For many years, the Poe House and Museum in Baltimore has held a celebration in honor of the writer’s birthday. In the past, Poe fans flocked to the event, usually held in January for one or two weekends. This year, there was one performance on March 3, and we were lucky enough to once again hit the road for Baltimore and attend.

Although we are still waiting on word as to what will happen with the Poe House, this performance could very well have been the last of its kind—most of you know the city of Baltimore cut the house’s funding in 2010, and according to Jeff Jerome, the reason it has stayed open longer than originally planned is due to private donations and high attendance at fundraising events.

We have been to many of the Poe birthday celebrations over the years and are hoping that the situation in which the house finds itself will change. After the concert, longtime Poe supporter, professor and well-known actor John Astin reminded goers that letters to the city of Baltimore’s Mayor would be helpful. Dust and Corruption’s Vagrarian has excellent advice on the way to write your letter, so although I will provide the address here, please read his excellent post at http://dustandcorruption.blogspot.com/2011/01/where-to-write-your-letters-to-support.html

The address is:

The Honorable Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

Office of the Mayor, City of Baltimore

100 North Holliday Street

Baltimore, MD 21202

If you’d like to make a donation directly to the Poe House, here’s all of that information:

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If you would like to make a donation to support the Baltimore Edgar Allan Poe House Museum, please send a check or money order to:

Jeff Jerome

Department of Planning

8th Floor

417 East Fayette Street

Baltimore, MD 21202

Make check payable to Director of Finance

Please annotate check “POE HOUSE DONATION”.

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In the meantime, I’ll share these photos of what I hope isn’t the last Poe Celebration. You can see that this was a rockin’ time, so if things head North and this tradition continues, don’t miss out next year! You can visit their website anytime for updates: http://www.poebicentennial.com/index.html

Charles and Nathan on the corner near our hotel. We usually stay at the Sheraton a few blocks from Westminster Hall, where the concert is held.

Charles and Nathan walk toward our destination as dusk settles on the city.

Every year, the celebration is populated with actors playing some of Poe’s most famous (or infamous) characters. Here, “The Cask of Amontillado”’s Fortunato weaves his way around a pole…

…and at the edge of a sidewalk…

….and in people’s faces.

And here I am with Fortunato, wishing I had some real amontillado!

VIDEO: See Fortunato in action!

The imposing tower of Westminster Hall rises into the early evening.

I have no idea what we were doing here, but I love our expressions. Also, check out the guy in costume—there were several attendees dressed in costume, and I wish I’d brought one of mine because I’d actually considered attending the concert in the gown I’d worn to our Edgar Allan Poe Dinner in 2000.

The back of someone’s hearse parked outside of the Westminster Hall gates.

The hearse obviously is connected with something called Girls and Corpses—this could be the famous magazine, but the logo doesn’t match, so it could be a local band or something similar. A web search didn’t help much in clarifying.

A shot of Poe’s monument. According to the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, yes, his bones really are under there: http://www.eapoe.org/balt/poegravd.htm, although this is not the original location of his burial.

A shot of a poster from the 2004 (I think) celebration. We framed it and we have it hanging in our dining room.

The pallid bust of Poe has presided over several celebrations. He’s not always on stage, but he’s always somewhere.

Fortunato and Montresor entertain on the balcony.

Below: Nathan, left, with Weird Maryland’s Matt Lake. We met him for the first time at the Poe event in 2007 and have run into each other at paranormal events on and off in the past few years.

Below: Matt signs a copy of Weird Maryland for a fan while Nathan looks on.

The sale table—always has lots of good Poe-related memorabilia, but my favorite things to buy are the academic studies published as chapbooks (I have quite a massive collection, even though my housemate Charles has me beat. And yes, I actually do read them).

I check out an issue of the newly-established Monsterpalooza while the crowd takes their seats (notice the packed house).

Cellist Gretchen Gettes opens the concert. It was the last shot I was able to get; no photography of any kind during the performance by anyone other than the Poe House’s official photographer was permitted.

Notes from the Second Row

I’m not going to write a big, beautiful review of Poe Forevermore; what follows here are a few things I pulled from the notes I was taking at the concert for the benefit of those who would be interested in its content.

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“Here, we have the dead in the basement and Poe outside.”

~ Jeff Jerome, Curator of theBaltimorePoeHouseMuseum, on Westminster Hall

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Cellist Gretchen Gettes opened the evening before Melanie Armstrong, John Spitzer, Mark Redfield, and Tony Tsendeas (well known to Poe Concert goers) took the stage with a clever program that told the story of Poe’s connection to Baltimore through letters and poetry.

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John Astin opened Act II and presented the loves of Poe’s life through the man’s poetry; he opened with “Alone,” and shared: “Poe was in love with love and in love with so many women; he lamented the death of his mother…he lost his mother…he fell in love with his foster mother Francis Allan when he was in his early teens, he fell in love with the mother of a playmate.”

Reads: “To Helen.”

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John Astin: “Then he lost his foster mother and there’s a poem I think is appropriate for his lament…he wanted to say goodbye to her, but he was called back from the army too late, and so as he was looking at her in her coffin, I imagine him saying [reads “A Dream Within a Dream.”]…Then there’s something I think is so brilliant about [Dream]…he states [All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream”] at the end of the first stanza, and then he asks it as a question the end of the second.” (Kristi: The juxtaposition exhibits the very tenuous quality of dreams themselves).

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Astin presented “For Annie” and lines from “…one of the greatest of Poe stories…‘Ligeia.’ We know that she has been his wife, we know that she is dead, but he can barely remember where they met,” Astin said, citing a key passage which hints at one of the story’s main themes: transmigration of the soul.

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George Bernard Shaw’s thoughts on Poe, Astin talked about the importance of “Eureka”: “If one can understand Eureka, one can unlock the mystery of all Poe’s work…for those who put faith in dreams as truth…the paper would shrivel and blaze at every touch of the fiery pen.”

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Astin read “The Conqueror Worm,” “To One in Paradise,” and “Annabel Lee,” “The Raven,” and closed his portion of the program with “El Dorado.”

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Kristi: Letter with Poe’s description of his life over the period in which Virginia seemed to get better, but then coughed up more blood: “…the end of a year, the vessel broke again, I went through precisely the same scene…each time I felt all the agonies of her death. Nervous, in a very unusual degree [Kristi: refs. or source Tell-Tale Heart’s opening line? Check year.]…I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity…I drank, god only knows how often or how much…insanity to the drink, rather than drink to the insanity.” [Kristi: Jackalope Story!! Alcoholism!! YES!! That’s it!! Also thematic Poe connection with trigger theory use!!]

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Astin: “He wrote and he wrote and he wrote and he never gave up, through all the poverty and all the sorrow.” [Kristi: Tape that on your monitor.]

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The night closed with parting words from Astin and Jerome as well as the traditional toast.

Knowing that this could be the last event made this emotional for everyone including audience members; there was a strange solemnity afterwards: no one wanted to stay, but no one wanted to go, either. At least for me, there was a sense that once I stepped away I wasn’t coming back. I hope this isn’t the case, and that there are many more celebrations in my future. I’ll always visitBaltimore—I’ll need my annual Annabel Lee Tavern fix, for sure—but something will be missing if the Poe House is gone.

The stone marking the original burial site of Poe. The stone was commissioned and placed too near one of the cemetery walls in 1913; in 1921, it was moved to its current location, which I believe is considered the correct spot.

More information on the stone.

Not a great picture, but this is one of my favorite spots in the cemetery—there’s a tiny path that winds past that little gravestone on the right, past a gnarled tree on the left, and around the corner. I’ve never been back there. I don’t want to ruin the mystery.

This is another favorite spot of mine.

This was me playing with shadows at the intermission. I like to call this my “Woman in Black” photo. Currently, it serves as the cover photo for the Scary Scribes Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/scaryscribes

This is beneath Westminster’s front entrance. I love that there are stones underneath another structure.

Melanie Armstrong, the gentleman who played Montresor, Mark Redfield, and John Astin take their bows.

John Astin shares with the audience.

Jeff Jerome gives the audience an update on the future of the Poe House and Museum.

Mark Redfield’s painting of John Astin as Gomez.

John Astin signs Redfield’s work.

Redfield, left, and Astin pose for photos.

Redfield and Astin shake hands.

Below: Nathan and I get a chance to chat with John Astin. He’s one of the most gracious men I’ve ever met.

Below: The goodies I picked up at the souvenir table; Charles is particularly jealous of the book on the Red Death. I think it’s the only one he doesn’t have and there appeared to only be one copy for sale so I grabbed it. He’s not going to let me live this one down, I can tell you!