Author’s legacy forever ‘The Raven,” and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’
RICHMOND — A new stamp honoring Edgar Allen Poe on his 200th birthday was unveiled last week at the Library of Virginia in Richmond with reflections by a distant cousin and a stirring reading of one of his best-known poems.
Harry Lee Poe, whose great-great-grandfather was Poe's cousin, lauded his relation as a path-breaking writer whose influence has been felt far beyond the American literary tradition he helped create.
"He was correct about the value of imagination for science, for faith and for every other field of human endeavor," said Poe, a writer, pastor and professor who also serves as president of the Edgar Allan Poe Foundation and Museum in Richmond.
Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston on Jan. 19, 1809, but raised in Richmond, becomes the second poet to have two stamps issued in his honor by the U.S. government. The other is William Wadsworth Longfellow, a contemporary of Poe's in the antebellum American literary world.
The stamp depicts a portrait of Poe by Michael J. Deas, a Virginia native who lives in New York. The U.S. Postal Service is selling the 42-cent stamp, as well as a limited-edition book of Poe's best-known poem, "The Raven," with six original illustrations by French artist Emmanuel Polanco.
While Poe is remembered as the creator of the mystery, an early master of the short story and a founder of American literary criticism, his voice came across most clearly yesterday in his poetry.
Dana Goia, a poet and outgoing chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, recited "Annabel Lee," a poem published after Poe's death in 1849. It was the first poem that Goia remembers hearing, read to him by his mother at bedtime.
"He's arguably the most influential American author on world literature," said Goia, who announced that Poe's stories and poems have been included in the National Endowment for the Arts' The Big Read, a program that encourages communities to adopt literature to read in common.
Another Poe poem, "El Dorado," was read yesterday by David Failor, executive director of stamp services for the Postal Service. Failor appeared in place of Katherine C. Tobin, a member of the Postal Service's board of governors whose flight to Richmond was canceled after the emergency landing of a commercial jet in New York on Thursday.
However, Failor remembered Poe most for a horror story, "The Tell-Tale Heart," which he recalled hearing for the first time in high school in Nebraska.
"I still get chills when I think about it," he said.
Michael Martz is a staff writer for Media General’s Richmond Times-Dispatch.
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