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Newsletter
Edgar Allan Poe's Dark Dreams
reviewed by
Edgar Allan Poe's Dark Dreams
Dawn Dunn (ed.)
Wormhole Books
Illustrations by Alan M. Clark
Introduction by Edward Bryant
Signed and numbered Chapbook: $15.00
ISBN 1-932030-01-8
Hardcover: $35.00
ISBN 1-932030-00-X
Imagine if Edgar Allan Poe were alive today. Would he attend the World Horror Convention? Maybe hang out at the bar (but not too much) and get into a conversation with Alan Clark, shuffling through some of Clark's latest sketches? Would they hit it off and decide to work together some day, with Clark providing illustrations for some of Poe's favorite stories and poems?
The result of such a collaboration might well be "Edgar Allan Poe's Dark Dreams," a lushly conceived and realized booklet of the sort Poe might have self-published. Except it was Wormhole Books who orchestrated this collaboration over the centuries, reminding us how much we owe the American master of the macabre. Clark's vibrant illustrations lend just the right atmosphere to the work of a man whose every sentence dripped atmosphere—and these get more stunning every time you look at them. A starkly severe portrait of Poe by Joanna Erbach opens the proceedings. Entertaining essays by Ed Bryant and Dawn Dunn examining Poe's literary stature and biography bookend the volume, with the contents consisting of three poems ("The Raven," "The Conqueror Worm," and "Annabel Lee") and three tales ("The Black Cat," "The Telltale Heart," and "Berenice"). While some may gripe that a few more tales might have given the volume some heft, it may be that a taste is all it was intended to be, enough to lure some of those brash beginners who've managed never to crack a Poe collection and ensnare their imaginations forever.
I think it's fitting that this new Poe publication be placed on a bookshelf among the modern classics of the grotesque. He's never gone out of style, though we may have slipped a bit in our remembrance. Thanks to Wormhole Books for giving us a gentle reminder, a nudge in the right direction, and thus paying tribute to a tortured soul whose work speaks to us yet through lonely lifetimes. He may not have been rewarded with the true reverence he deserved in his lifetime, but we can all help make up for the lack now and forever.