Dreary, Macabre, and Mysterious

Ravenous imagination

Photo by Sergio Ibannez on Unsplash

Not to romanticize illicit activities, however… did you know Edgar Allan Poe, America’s first professional writer and earliest crafter of short stories, was a binge drinker and occasional opium user who was prone to suggesting both were purely literary devices?

Orphaned as a toddler, he was a drifter, gambler, suicidal West Point failure, author, editor, literary critic, and poet. His famously eerie, 108-line narrative poem, The Raven, is believed to have been written over a ten-year period and published after his cousin/wife died of tuberculosis.  

His wild imagination fueled tales of mystery and macabre often written in the first person. Both he and his works are referenced in literature, music, films, and television, and the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the genre is awarded annually by The Mystery Writers of America.

Whether his writings were fueled by drugs and alcohol remains to be proven, however, he died of disreputable causes at the ten…