interrupt my manuscript to feed my physical body, to prepare food and drink. You are so fortunate, no longer to need these things.

          But, now I’ve returned. There is one final question I wish to address, that culminating puzzle or hoax you posed for all who are captured by your genius, your person and whipsaw career. This is the manner and meaning of your death.

          Few other aspects of your life have raised so much enquiry. That night at a Baltimore polling station, who exactly died? And how? Why did things come to pass as they did? Who was responsible for your injuries? 

          Were you indeed a victim of ‘cooping’? — that malign eighteenth century American political strategy which took strangers in hand, gave them to drink excessively, then compelled them to vote and vote again under many names until the night was over? And, if not, how else explain that you were dressed in shabby and filthy garments — clothing you would never have owned or worn in public? 

          And if, indeed, the broken man his friends discovered at the polling station was none but you, what of those deathbed rantings described as yours? More uncharacteristic phrasing than that reported can scarcely be imagined. Or, was this just bad or second-hand reporting?

          So — was it you, Poe, who died? Or was it some other in your place? You had enemies aplenty. Did one of them pay for your injury and demise? Or, did you suspect their plans and escape them? Perhaps, like Julius Rodman or Arthur Gordon Pym, you embarked on a voyage to parts unknown, to regions unguessed at by any.

                                                                                             

Epistle to Poe II     4

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