#photostorydlb
Home on Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse, Bronx New York.
When I was in Paris, the first thing I noticed was how many streets were named after artists, writers and musicians. I never found this to be true in the states. At any rate, while I was working on my photo book about the Bronx, I did try to find the great landmarks and came to the conclusion that this little home where Poe wrote The Raven (for example) and computed to a newspaper job in Manhattan; and where his "child bride" died, and where his mother-in-law tried her best to save him from poverty (without success) – and if you walk into this house you will need to stoop down.
It's tiny. But you will see the desk where Poe wrote by candlelight.
He may not have been the greatest writer produced by America – but he was one of the greatest geniuses we've produced in the arts. I could go on about how he was able to write poetry that was musical; or how he invented the deductive detective before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
And his ultimate mysterious death in the streets of Baltimore. I wondered whether that was why their football team is named the Ravens.
It's a heart-breaking story, and he continues to be one of the few writers that I can pick up at any time and just read a passage or two although I know the story so well. It's the style, the ideas, the crazy excessive erudition and the ideas he came up with despite living in abject poverty.
And it wasn't that the fates were all against him. He had a terrible temper, and it was said that normally he was a quiet reserved fellow, and that he got along with his fellow workers at the journal; but that if he had a single sip of liquor, he became a drunken lunatic.
I had read that about General Grant who had a reputation as a big drinker, but it turned out that Grant got drunk on a single swallow of hard liquor.
Well, I couldn't really just take a single picture of Poe's house that would do it justice, and there it is with the background of the Grand Concourse – and I decided to do it as a sort of poster – or that I might add other views of the house's interior when I visited it again. It was closed the day I was there.
Bon voyage Poe – wherever you are.
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