos rush to hurry and bury their heads

fearing hail’s icy knuckles on their skin,

the milk stout James undulates ripples

racing like microscopic sailboats over his face

wrecking carefree into the feeble red clay banks,

gnats grow cross-eyed in the polarizing wind

seeking shelter within the friendly fur of homeless necks

and short-haired K-9’s with flaccid tails

tucking their snouts close to their handler’s crotch,

brief doses of silence hang like empty nooses

waiting for innocent water to become criminally heavy,

my grave eyes sketch the palm reading sky

prying into the beech wood woolen clouds

crying aloud to sidewalk strollers

lightening will rain and thunder will roll over

screaming blaze honey cream droplets

down and set to drown day into night’s arms.

About the Author

Gonjoe Winn works as a Professional School Counselor in Chesterfield County, and is an alum of James Madison University and Virginia Commonwealth University. Gonjoe plays harmonica in a Richmond-area band called “The Approach” (http://theapproachrva.bandcamp.com/) and is always up for an adventure.

Third Place

“For Company”

By C. L. Clickard

At midnight in Maison la Creep

I wakened from a fitful sleep

to find an incorporeal guest

hovering near the cedar chest.

She dressed quite nicely for a ghost.

Her shroud was daintier than most,

and where her dented skull might show

the ectoplasm formed a bow.

And if you didn’t mind the gore

she smeared across the parquet floor,

she wasn’t half bad company.

I asked her back for Sunday tea

Next evening I was reading late

a stack of crumpets on my plate

when from the painting o’er my bed

emerged a spectre, minus head.

The portrait’s visage he’d have matched

if his head was still attached .

So since one should not snub one’s host

 I offered up my buttered toast

But he had business dark and dire

and could not linger by my fire.

Still, as he must return by dawn

I offered breakfast on the lawn.

The third night dozing in my chair

a skull came floating in mid air.

I wondered if the cranium might

belong to he from yester night.

But thinking such a question rude

and being in a quiet mood

we sat in friendly contemplation

of the fireplace conflagration.

And ‘ere he floated out at dawn

I asked him to return anon.

Such  peaceful camaraderie

is quite a scarce commodity.

On Thursday night I could not doze

so wand’ring through the hedge maze rows,

I chanced upon a spectral choir

chanting quatrains bleak and dire.

Politely I restrained the urge

to don a robe and join their dirge

And when they stilled, inquired their rate,

then booked them for the vicar’s fete.

Twas Friday when an apparition

dragged me from my deep dormition

and led me to a loathsome crypt

where shadows swirled and ichor dripped.

It raised a black and withered claw

The ghoul’s intent  I clearly saw,

and rapped upon that marbled door

with a jolly, “Drinks? -- at four?”

And though no answ’ring voice I heard

from guiding ghoul or the interred,

I felt my terms had been accepted

and company should be expected.

So I retired once more to bed

awaiting visitations dread

and when, at last, the hour tolled four

a noxious smoke roiled from the floor.

I watched as spectral shape congealed

complete with axe and blood drenched shield

Twas Comte la Creep, knight dire and dark

my bloodline’s thrice-cursed patriarch!

I took the axe his hands were gripping

“Pardon, sir, it seems you’re dripping.”

and  proffered snifter, pipe and chair.

His howl of outrage rent the air:

“Ere since my unshrived inhumation,

I’ve terrorized each blood relation

who dared reside here e’en one night!

Yet you…. unwholesome, twisted wight…

Have you no nerves? No fear? No dread?

No terror of the vile undead?”

I shook my head and offered up

a steaming jasmine tea-filled cup.

“Enough!”  he shrieked.

“I’ll not be taunted

with the shame of being wanted.”

He snatched his blade from off my bed

and clean divorced me from my head.

Ashamed of my ungainly pose

I rose, at least from neck to toes,

and hoisted severed head to see:

the painting now resembled me!

“Be cursed to haunt these halls alone

until this insult you atone.”

Thus with that shout, his anger sated

the Comte la Creep disintegrated.

Appalled, I swept through hall and tomb

each echoing, unspectered room,

and found my ghostly infestation

had dwindled to one pale relation.

And thus I linger, mortified,

until, within these halls, has died

some unsuspecting Creep relation --

who’ll come to join my ululation!

So should these wailings 'round your bed

loose your grasp on life’s thin thread,

pardon my effrontery --

‘tis only done for company.

About the Author

C L Clickard is an internationally published author, poet and puzzle-maker. Her latest book Victricia Malicia,

released from Flashlight Press in 2012. Her next book, Magic for Sale, releases from Holiday House in 2014.

Her work has appeared in Underneath the Juniper Tree, Spellbound, and Crow Toes Quarterly.

You can find out more about Carrie and her work at www.clclickard.com.

Get all the latest Poe Museum news with the Spring 2013 issue of our newsletter Evermore. This issue features updates on new acquisitions, upcoming events, and the Poe Museum kittens. spring2013newsletter

On May 16, 1836, Edgar Allan Poe and his young fiancée Virginia Clemm were joined by a few close friends for a small wedding ceremony at a home near Capitol Square. According to different sources, the event took place at either Mrs. Yarrington’s boarding house at Eleventh and Bank Streets or the home of Amasa Converse at Eighth and Franklin Streets. The guests included Virginia’s mother and Poe’s aunt Maria Poe Clemm, Poe’s boss at the Southern Literary Messenger Thomas White, White’s daughter Eliza, a pressman named Thomas W. Cleland and his wife, the printer of the Messenger William McFarlane, an apprentice in the Messenger office named John W. Fergusson, the owner of the boarding house in which Poe lived Mrs. James Yarrington, one of Virginia’s friends Jane Foster, and a few others.

In addition to the number of guests associated with the Southern Literary Messenger, another magazine writer, Rev. Amasa Converse, performed the ceremony. In addition to editing the Southern Religious Telegraph, Converse was a Presbyterian minister. He later recalled Poe’s bride as “polished, dignified and agreeable in her bearing… [possessing] a pleasing manner but…very young.” Of course, Virginia was half the age of her twenty-seven year-old groom, but Converse noted she had given “her consent freely.” Unfortunately, her father’s death a few years earlier had prevented him from giving her his permission to marry, so, earlier on his wedding day, Poe had signed a marriage bond verifying Virginia was twenty-one and able to marry without her father’s consent. Cleland co-signed the document.

In a 1904 letter to T. Pendleton Cummings, Rev. Converse’s son F.B. Converse wrote that Poe “was married by my father…in my father’s parlor…at the Southeast corner of Main and Eighth Streets, Richmond…Edgar Allan Poe came to the house, and the wedding was performed in the parlor, my father standing, according to the impressions which I have received, near the mantel piece and Edgar Allan Poe and his bride coming in at the front. There were very few persons present at the wedding, my mother and the members of the family, and perhaps one or two more companions, which they brought with them.”

Poe collector James H. Whitty later interviewed Jane Foster about the wedding, and he reported, “Mrs. Jane [Foster] Stocking was present at the wedding, which took place in the parlor of the Yarrington home, where Poe boarded, Mrs. Stocking, then but a slip of a girl, was full of thrills with thoughts of seeing so young a girl, like her own self, getting married; and also like Virginia, she was so little, that she found her best view of the ceremony was from the hallway door, where she obtained a reflection of the entire scene through a large old-fashioned mirror, which tilted forward a bit from over the mantle. All the boarders of the home, and all the poet’s friends, including Mr. Thomas W. White and his daughter Eliza, were present. Virginia was attired in a new traveling dress, and…hat. After the ceremony and congratulations the newly wedded entered a hack, waiting on the outside, and went to a train for Petersburg, Va., where they spent their honeymoon…Mrs. Stocking at the time of the wedding was both young and shy, and on the occasion she said, that she could only look, and look about in bewilderment — for in that short ceremony of a few minutes she was picturing her little companion of the day before suddenly transported into matured womanhood; like in the fairy tales, she was wondering why Virginia didn’t grow taller and look different, à la Cinderella; that’s what bothered little Jane Foster the most; but Virginia looked natural, and never changed an iota.”
After the ceremony, the guests ate wedding cake baked by Mrs. Clemm. Then some of the guests accompanied the newlyweds to the train station where they boarded a train to their honeymoon at the home of magazine editor Hiram Haines in Petersburg.

A few days later, on May 20, the Richmond Whig reported, “Married, on Monday May 16th, by the Reverend Mr. Converse, Mr. Edgar A. Poe to Miss Virginia Clemm.” Other papers in Richmond and Norfolk carried similar announcements.

Contemporary accounts attest that Poe was a devoted husband to his adoring wife. Their friend, the poet Frances Osgood, wrote, “Of the charming love and confidence that existed between his wife and himself, always delightfully apparent to me, in spite of the many little poetical episodes, in which the impassioned romance of his temperament impelled him to indulge; of this I cannot speak too earnestly — too warmly. I believe she was the only woman whom he ever truly loved.”

Poe and his wife would be married for eleven years before Virginia succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four. Poe followed her just two years later. Though both died in different cities, their remains were reunited over thirty years later, and they are now buried together in Westminster Burying Grounds in Baltimore.

Today marks the 177th anniversary of Poe’s wedding, and it seems appropriate to conclude this post with Poe’s poem “Eulalie,” a tribute to the joys of married life:

EULALIE — A SONG.

I DWELT alone
In a world of moan,
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride —
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.

Ah, less — less bright
The stars of the night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
And never a flake
That the vapor can make
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie’s most unregarded curl —
Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie’s most humble and careless curl.

Now Doubt — now Pain
Come never again,
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
And all day long
Shines, bright and strong,
Astarté within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye —
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.

If you are interested in learning more about Poe’s marriage, visit the Poe Museum to see a display of artifacts owned by Virginia Clemm Poe. You can also learn more about Poe’s honeymoon in Petersburg at the May 23 Unhappy Hour when Jeffrey Abugel, author of Edgar Allan Poe’s Petersburg, will be here for a book signing.

The Poe Museum is proud to announce its upcoming exhibit “Poe in Paris,” which runs from June 23 until September 8, 2013 at the Poe Museum at 1914 East Main Street, Richmond, Virginia. Drawing on rare artwork and documents from the Poe Museum and four other collections, the exhibit will explore Poe’s influence on French avant garde artists and writers of the nineteenth century. On Saturday, June 22 from 5 to 9 P.M. the Poe Museum will host a special preview opening and wine pairing for which tickets can be purchased at the museum or at poemuseum.org for $25 in advance or $30 at the door.

About Poe in Paris:

The progressive cultural climate of nineteenth century Paris gave birth to artistic movements like Impressionism, Symbolism, Post-Impressionism, and Fauvism. The writers and artists active there pioneered the concepts which would soon give birth to modern art and literature. One of the most important and influential figures in this incubator of innovative ideas never even visited Paris, but his name was on the lips of almost every member of the city’s avant garde. His works were discussed and imitated by the leading authors and illustrated by the most innovative artists. Though Edgar Allan Poe never saw Paris, some of his most important works were inspired by the city and, in turn, inspired Paris’s leading artists and writers including the painters Edouard Manet and Paul Gauguin and the writers Charles Baudelaire and Jules Verne.

Since most Americans only know Poe for a few of his horror stories, which comprise only a small fraction of his oeuvre, it is easy to forget that Richmond’s greatest writer was also America’s first internationally influential author. After his early death in 1849 and the dismissal of his works by some American critics, it was the Europeans—especially the French—who cultivated an appreciation of Poe’s revolutionary contributions to world literature and aesthetics. Poe and his followers promoted concepts like “Art for Art’s Sake” and “Pure Poetry” which turned the art world upside-down and ushered in the age of Modernism. It should be no wonder that Edouard Manet produced three portraits of him and provided illustrations for a French edition of “The Raven” translated by avant garde French poet Stephan Mallarme. Symbolist painter Paul Gauguin and Fauvist Henri Matisse were among the many French artists to produce Poe-inspired works. Considered the Father of Science Fiction, Jules Verne was inspired by Poe’s science fiction stories and even wrote a sequel to one of Poe’s novels.

The Poe Museum’s intriguing exhibit will feature Poe-inspired artwork by Edouard Manet, Henri Matisse, and more in addition to rare early French translations of Poe’s works by Charles Baudelaire, Stephan Mallarme, and others. Assembled from the Poe Museum’s collection as well as from four other public and private collections, the exhibit will explore Poe’s presence in Parisian culture at the time Modern Art was born.

“Poe in Paris” will run from June 23 until September 8, 2013 with a special preview evening and wine pairing to be held on Saturday, June 22 from 5 to 9 P.M. The exhibit is included in the cost of Poe Museum general admission, but tickets for the preview evening and wine pairing can be purchased at the Poe Museum or on its website for $25 in advance or $30 at the door.

This June 24-26, the Poe Museum and the UVA Small Special Collections Library will host the first-ever Positively Poe Conference devoted to Poe’s life affirming and benefitial contributions to art, literature, culture, and science. This unique conference promises to change the way you think about Poe’s life and work. An international group of the leading Poe scholars, artists, and scientists will converge on the University of Virginia for a new kind of conference to be held in the shadow of some of the very sites that influenced Poe’s greatest works. Conferees will attend a dinner only a short distance from Poe’s dorm room and a picnic in the very Ragged Mountains that appear in Poe’s “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains.” A wide array of speakers will explore previously overlooked aspects of America’s most famous and most misunderstood author. The response so far has been great, and people from around the world have already registered. Don’t miss this opportunity to be a part of this groundbreaking event in Poe studies. You can register for the conference online today. For more information, contact the conference organizer Alexandra Urakova at positivelypoe@gmail.com. A tentative schedule appears below.

Monday, June 24, 2013

7:00 Dinner – Rotunda Room.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

All paper sessions in the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library auditorium

9:00 Session One – The Boy Next Door
Chair – Stephen Rachman, Michigan State University

A. Richard Kopley
“Edgar Allan Poe, the Boy Next Door”
B. Chris Semtner
“A Young Girl’s Recollections of Edgar Allan Poe”
C. Jerome McGann,
“Verse and Reverse. Poe and the Poetry of Codependence”.

10:30 Break

11:00 Session Two – Literary Circles, Friends and Followers
Chair – Jerome McGann, University of Virginia

A. Philip Phillips
“Yankee Neal and Edgar Poe: The Fruits of a Literary Friendship”
B. John Gruesser
“Poe, Whitman, and Melville in New York and Beyond”
C. Emron Esplin and Margarida Vale de Gato
“‘Excellent system(s) of positive translation(s)’: Why Poe’s Translators Have Neither Been Invisible nor Ephemeral”

12:30 Lunch break

1:30 Session Three – Poe and Art
Chair – Stephen Railton, University of Virginia

A. Scott Peeples
“Poe in Love”
B. Sonya Isaak
“When Music Affects Us to Tears”: Poe’s Silent Music – Divine Aspiration and Lasting Inspiration
C. Anne Margaret Daniel
“Bob Dylan: ‘like being in an Edgar Allan Poe story’”

3:00 Break

3:30 Session Four: Collecting Poe

Susan Tane and Harry Lee Poe

4:30 Break

6:00 Picnic – The Ragged Mountain (Beth Sweeney’s readers’ theater)

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

All paper sessions in the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library auditorium

9:00 Session One – The Comic Side of Poe
Chair – Richard Kopley, Penn State University

A. Barbara Cantalupo
“‘a little China man having a large stomach’: Poe’s Homely Details in ‘The Devil in the Belfry’
B. Alexandra Urakova
“Shreds and patches”: Poe, Fashion, and The Godey’s Lady’s Book
C. Elina Absalyamova
“A Comic Poe: European Success Story”

10:30 Break

11:00 Session Two – Tales: Rethinking the Gothic
Chair – Bill Engel, University of the South

A. Bonnie Shannon McMullen
“The ‘sob from the . . .ebony bed’: The Reanimation of the Gothic Tale in ‘Ligeia’”
B. Susan Beth Sweeney
“Positive Images: Poe and the Daguerreotype”
C. William E. Engel
“Jaunty dialogs with the non-human: a Closer Look at Dogs in the Works of E.A. Poe”

12:30 Lunch break

1:30 Session Three – Poe and Ethics
Chair – Margarida Vale de Gato, University of Lisboa

A. Gero Guttzeit,
“‘Constructive Power’: Poe’s Mythology and Ethics of Authorship”
B. Katherine Rose Keenan,
“You Can’t Escape Yourself”: Poe’s Use of Moral Doppelgangers”
C. Shawn McAvoy and Heather Myrick Stocker
“Selective Symbolism: Poe’s Romantic Theology”

3:00 Break

3.30 Session Four – Poetry, Science, and Eureka
Panel Chair – Harry Lee Poe, Union University

A. Stephen Rachman
“From “Al Aaraaf” to the Universe of Stars: Poe, the Arabesque, and Cosmology”
B. René van Slooten
“Religion, Science and Philosophy in Eureka”
C. Murray Ellison
“Judging Edgar Allan Poe’s Eureka after the Author’s Death”

5:00 Close

April is National Poetry Month and the perfect time for a visit to the Poe Museum. Not only is the Poe Museum currently exhibiting a manuscript for Poe’s early poem “To Helen” as well as rare first editions of Poe’s volumes Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, Poems, and The Raven and Other Poems, but the Museum is also home to a garden inspired by Poe’s poetry.

The Poe Museum’s legendary Enchanted Garden opened in April 1922 as Virginia’s first memorial to Edgar Allan Poe. The garden remains the heart of the Poe Museum complex and continues to thrive as a living embodiment of Poe’s poetic ideals. The name of the garden was borrowed from a line from Poe’s 1848 version of “To Helen.” The layout was derived from his poem “To One in Paradise,” and most of the flowers, trees, and shrubs were mentioned in hiss poems and short stories. Among the many plants visitors will encounter in the Enchanted Garden are begonias, clematis, geraniums, hyacinths, hydrangeas, pansies, roses, violets, and tulips. The grassy lawns are lined with ivy (said to have been taken from Poe’s mother’s grave at St. John’s Church), and the exterior staircase is covered in jasmine. Shade is provided by lovely old boxwoods which have grown to the size of trees. Other trees and shrubs include dogwoods, camellias, a magnolia, and a huge photinia, each of which displays beautiful flowers at different times of the year.

In addition to planting a variety of colorful plants, the founders of the Poe Museum incorporated building materials from a number of demolished buildings associated with the poet. The pergola was constructed using bricks and granite salvaged from the office of the Southern Literary Messenger, the magazine at which Poe began his career in journalism. The garden also contains elements from Poe’s foster father’s office, a boarding house in which Poe lived in Richmond, and from one of Poe’s New York homes.

If a garden seems an unusual memorial to a writer best known for his tales of murder and madness, you might be surprised to learn Poe loved nature and wrote a number of pieces about nature and landscape gardens. Among these are “Morning on the Wissahiccon,” “The Landor’s Cottage,” and “The Domain of Arnheim.” In the following passage from “The Domain of Arnheim,” Poe explains how a garden is like a poem:

“Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man lived more profoundly enamored of music and poetry. Under other circumstances than those which invested him, it is not impossible that he would have become a painter. Sculpture, although in its nature rigorously poetical was too limited in its extent and consequences, to have occupied, at any time, much of his attention. And I have now mentioned all the provinces in which the common understanding of the poetic sentiment has declared it capable of expatiating. But Ellison maintained that the richest, the truest, and most natural, if not altogether the most extensive province, had been unaccountably neglected. No definition had spoken of the landscape-gardener as of the poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the creation of the landscape-garden offered to the proper Muse the most magnificent of opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest field for the display of imagination in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty; the elements to enter into combination being, by a vast superiority, the most glorious which the earth could afford. In the multiform and multicolor of the flowers and the trees, he recognized the most direct and energetic efforts of Nature at physical loveliness. And in the direction or concentration of this effort — or, more properly, in its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth — he perceived that he should be employing the best means — laboring to the greatest advantage — in the fulfillment, not only of his own destiny as poet, but of the august purposes for which the Deity had implanted the poetic sentiment in man.”

A visit to the Enchanted Garden is like walking through Poe’s poetry, and National Poetry Month is a great time to see the spring flowers in bloom.

In celebration of National Poetry Month, the Poe Museum will be accepting submissions throughout the month of April for a poetry contest. There are no restrictions on content or form. All poems must be no longer than Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (108 lines). Only one poem may be submitted per author.

Prizes for the top three selected poems will be as follows:

1^st Place:

Publication on The Poe Museum’s blog

Publication in The Poe Museum’s print newsletter Evermore (includes 2 contributor copies)

One year of membership to The Poe Museum ($25.00 value)

2^nd Place:

Publication on The Poe Museum’s blog

One free admission pass to The Poe Museum ($6.00 value)

3^rd Place:

Publication on The Poe Museum’s blog

Submission Deadline:
11:00 P.M. Eastern Time, April 30^th, 2013

Submission Guidelines:
Electronic submissions are preferred. Submissions may be inserted directly into the body of the email, or attached as a .DOC, .RTF, or .PDF. Send to submissions@poemuseum.org

Print Submissions may be sent with a self addressed envelope to:
The Poe Museum
1914-16 East Main St.
Richmond, VA 23223

Response Times
All winners will be contacted by May 10^th. Winners will be published electronically in May, with newsletter publication in July.

Rights
All rights revert back to the author upon publication. The Poe Museum retains non-exclusive publication rights.

It may still be February, but spring has already arrived in the Poe Museum’s Enchanted Garden. Several flowers are in bloom, and more are on their way. Here are some photos taken yesterday in the garden.

Beginning in 1921, the Poe Foundation created this garden as Richmond, Virginia’s memorial to Edgar Allan Poe. The museum’s founders planted trees, flowers, and shrubs mentioned in Poe’s works and incorporated bricks and granite from Poe’s Richmond homes and places of employment into the walls, paths, benches, and shrine. Even the layout is based on descriptions taken from Poe’s poetry.

The Poe Museum and its Enchanted Garden opened in April 1922. Nine decades later, the garden remains the heart of the Poe Museum complex. In addition to showcasing Poe’s favorite plants and hosting Poe Museum events, the garden has become a popular wedding venue–even earning the distinction of being named one of this year’s top wedding sites by Virginia Living Magazine.

The next time you stop by the Poe Museum, be sure to devote part of your visit to exploring this beautiful oasis in the middle of downtown Richmond.

It’s Valentine’s Day, a holiday Americans celebrated even back in Edgar Allan Poe’s time. In fact, one of his friends, Anna Charlotte Lynch, hosted an annual St. Valentine’s Day party at her home in New York.

Throughout 1845, Poe was a favorite guest at Lynch’s weekly literary soirees. In her words, “During the time that [Poe] habitually visited me, a period of two or three years, I saw him almost always on my reception evenings, when many other guests were present. . . . In society, so far as my observation went, Poe had always the bearing and manners of a gentleman — interesting in conversation, but not monopolizing; polite and engaging, and never, when I saw him, abstracted or dreamy. He was always elegant in his toilet, quiet and unaffected, unpretentious, in his manner; and he would not have attracted any particular attention from a stranger, except from his strikingly intellectual head and features, which bore the unmistakable character of genius…”

Over the course of his visits to Lynch’s soirees, Poe befriended many of New York’s leading writers. At the same time, he became the recipient of attention from a few of the female attendees. One of them, Frances S. Osgood, was one of the nation’s most popular poets. She and Poe published flirtatious love poems to each other in the magazines of the day. In a letter to one of Poe’s other admirers, Sarah Helen Whitman, Osgood wrote, “I meet Mr. Poe very often at the receptions. He is the observed of all observers. His stories are thought wonderful, and to hear him repeat the Raven, which he does very quietly, is an event in one’s life. People seem to think there is something uncanny about him, and the strangest stories are told, and, what is more, believed, about his mesmeric experiences, at the mention of which he always smiles. His smile is captivating! . . . . Everybody wants to know him; but only a very few people seem to get well acquainted with him”

Another of the attendees taking an interest in Poe was Mrs. Elizabeth Ellet. Although Poe spurned her advances, she continued to send him love letters. She may be the one Elizabeth Oakes Smith was referring to in this account: “A certain lady . . . . fell in love with Poe and wrote a love-letter to him. Every letter he received he showed to his little wife. This lady went to his house one day; she heard Fanny Osgood and Mrs. Poe having a hearty laugh, they were fairly shouting, as they read over a letter. The lady listened, and found it was hers, when she walked into the room and snatched it from their hands”

Whether or not that account refers to Ellet, it is known that, in late January 1846, she reported having seen an “indiscreet” letter from Osgood to Poe lying on a table in his house. Nobody bothered to ask Ellet why she was reading other people’s mail, but Lynch and her friend Margaret Fuller soon showed up at Poe’s house to demand Poe return all the letters Osgood had ever sent him. He responded that Mrs. Ellet should worry more about her own letters to him.

After Lynch’s departure, Poe unceremoniously dumped all of Ellet’s letters to him on her doorstep. Soon thereafter, Ellet and her brother arrived at Poe’s house to demand the same letters, which he no longer had. After Ellet’s brother threatened him, Poe went to another friend, Thomas Dunn English, for a pistol with which he could defend himself. English not only refused but also accused Poe of lying about ever having received any letters from Ellet in the first place, so a fist fight broke out.

Although Poe would later send Ellet a letter of apology, Lynch removed him from her guest list, and Ellet began spreading rumors that he was insane. This was only a couple weeks before Lynch’s annual Valentine’s Day party. Despite not being allowed to attend that gathering, Poe sent Lynch the following Valentine’s poem, which he intended to have read at the party. It is addressed to Frances Osgood, one of the women at the center of the previous month’s scandal. You can find her name spelled in lines of the poem if you write down the first letter of the first line, the second letter of the second line, and so forth.

For her these lines are penned, whose luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Læda,
Shall find her own sweet name that, nestling, lies
Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.
Search narrowly this rhyme, which holds a treasure
Divine — a talisman — an amulet
That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure;
The words — the letters themselves. Do not forget
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor.
And yet there is in this no Gordian knot
Which one might not undo without a sabre
If one could merely understand the plot.
Enwritten upon this page whereon are peering
Such eager eyes, there lies, I say, perdu,
A well-known name, oft uttered in the hearing
Of poets, by poets; as the name is a poet’s, too.
Its letters, although naturally lying —
Like the knight Pinto (Mendez Ferdinando) —
Still form a synonym for truth. Cease trying!
You will not read the riddle though you do the best you can do.

The same day Poe addressed the above poem to Frances Osgood, his wife Virginia wrote him this poem. Poe’s name is spelled out in the first letter of each line.

Ever with thee I wish to roam —
Dearest my life is thine.
Give me a cottage for my home
And a rich old cypress vine,
Removed from the world with its sin and care
And the tattling of many tongues.
Love alone shall guide us when we are there —
Love shall heal my weakened lungs;
And Oh, the tranquil hours we’ll spend,
Never wishing that others may see!
Perfect ease we’ll enjoy, without thinking to lend
Ourselves to the world and its glee —
Ever peaceful and blissful we’ll be.
Saturday February 14. 1846.

After Valentine’s Day 1846, Poe never spoke to Osgood again. In accordance with his wife’s wishes, as expressed in the above poem, Poe and his wife soon moved out of the city to a cottage in the countryside, far from “the tattling of many tongues.” Unfortunately, their love was not enough to heal her “weakened lungs.” Tuberculosis claimed her less than a year later.

The following year, for Lynch’s 1848 Valentine’s Day party, Poe’s long-distance admirer, Sarah Helen Whitman, sent Lynch a Valentine’s poem for Poe. Lynch read Whitman’s poem at the party but did not immediately publish it. She explained in a letter to Whitman, “The [poem] to Poe I admired exceedingly & would like to have published with your consent with the others, but he is in such bad odour with most persons who visit me that if I were to receive him, I should lose the company of many whom I value more. [Name obliterated] will not go where he visits &several others have an inveterate prejudice against him.” The name that was removed from the letter was likely Mrs. Ellet’s.

Whitman’s Valentine poem to Poe appears below.

If thy sad heart, pining for human love,
In its earth solitude grew dark with fear,
Lest the high Sun of Heaven itself should prove
Powerless to save from that phantasmal sphere
Wherein thy spirit wandered, — if the flowers
That pressed around thy feet, seemed but to bloom
In lone Gethsemanes, through starless hours,
When all who loved had left thee to thy doom,–
Oh, yet believe that in that hollow vale
Where thy soul lingers, waiting to attain
So much of Heaven’s sweet grace as shall avail
To lift its burden of remorseful pain,
My soul shall meet thee, and its Heaven forego
Till God’s great love, on both, one hope, one Heaven bestow.

Later in 1848, Whitman and Poe would meet, become engaged, and break off that engagement after only a month.

Visit the Poe Museum this Valentine’s Day to learn more about Edgar and Virginia Poe, Anna Charlotte Lynch, and Sarah Helen Whitman. A lovely portrait of Lynch is now hanging in the Elizabeth Arnold Poe Memorial Building. You can read the Poe Museum’s letter from Lynch to Poe here.