Long after his death, Edgar Allan Poe’s work still scares readers.
Is there a book you return to again and again, a work that would make life on a desert island bearable? Each weekend, until Labour Day, Globe writers will share their go-to tomes – be it novel, poetry collection, cookbook – and why the world is just a little better for them.
I've been a Baltimore Ravens fan for as long as I can remember. I most look forward to those October weekends when I can have a warm cup of green tea in my purple mug, sitting on the couch while I intensely watch the next series of plays that quarterback Joe Flacco will probably blow.
To the right of the television is my bookcase, where guests never fail to spot a thick book adorned with a bold, orange-ish spine – my copy of an anthology containing every single poem and short story written by Edgar Allen Poe.
Inside is an extremely dog-eared page, marking the poem I always come back to. Coincidentally, it's the poem Baltimore's NFL team is named after: The Raven.
I first discovered The Raven when I was young – too young for the macabre tales Poe is famous for. First published in 1845, The Raven is Poe's best-known work, a poem that leaves your heart thumping, leaves you hanging on to every word, waiting for what comes next.
You probably know the plot by heart even if you haven't read it in years. (So ubiquitous is the narrative that you might know the plot even if you've never read the poem.) But, a refresher: Its 18 stanzas tell the story of a man reading in his chamber, grieving the loss of the love of his life, Lenore. He suddenly hears a tapping at the door to his room. Wanting to grieve in peace, he ignores the knock – only this and nothing more. But it continues.
When the man opens the door, there is no one there. The tapping continues. The man reasons that it must be coming from the window. And there sits a raven, a raven whose only communication is through one word: "Nevermore."
Among other things, the man asks the raven questions about his life, about Lenore and if he'll ever see her again, but the raven consistently responds with nothing but the one word. The man is furious. He wants the bird to leave, but while he sits with it, he continues to ask it questions about the woman he lost, his purpose in life and what is next. The bird's answer is always the same: "Nevermore." This being Edgar Allan Poe, the man ultimately descends into a spiral of self-doubt and madness. There's no happy ending.
For me, Poe's greatest achievement was writing literature that left you not only confused the first time you read it but also left you contemplating life's most complex questions. And The Raven has stayed with me, I think, because despite its gloominess and ominous ending, the poem explores the madness we all experience when we grieve, as well as the necessity of quiet reflection.
Every time I read the poem, it tugs at my insecurities, the just-under-the-surface melancholy that can often send us into periods of despair, if not madness. And every time I returned to The Raven, I discovered something new in one of its 18 stanzas that I'd somehow missed before. Eventually, I was able to recite the poem in its entirety.
Poe was born in Boston but he died in Baltimore, in 1849. He was interred in the city's Westminster Hall and Burying Ground and, over the years, his grave became a tourist attraction. In 1996, when an NFL team relocated to the city, Baltimore fans, in honour of Poe's work, voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Raven as a mascot. They liked the connection with the other birds in town, the Orioles, and appreciated the visual of an ominous, tough, menacing black bird.
My fandom of the Baltimore Ravens and my appreciation of Poe's poem happened at separate times in my life, but both somehow came to be intertwined. The Raven reminds me of my childhood, spending hours with my uncle talking about literature, and it was the poem that made me want to study English in university.
Considering that both football and Poe's work have haunted my life, it only seems natural that when I gear up for another NFL season, I return to two ravens.