April marks National Poetry Month, a chance to make people around the country appreciate the art form and engage with it in some way.
The Cherry Hill library took a unique approach to that with a recent event honoring the works of Edgar Allan Poe that featured an impersonator of the writer.
Actress Helen McKenna – who has portrayed Poe for more than 30 years – donned a black suit, wig and painted-on mustache to perform some of the writer’s most famous works from memory, with the idea that Poe’s spirit had taken possession of McKenna’s body for the library event.
The performance began with some background on Poe’s life story and childhood as the child of actors whose father left the family and whose mother’s death came when he was still a youngster.
“I was taken in by a family called the Allans,” joked McKenna as Poe. “That’s where the middle name comes from. They did not want to adopt me outright, because I was the child of actors, and actors are morally inferior people.”
Another tragedy in Poe’s life detailed by McKenna was the loss of Jane Stanard, a friend’s mother who also became a close friend and confidant of the writer. The impersonator then performed the poem, “To Helen,” which Poe wrote about Stanard over the course of 14 years.
“Her name is Jane, plain Jane,” McKenna explained as Poe. “Of course, you would never call her that. So what name can I give her? Well, there’s Helen of Troy, the great beauty, the connection to the classic civilization. And so I decided to call the poem ‘To Helen.’”
McKenna also discussed Poe’s volume of work, not just the amount of writing but also the number of genres in which he worked, from horror and mystery to literary criticism. McKenna performed one of Poe’s works as a critic, reciting his review of “Confessions of a Poet.”
“People were angry. They didn’t like what I was doing,” noted McKenna, who then told the library audience about Poe’s rivalry with Rufus Griswold. He would go on to write a biography of the poet – often described as inaccurate – in the wake of Poe’s death in 1849.
McKenna asked attendees if they knew how Poe died; they answered with everything from exposure to murder.
“So the reason I ask is that I don’t recall,” acknowledged McKenna, a reference to the still unknown cause of Poe’s untimely death at 40. That led to her performance of one of Poe’s most famous works, “The Raven.”
After she finished, McKenna told the audience the tale of Poe’s marriage and his wife’s subsequent death from tuberculosis.
“I understand that I’m talking to a modern audience, so I am fully prepared for you to turn on me when I tell you yes, she was my first cousin, and she was 13 and I was 27,” Poe noted of his wife through McKenna. “So let that sink in.”
McKenna then recited “Annabel Lee,” a poem in which the narrator laments the loss of his young love.
The library audience was encouraged to ask questions; one individual wanted to know about the writer’s time in Philadelphia. While Poe is most often associated with Baltimore, some of his best known pieces were written in Philadelphia.
“I lived in Baltimore for four years, and I died there …” recounted McKenna’s Poe. “I lived in Philadelphia for six years, so longer than I did in Baltimore, and I did a lot more significant writing in Philadelphia than I ever did in Baltimore.
“So what I like to say is, ‘Baltimore has my body, but Philadelphia has the body of work.”
Another asked if “The Raven” was actually the tale of a man who had killed his lover, which McKenna as Poe called “hogwash,” but McKenna still encouraged people to find whatever meaning they would like in Poe’s works.
The event ended with a performance of “The Bells,” after McKenna described how Poe liked to experiment and saw poetry as music.
