MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

To say that there is some ambiguity and confusion regarding the intimate letters of Edgar Allan Poe is an understatement. In the same vein that Baltimore, as well as various other cities declare “Poe” to be their cities’ writer, studying the surviving letters (and acknowledging the letters that didn’t survive) of Poe and his intimates only seems to complicate existing frameworks about him, his work, and his correspondents. Thus, scholars have been trying, for decades, to find the “real” Poe through layers of confusions, contradictions, and unreliable sources. This presentation will not attempt to uncover the “real” Poe. That endeavor seems as preposterous as uncovering the “real” Baltimore. Instead, this presentation will provide the epistolary evidence (and lack of evidence) to confirm Poe’s need to write letters to multiple women due to his inability to achieve unity with his mental and physical self, as well as with an idealized and unattainable female reflection. In fact, Poe’s epistolary addiction provided another comorbid layer where he was able to release simultaneous intimate projections that did not need to follow the standards or expectations of his society. Baltimore’s role in this thread of Poe’s epistolary communication is intertwined, but surely not dominant in the examination. In Poe’s epistolary history and life, physical location and geography are secondary to internal location and narrative—creating a mapped line that, much like floaters in the eye, disappears when chased. It is with this non-traditional, addicted, and fleeting geography in mind that the epistolary correspondence between Poe and the major female figures in his life are presented.