In Poe’s wake

Explores how Edgar Allan Poe has become a household name, as much a brand as an author. You’ll find his face everywhere, from coffee mugs, bobbleheads, and T-shirts to the cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Edgar Allan Poe is one of American culture’s most recognizable literary figures, his life and works inspiring countless derivations beyond the literary realm. Poe’s likeness and influence have been found in commercial illustration and kitsch, art installations, films, radio plays, children’s cartoons, and video games. What makes Poe so hugely influential in media other than his own? What do filmmakers, composers, and other artists find in Poe that suits their purposes so often and so variously? ‘In Poe’s Wake’ locates the source of the writer’s enduring legacy in two vernacular aesthetic categories: the graphic and the atmospheric.