Poe had humiliated extremely well-connected and successful folk–there’s no doubt about that. To damage a person’s hard-earned literary reputation is to steal their land, wife and property, and a savage, sarcastic review from Poe did occasionally do that.

But Poe couldn’t be put away THAT easily; he had a name, a face, a gigantic literary reputation.

If Poe had been found by just anyone, with his throat cut or a bullet in his belly, he would have been martyred at once, and many questions would have been asked. ‘Who did him violence?’ would have been on everyone’s lips.

Instead, the events Oct 3-7 leading up to Griswold’s ‘few or no friends’ libel in Greeley’s NY Tribune Oct 9, were shrouded in mystery and cover-up, from which a hurried burial without an autopsy peeped out. Rumors of debauch and self-affliction, not murder, arose from the haze–thanks to Griswold’s piece and thanks to the actions of the few who found him on the 3rd and kept the whole thing hidden after his mysterious death on the 7th, and after his hasty burial on the 9th–all documents pertaining to Poe’s death went missing, and his death remains a complete mystery, but at the time, the unofficial verdict rushed to the world was ‘death by drunken binge,’ simply by rumor and default. It was the perfect crime–because they managed to make Poe seem not only responsible for his own death, but in a way that played right into the hands of his slanderers.

A well-known writer during her day, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, published a piece in 1867 that claimed Poe died as a result of a “beating.” Snodgrass quickly responded in the same publication, assuring the world Poe had been in a “beastly state of intoxication” –the letter said so, you see? The strange letter written by Joseph Walker upon finding Poe near Snodgrass’s home–how odd that Poe should leave Richmond for Philadelphia and end up miles out of his way in Baltimore–near the home of Snodgrass, who made sure Poe perished miserably and alone, away from those who loved him. Snodgrass, Poe’s friend! The letter actually said ‘worse for wear,’ but Snodgrass, so anxious to save the world from Mrs. Smith’s idea, became so worked up in his article that he remembered the letter–which was in his possession–as saying in “a beastly state of intoxication,” and that’s what Snodgrass told his readers it said. Snodgrass, Poe’s “friend,” was making sure the Griswold story stuck, 18 years after Poe’s death. The attending physician is on record saying Poe had not consumed alchohol; Snodgrass was the only ‘witness’ to the Griswold spin of dissolution.

To describe Poe in the obituary in Greeley’s newspaper, Griswold actually copied a entire passage of a novel, verbatim, where a villain is described.

As a biographer (Quinn) put it:

‘The damage this article did to Poe’s reputation is incalculable. Printed in Horace Greeley’s paper and republished in the ‘Weekly Tribune’ on Oct. 20, it was accepted as authoritative, and it was copied, even in journals friendly to Poe. It appeared, for example, in ‘The Richmond Enquirer’ on Oct 13 and it created that *first* impression, so hard to efface.

Greeley’s circle included the transcendalists like Emerson who Poe liked to poke fun at. Poe moved easily from South to North, one of the very few writers in that day who could do so, but he did pick on New England (and England)–the friends Greeley and Griswold were both from Vermont.

Meanwhile Helen Whitman, to whom Poe had been engaged, was realizing some things on her own, after Poe’s death. In a letter to Fanny Osgood, Whitman wrote:

“from the numerous efforts which have been made both before and since his death to prejudice me against *him* I cannot but infer that similar agencies have been employed to convince him that I had ceased to regard him with interest” and she goes on to say she always held him in high regard. Whitman discovered that rumors were being carried abroad by more than one “lady who had quoted Mrs. Whitman as her authority that Poe was ‘an intemperate and dissolute man.’” There was some strange shit going on. A letter does exist in which Greeley writes Griswold asking if there is any way the impending marriage between Whitman and Poe can be stopped, with Greeley implying Poe is a monster.

Whitman had to badger Griswold for letters she wrote to Poe, and when he finally replied, after ignoring her, he wrote, “I was not his [Poe's] friend, nor was he mine” and then it gets really wierd when Grizzy writes, “be very careful what you say to, or write to, Mrs. Clemm, who is not your friend nor anybody’s friend and who has no element of goodness or kindness in her…” and he goes on to say that poor old Muddy has “wickedness in her heart” and tells Helen Whitman that Mrs. Clemm believes he, Griswold, is her friend, so do not repeat what I am saying to anyone and destroy this letter. Creepy.

Another of the few who participated in the mysterious events of Oct 3-7 and beyond, and who made sure Poe had a hasty burial, were two cousins, one of them by marriage, who, by sheer coincidence, showed up just as Snodgrass was deciding what to do with Poe, and, according to the Snodgrass account in 1867, recommended hiring a carriage to take him to the hospital, refusing to take Poe into his home to recover because Poe, in the opinion of said cousin, was a drunken lout–this according to Snodgrass. The other cousin, Nielson Poe, gives an indication of *his* feelings for Poe in a letter he writes to Mrs. Clemm following the funeral, in which he fails to tell her what happened to Poe (even though he was there with Snodgrass) and writes, “Edgar had seen so much sorrow–had so little reason to be satisfied with life–that, to him, the change can scarcely be said to be a misfortune.” Poe ended up away from home and friends, in distress, and waiting for him was a small band of men who clearly did not like him.

The explanation which Poe sympathizers make is that Snodgrass, being a fanatical temperance man, was anxious for Poe’s death to be by alcohol–to set an example for ‘the cause,’ but this does not explain why Snodgrass kept Poe’s whereabouts a secret while Poe was supposedly dying from alcohol poisoning Oct 3-7. IF Snodgrass realized Poe, the famous author, was on death’s door because of a drinking binge, how much better for ‘the cause’ if this gentleman temperance newspaperman were to alert the world to this fact while Poe was dying. The world would have been able to witness first-hand the greatest temperance scoop of all time: Edgar Poe found dying of alcohol!! But the temperance man did no such thing. During the whole time in question, he kept Poe’s death under wraps. Snodgrass was the man on the spot to report and prove to the world that Poe was dissolute and to make sure the world knew intemperance did Poe in. Snodgrass needs to be examined in a different light, not to mention Greeley and his associates, which included Margaret Fuller, who was in the middle of a love letter scandal that almost got Poe killed by a jealous husband in 1847, but that’s for another day…

In October, 1849, Poe was disappeared. Mystery attends him.

Thomas

Here’s how it works here–how I would go about it myself if I ever had to.

First of all I would phone up my good friend Anchalee (not her real name), a prominent antique and real estate dealer from a very high family with connections to the local royal family. I would tell her I wanted so much to see her because I had things on my mind that were so difficult to speak about and I needed her advice. She would understand immediately that I meant something illegal, and she was very proud of being the best in town at that. So we would meet in a chic little bar overlooking the river for margheritas, just the two of us. Almost immediately she would understand that I meant someone simply had to be gotten out of the way, for whatever reason wouldn’t matter. She would tell me that someone named Sam (good Thai name!) would meet me tomorrow at the Noodle Shop in the Night Market at 8pm. He would know me and introduce himself to me. I should have a bowl of noodles with him, and during the meal hand him a slip of paper with the name of the person and a few bits of relevant information like his address, where he works, his habits if he had any etc, and he might ask me some questions. I should also have a packet with 50,000 baht (+/- $i500.00) in it in a newspaper and place it on the table between us just as we got up to leave. When we parted I should leave the newspaper on the table.

That would be the hitman’s money.

Before going to the Noodle Shop I should have gone to the nearby bookstore on the moat and sat on the bench just outside the door on the right hand side at 6pm with another newspaper in my lap. Inside the newspaper there should have been a packet with another 50,000 baht (+/- $i500.00) in it in cash. A woman would have come and sat next to me and asked me for the time. I should have looked at my watch and told her, and then have gotten up and left the newspaper on the bench with the packet in it right beside her. Then I should have walked away toward the night market without looking back.

That would have been Anchalee’s money, and the hit would happen within a week.

In fact the woman with the packet has no idea who or what it’s for but simply knows what to do with it–give it to her boss, a big gem dealer or hotel owner whose mistress she is, or whatever. The man in the Noodle Shop will have no idea he is working for Anchalee, and when he passes on the information to the intermediate who knows the hitman with 30.000 baht in cash, my name and person will also be out of the loop. The gunman riding pillion and the motorcycle driver driver will make 20,000 baht between them, and the body will be left quite dead beside the road.

Nobody knows anybody anymore what is more why, and the police know there are always big people behind all such hits and won’t bother to make enquiries. Also, most of the hitmen are off-duty policemen.

And what are the reasons? Rivalry usually, or humiliation, or potential humiliation–or as a lesson to someone else who needs to be put in their place, financially, politically, very often sexually, occasionally artistically (advertizing, publicity, self-promotion etc.). That’s all–just like Edgar Allen Poe but today in Chiang Mai.

Christopher

Griswold, pal of Greeley, the most influential newspaperman in America at the time, was the preeminent anthologist of his day–Poe was murdered mere weeks after he told Grizzy, OK, you’re my literary executor–and Grizzy was the man who informed the world about what happened in Baltimore, hours after it happened, in a style that was zero percent ‘investigative journalism’ and 100 percent ‘this is what happens to those who mess with the transcendentalists.’ Poe is dead. He had no friends, people. You must have friends. “Friends” meaning friends in high places, like Horace Greeley and Ralph Waldo Emerson who are serious people, who don’t mess around with you.

It’s easy to name names in a case like this, because they are still known today, but difficult to believe a case like this–for precisely the same reason: the participants are still known today, as respectable writers, and this bookworm familiarity bars the sort of disquisition years hence which could strike an uncomfortable chord, to question the sagacity of placid commentators who have yawned over transcendentalist literature for years would be heresy.

But let us leave the ‘real story’ and the ‘real events’ behind. There is still the fact of the gangland hit and its effects on our literature since. Our literary history is short–it happened yesterday, and the significance of Poe naturally goes far beyond the person who was disappeared; it is highly significant aesthetic debate which needs revisiting–again and again, since the mass of literary humanity tends to be dull, and easily swayed by coteries even in the best of literary republics. It is stone’s throw from Emerson to his godson W. James to T.S. Eliot and G. Stein and the rabid clique of anti-Poe modernism.

I don’t approve of X because Y tells me to. I’m sure you could cite thousands of distinguished poets and scholars who approve of Pound. I don’t approve of Pound. You can say my dismissal is ‘cheap,’ but this is nothing more than a ‘cheap’ defense of Pound. All defenses of Pound, in my opinion are ‘cheap,’ while in your opinion, the reverse is true, but you are implying your opinion weighs more than mine because of someone else’s opinion. My opinion of Pound may not reveal how much I have studied the subject, but that doesn’t mean I cannot make hold that opinion with not only impunity, but respect. To ask me to proceed at length with my opinion would be to give Pound more credit than he deserves. Even Pound’s defenders admit he’s a “crank,” and that he made cheap dismissals of entire eras of literature. But Pound is allowed to do this… why? Where, exactly, is the Pound that is so important, that justifies all of his nonsense? Where is the one work by Pound that justifies Pound’s nonsense? It does not exist. Let us not be intimidated by Pound’s friends–who were his friends because of his other friends–in the world of networking actuality is endlessly deferred. Let us look at the actual writings and opinions Pound authored. One can have negative influence–be actually worse for mankind than if one had never existed–and Pound is one of these men, in my opinion. Literature is not some game where one accrues accolades, is it?

It might be interesting to understand WHY Pound is so admired when he was a below average translator, a bad to average poet and a worse critic. Have I left anything out? Let’s see…did he write novels, short stories, scientific treatises, reviews, pieces of journalism? No, he’s remembered for translations, poems, and a few essays. Pound’s great accomplishment in the eyes of some was to cut Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ down to size. Michelangelo took a block of marble and found a statue; Pound took a fish tank and scooped out some fish. Poor Vivien edited the ‘The Waste Land,’ too. But Eliot knew who to thank. Anyway, if we look over Pound’s actual work…what do we see? Anything the world would miss if it were gone? I’m afraid not.

No, Pound is a symbol of a new kind of poet, a symbol of a poet who doesn’t have to be *good,* who doesn’t have to be a Shakespeare or a Milton or a Dante or a Goethe or a Poe or a Shelley or a Keats or a Tennyson or a Longfellow, who needs only to be *active,* to be a busy-body, highly opinionated, lots of friends, travel about, hold any crazy opinion they wish, write shoddy, crazy, unfinished work, translate without knowing the language… Pound represents a greatness that *flatters us* into thinking that we, too, can be an important literary force merely on the account of a no-holds-barred, busy-body *energy.* Thomas Carlyle was the 19th century Pound; Poe called Carlyle an “ass” once, and Carlyle’s reputation continues to fade. In 50 years or so Pound will be a footnote, a puzzlement…

Thomas

I was being cutting about the Cervantes Prize when, after using Gonzalo Rojas to nail you on your cheap dismissal of Pound, you attempted to come back with “somebody says he’s great.” It’s worth noting that the man I cite is not a nobody but is arguably the greatest living Latin American poet, and has won a hugely prestigious prize for lifetime achievement.

I don’t fault you for not knowing that. I have no clue what the most important prize for, say, Japanese poets might be. I have no idea who won it last year. Whoever it is probably has quite a body of work and might have something to say about our parocial bickering. Or not.

If I were more strategic about picking my battles I probably wouldn’t keep arguing with you.

Poe, a famous and beloved author, one of the greatest writers the world has ever known, was ‘disappeared’ in broad daylight in 1849 in the United States of America, a penniless vagabond, quickly buried, the crime covered-up, the author libeled by anthologist Rufus Griswold in Horace Greeley’s ‘Tribune,’ no questions asked about the death, just a dire warning, ‘Poe had few friends,’ meaning, ‘anything can be done to you if you don’t have friends.’

OK, John? Poe was ‘disappeared’ in this country, and since 1849 the event has been carefully and consciously covered up, with extremely little interest by anyone on what really happened to Poe, you know, Poe, the guy who invented the detective story and whose influence on Latin and European and Asian and American citizens is incalculable, so yea, ‘why bother.’

Not only is it ‘why bother,’ when it comes to Poe in his own country, in the United States, but his reputation’s been spat on and abused for decades by one distinguished literary group after another.

So, yes, ‘why bother’ indeed.

If Poe can be disappeared, then why is it surprising that anyone is? The problem is too vast for us to comprehend. We are motes of dust in the universe of disappearance, and no one has any right to expect anyone to care about any disappearance. The whole thing is more fucked than any of us can possibly know. Every last one of us is stuck deep in Plato’s cave. Latin politics can take a leap into hell for all I care.

Poe and Keats wrote in English. They are outstanding authors. So now I’m supposed to know about every author of every language in the world? And I’m naive somehow because I don’t ‘bother’ to know about some writer who got money from the King of Spain?

I’m just picking my battles like everyone else, John.

Sheesh.

Thomas

I read your interesting interview linked to at Silliman’s blog today. I enjoyed it very much. It’s helpful to know a little about the people whose blog posts you regularly screw up in the comments thread. (Should be smiley face here but we don’t want to upset John Oliver Simon again).

I didn’t understand you final comment, though.

Speaking as an outsider, that is.