Poe at the Morgan

Seeing artifacts from stories I’ve heard and people I admire is really cool to me. I was into Edgar Allen Poe’s poetry back in middle and high school and I did a paper on him, memorized “The Raven” for class, read about details of his life and whatnot. When Declan said they had Poe’s collection, I was eager to see Poe’s handwriting and the papers that he himself touched. Looking at his pieces, I couldn’t help but place them into the context of Poe’s life. Where was he when he wrote this? What was his mindset? “The Raven” is his best known poem and seeing that letter just reminded me that it wasn’t always that way. Poe had to write and rewrite the work. He proposed this new idea for “The Raven” to someone and had to struggle to get it published before it was anything at all. That was the item that stood out the most to me.
I found the scroll to be odd. Did he first put the blank papers together or did he first write on separate pages? I was trying to understand why he would choose a scroll over binding it like a book. I took a class about the printing press and the importance of decisions on font, spacing, punctuation, binding (or not binding) and how the final piece is presented. Poe’s short story didn’t stop flowing because there were no pages to turn. I got close to the paper to see if he had written it quickly (in one sitting) or stopped and picked up in different inks or angles. The artist’s details are lost in reproduced works so I’m glad I got the chance to appreciate Poe’s originals.