Poe, Poe Edgar

While I was doing my research on Bronx literature, I came across a couple of Yiddish poems about Edgar Allen Poe's cottage, which is located just off Kingsbridge Avenue, near my home. My first impulse, of course, was to wonder why Yiddish writers would choose Poe as a subject. On the surface, at least, they would seem to go together like gefilte fish and bananas.

After thinking about it for a while, I got the connection. After all, the Jewish community produced Franz Kafka, who is kind of like a second cousin to Poe. With a little imagination, it's easy to imagine how Poe's terror and sense of impending doom could find fertile ground in Jewish literature. Besides, the Bronx was filled with Yiddish writers in the 1920's--it's statistically likely that at least a few of them would be Poe fans.

One of the poems, Abraham Walt Liessen's, “At Poe Cottage in Fordham,” is a little too bombastic and overwritten for me. Here's Liessen's description of Poe:
I see him upright, as I close my eyes
Embittered, near a cloud of luminous lace,
Choked with pride, his heart agonized
Staring forlornly at the cold fireplace;
Lethargic he pines, galled in fever—
A phantom disheveled, aquiver.

Embittered, choked with pride, agonized...I get the feeling that Liessen's Poe was a little too precious for this harsh world. One imagines him swooning, hand against forehead, moaning "creamed corn again. ALAS!" before falling to the ground in a trance.

On the other hand, Zische Landau's “A Little Park, with Few Trees” isn't too self-important, has some funny bits, and gives a nice portrait of Poe's cottage. Best of all, it's by a guy named "Zische." Seriously, what a cool name. I mean, you're getting extra cool points as you sit there reading his name to yourself. Say it aloud and you'll need to start wearing sunglasses and listening to jazz.

Zische Landau, “A Little Park, with Few Trees.”

A little park, with few trees growing;
a wooden house sits humbly there,
on which appears a painted raven-
it all has such a childish air.

And on the wall there hangs a tablet,
and from the tablet you will know
here lived in eighteen nine and forty
the poet Edgar Allen Poe.

The name, the raven wake within me
a memory of years before.
And since one is allowed to visit,
I let myself approach the door.

In a kimono red as scarlet,
a woman’s looking through the pane.
I’m so repelled by red kimonos
that in a flash I’m out again.

To stand outside suits me much better;
I clasp my hands and focus all
my thoughts upon the roof’s brown shingles,
and on the cottage’s white wall.

Within my mind are mixed together
a verse of Poe’s, a word, a rhyme.
Where have I heard them, come across them?
I feel they’re from a distant time.

And yet, in dream and fact, they soothed me
and frightened me to my heart’s core.
All this was only yesterday.
But will it come back? “Nevermore.”

Okay, Ziche's a little maudlin, but what do you want--he's a Jewish guy writing about Edgar Allen Poe; maudlin comes with the territory. What's cool, though, is his depiction of the cottage. It hasn't changed much in the 80 or so years since Landau wrote this poem, although they've gotten rid of the raven. It's a mouldering, peeling wreck that is largely ignored and seems somewhat out of place in the park, which features a bandstand, a playground, and scads of screaming, playing Dominican kids.

(I'll admit that I was a little nervous about Poe park. Before I moved in, Rich told me that it was a hangout for transvestite hookers, who would often catcall passers-by. I confess to being a little confused about how this is really all that bad, but Rich assured me that being yelled at by "Tranny Hookiz" is really horrifying.)

I also have to admit that I was a little disappointed when I found that the park only featured screeching kids and some teen-aged hispanic goths. I was looking forward to the dangerous trannies, so the relatively banal sight of a bunch of mothers watching their kids was a real let down. All the same, the cottage is really close to my home, so I was constantly reminded of it. It soon became a comforting, familiar site. Even without the cross-dressers.

When I was a little more settled in and started wandering around, one of my first visits in the Bronx was Poe cottage. I came on a Saturday, during one of the few hours that it was open. I felt a sense of foreboding as I approached the building. A cold shiver ran up my spine. The house had a carefully manicured garden and a wind chime, neither of which were appropriate to the time. I began to worry that this was going to be a travesty, an insult to the memory of Poe.

When we knocked on the door, a weedy, redheaded woman cracked it open, told us to wait for about fifteen minutes, and went back inside. I decided that her furtive behavior gave the cottage a little more panache than I had expected, so I waited contentedly, only occasionally snarling at the irritating wind chime.

We finally got to go in, and our tour guide, Joy, proceeded to show us the five rooms in which Poe, his wife, and his mother-in-law had lived for three years. The furnishings, she told us, were not original, except for one or two that Poe's mother-in-law may have sold to the neighbors. Joy showed us the Poe bust and portraits that shared space with his living quarters. I, meanwhile, grumbled to myself about the historical innacuracy of putting all the contextual material in the rooms where Poe lived.

Joy also showed us the bed where Poe's wife, Virginia, died of tuberculosis. Supposedly, Virginia died under Poe's West Point coat, the only warm covering in the house. The bed, on the other hand, was covered with a polyester fleece blanket with a plaid pattern. "Yeah," I thought to myself, "That's historically accurate. Where are the flannel sheets and Laura Ashley comforter?"

Joy took me through the rest of the house. I was going solo at this point, as my wife had abandoned the tour, citing a whining child. Personally, I think she was pinching George in order to create an excuse for ditching me. I could understand, as Joy's spiel was a little canned, and the "historical reconstruction" of the house bordered on the blasphemous. The highlight was the holes in the walls, which were covered with plastic sheeting and blue masking tape. Apparently, they're planning a major renovation. Between this and the furniture, I wonder if anything will be left of Poe's cottage.

The coolest part was after the tour was over, when Joy told me that she and her significant other live in the house's basement, rent free. They rarely come out, presumably to ensure their safety. Joy, apparently, has a graduate degree in history as well as a law degree, and is trying to get a writing career going. She is using her sojourn in Poe house as a way of making a few bucks while she works part-time in the public schools and tries to figure out what she wants to do next. Joy doesn't seem to like the neighborhood very much and tends to avoid interacting with the neighbors. It think she's a little afraid of the brown people.

I've since brought a few friends to visit. Katie and Heather told me that, overcome with compassion, Joy "broke down" while discussing Virginia's death in the cottage, and was a little loony during the rest of the tour. I later went through with John, hoping to catch some emoting over Virginia's death, but was denied.

When I read Landau's poem, I couldn't help but laugh at his description of the crazy lady in the red kimono taking care of the cottage. It seemed so funny that, 80 years later, Poe Cottage has another moderately crazy woman showing visitors through its lonely rooms. Sometimes, as I pass the cottage on the way home from the subway, I imagine Joy in the basement, listening to the wind whistling through the holes in the house. I envy her.

Hall of Fame for Great Americans

My friend John came for a brief visit last weekend. As I tend to do whenever I've got a captive audience, I set out to expose him to some of the wonders of the Bronx. In John's case, this was a little harder than usual, as he lived in New York for several years, and even stayed in the Bronx for a while, so he's seen a lot of what the green borough has to offer.

(I'm field-testing nicknames for the Bronx. Given that it has far more parkland and undeveloped lots than any of the other boroughs, I think "The Green Borough" might be the best bet. At any rate, it sounds a lot better than "The Economically-Depressed Borough," "The Drinking Booze from a Paper Bag Borough," or "The Borough Where You're Most Likely to Get Stabbed.")

At any rate, John's been to Woodlawn and many of the parks and, since it was a blustery day, we didn't want to venture too far from shelter. We started off with a visit to Poe's Cottage, where Edgar Allen Poe lived from 1846 to 1849, and which deserves its own huge post. Since we still had a lot of time when we were done, I decided to take him to The Hall of Fame for Great Americans.

The Hall of Fame sounds very impressive, and John must have thought that I had gotten lost as I led him to it. It is on the campus of Bronx Community College, and the neighborhood around it is pretty rough. He had to have been even more surprised when I told him that we had to walk a little further, as one of the entrances offered "the best view of the campus."

To his credit, John was game, and he went the extra mile. When the campus security guard let us in, John was on the phone with a buddy, but I watched him scanning the campus as we walked past beautiful buildings and well-kept lawns. When he was finished with his phone call, he said "THIS is a community college?"

His confusion was understandable. Bronx Community College began life as the estate of a wealthy landowner. In 1894, New York University, looking to expand from its cramped space in lower Manhattan, purchased the land. Attempting to create a first-rate campus, the University hired Stanford White, the pre-eminent architect of his time, to design the school. White built a collection of beautiful halls, which were inspired by classical structures. I think the coolest one is the library, which looks like the Pantheon, and has incredible cast-bronze doors.

Around the library, White built a curving colonnade, which became the home of the Hall of Fame. It's easy to imagine the enthusiasm that went into the walkway. To begin with, there's the name, which is beautifully excessive, but borders on the redundant. After all, it's not like anybody's going to build a Hall of Fame for mediocre Americans.

That's what Presidential libraries are for.

Then there was the selection process. Although NYU administered the Hall of Fame, the selections were made by an independent review board, and private citizens and regional groups waged huge, expensive campaigns to get their favorite candidates elected. This, combined with the dedication and popularity of the Daughters of the Confederacy, helps explain why Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee managed to get into the Hall of Fame, but Henry Ford and Sacagawea didn't.

In an article about the Hall of Fame, R. Rubin noted that, in its heyday, the hall of fame was more prestigious than the Nobel Prize, which is borne out in its description as "A Secular Shrine" for the United States. However, the declining neighborhood and looming bankruptcy conspired to make NYU sell the University Heights campus to New York City. In 1973, the campus became Bronx Community College.

The Hall of Fame got lost in the mix. The state of New York occasionally earmarks funds for its upkeep, but the private donations that used to keep it going have long since dried up. Added to this, people have simply forgotten about the Hall of Fame. I've visited it three times and have never seen more than one or two other visitors there. I imagine that it was once a busy spot, but now it tends toward the quiet and contemplative.

My wife and I have established a couple of traditions for our visits. One of these is making fun of some of the inductees, and expressing disbelief at the heroes of prior ages. We also like to laugh at some of the more outrageous busts. The most ridiculous one is Alexander Hamilton, which looks like a cross between Julius Caesar and Rocky from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. On this last trip, John and I pulled out a ten-dollar bill for comparison purposes and agreed that the Romanesque, nude Hamilton bore no relation whatsoever to the guy on the money. John surmised that some of Aaron Burr's descendants might have been responsible for the horrifying likeness.

Our other Hall of Fame tradition is making our guest choose his or her favorite Hall of Famer. Afterwards, of course, we photograph the two of them together. My hero was Edgar Allen Poe. When I first visited the Hall of Fame, his bust sported a perfect spider web over one eye. Poe, a spider web, a secluded old monument, a windy hillside in the Bronx...what's not to love?

After a great deal of deliberation, John chose Mark Twain, and I decided that it's interesting to find out who your friends' heroes are.