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[dave eberhardt]

Baltimore poet Mark Sanders (MS), brings Baltimore's iconic Edgar Allen Poe to life at the 405 space on October 8th, 14th, 15th and 21st- (doors open 7:30,  8PM show- cost is $10). It's at 405 Oliver St. just east of Guilford Avenue not far from Station North.
 
A portion of all proceeds will be donated to “Pennies for Poe”, an organization dedicated to the preservation of the Poe House. Rafael Alvarez, current president of the Poe Society and long-time Baltimore journalist, ably hosted along with Julie Fisher, Poetry in Baltimore website host/mother dominatirix. The famed Baltimore Poe re-en-actor, David Keltz attended this opening performance.

Mark Sanders!  Wow- could Mark please be invited to recite “The Raven" at a Ravens game instead of the Key poem ("Star Spangled Banner") ? Or Ravens players or management donate to preserve the Poe House?  Mark- deserves an M & T Bank stadium sized audience!
 
 He cleverly weaves Poe’s masterful poem throughout the play- and I realized that "The Raven" is NOT a schlocky poem (it's only been taught that way) - not the way Mark does it. He brings out many differing emotions that are in the poem.
 
Bring yer hankies; in this wrenching one man three act performance, Mark does not concentrate on the macabre or horror in the tales but rather the pain caused Poe by the loss of his beloved young bride, Sissy- and his obsession in the poetry with the untimely death of a beautiful woman.

Of course, the poem- "The Conqueror Worm" is horrific enough and Poe is clearly trying to refine his pain at his bride’s tubercular and consumptive bleeding into art and beauty.
 
Poe is still apparently taught at some schools – at least in Baltimore, which happily proclaims Poe a native son. It’s hard to know whether his relentless rhyming is attractive or not to today’s tastes. Certainly “Annabel Lee” still seems over the top campy- but in the hands of Mark Sanders- the Poe poetry is powerful.

Poe does a lot with interior rhymes and has a sense of musical cadence building that is impressive, not just jingly.

The reason for this Poe event is also a reflection on our times. Poe House, a museum on Amity St. on the west side near the University of Maryland Hospital complexes and Martin Luther King Boulevard, set up to celebrate Poe’s life and work, has fallen on hard times. City budget cutbacks have closed it. The Poe Society, led by Rafael Alvarez, Baltimore journalist and writer, is trying to raise “pennies for Poe.”

The 405 venue is perfect for this show- a theatre in an old factory somewhat reminiscent of the settings in the horror movie "SAW 1,2,3,4" (one almost expects a leather face to come out of the dressing room!)- two blocks away from one of TV’s  “The Wire” settings (the education/school section) with nearby Greenmount Cemetery and trains rumbling spookily through nearby tunnels.

Parking is plentiful.

Using mostly Poe's own works and letters to him by such notables as Dickens and Hawthorne, Sanders is forever snatching sheets of paper from his pile of books and then reciting such works  as "To Helen,  and The Haunted Palace” ; but Sanders also contrasts the sadness with Poe's somewhat stilted attempts at humor. Sanders Poe pokes fun at himself, a side of Poe’s character that seems true to life- e.g.- Narj says, at one point: "a crow talking… scary!” Sanders’ hard work put into many small gestures make this a wonderful performance.

Think of the great artists inspired by Poe- Rachmaninoff’s great requiem like- “The Bells”, the movies, the tributes by such French masters as Baudelaire and Mallarme, the illustrators of his books such as Rackham and Clark, think of Poe’s visage staring out at you on the Beatles “Sgt Pepper” album- and you are glad Baltimore has him as a claim to fame. Europe realized his greatness before America- partly due to the besmirching his reputation suffered at the hands of his critic- Rufus Griswald.

The performance left me wanting to console Sanders for his magnificent portrayal- at least with a stiff slug of brandy. He has earned it with his excellence and deserves the widest possible audience as we approach Halloween.

[dave eberhardt]

Additional notes:

Scholars have debated the some 20 theories of Poe’s death- and 4 cities- New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Richmond lay claim to being the “city of Poe”.

French poet, Mallarme's tribute follows: "At the Tomb of Poe"-
translated into English by Mallarme himself, although poorly:

Such as into himself at last Eternity changes him
The Poet arouses with a naked hymn;
His century was overawed not to have known
That death extolled itself in this strange voice.
But, in vile Hydra voices, (they) (de note- the critics) once hearing the Angel
Giving too pure a meaning to the words of the tribe,
hearing the poet,
They charged him as always drowned in alcohol!
O clouds, o soil- eternal enemies, o struggle-
I want my words to carve a bas-relief
With which to adorn his tomb!
On that stern basaltic block that falls
From a mysterious and ancient disaster-
A warning against false charges that poets are drunkards
Now and forever after.


The Daisy Aldan translation of Mallarme’s poem:
Le Tombeau d'Edgar Poe
"Just as eternity transforms him at last into Himself,
The Poet rouses with a naked sword
His age terrified at not having discerned
That death was triumphant in his strange voice.
They, like vile Hydra's on hearing this angel
Give a purer meaning to the words of the tribe,
Loudly proclaimed sorcery drunk
In the dishonest flow of some dark brew.
From hostile soil and cloud, o grief!
If our imagination does not carve a bas relief
With which to adorn the shining tomb of Poe,
Silent block of fallen granite here below
From some dim old disaster, let it be a boundary
To foul flights of blasphemy in the future!"


At the Tomb of Poe- david eberhardt

He sinks beneath the surface like a stone,
Sidling crab wise down ‘til buried in mud,
A gold bug thread wise through vacant skull eye down
Into maelstroms of stars. Less and less loud, the thud,
Of shovelfuls above him ... into sidereal time, the tunnel back to light obscured.....
Buried alive as he thought! As if to keep him down, the green
Block from some ancient, obscure disaster - Vermont granite dug,
Ripton quarried, dark green, not jadeite green, an intenser, darker green -
As absinthe, but blacker, still, like “Nevermore”, its dense sheen
Like shiny hair: black hair, Ligea's, Virginia's, Helen's or Lenore's.
Bury the critics alive, I say, Poe careens
Down corridors of light, more drunk than before!!
 
Upon the stone a raven carved, the words blur, but it's not the end.
Buried alive in our imaginations, he rises eerily, again!



HOLLYWOOD CEMETERY from Blue Running Lights
overlooking the James River, Richmond, Va.
city of Poe, endlessly burning
this poem dedicated to the memory of Suzanne Meyers- she who inspired it!

Past China St., Pine, on Oregon Hill,
(It's not California, but it might as well be),
Ospreys fly up out of cypress like redwoods,
Pure white wisteria against violet porches,
Louisiana, Gulf cities, and porches forever...
The confederacy's gone down, defeat again,
Beyond Belle Island the city's still burning.
My actress mother * buried in disgrace;
Theatre burns, they replace it: a church,
Church burns, back comes the theatre;
All of them burn and all the people in them.
Still the river flows by Belle Island
In its marcel waves and ash brown braids
At the foot of the cemetery where "famous" have markers;
The river licks burning, towers never stop rising
Then falling back in the flames of the theatre.
Funerals wind into tighter, tighter spaces.
"I had not thought death unravelled so many faces." **
Until the stones start repeating themselves.
"A star sets, rises on the other shore",
Like to see you again, babe, but it's nevermore,
"At rest until resurrection and reunion",
"`Til the dawn breaks and the shadows flee,"
May the woman I loved so remember me.

.
• *Edgar Allen Poe’s
** Dante quoted in Eliot