The West Point Poems, 1831. There's been little written about Edgar Allan Poe's military service and how it influenced his often macabre writing. William Hecker's book on Poe's West Point-era poems finds inspiration in military order.
Note: Lieutenant-Colonel William F. Hecker was killed by an IED in Najaf, Iraq, in January 2006. The following review was written before news of his death reached the reviewer.
Concerning his edited work of Edgar Allan Poe’s 124-page edition of 1831 poems, Army officer and former West Point professor William Hecker states that, “It had become apparent that no one had truly put together a detailed assessment of Poe’s four years of military discipline or seriously tried to connect that experience to his aesthetic.” One of the main reasons for writing this edition of Poe’s West Point era poems is the dearth of scholarship on his military experience, particularly that of his West Point years. A widespread misinterpretation among academia and wider audiences concerning Poe is that he disdained his military experience. Hecker carefully lays to rest the specious nature of this long-held assumption.
Poe (1809-1849), who enlisted in the Army in 1827 under the name of Edgar A. Perry, will always be an American favorite. Millions of school children read his horror stories and poems, all wrought from his supremely macabre twist on the anti-Classical nature of Romanticism. Perhaps his most enduring poems are from the 1845 collection, The Raven and Other Poems. Notwithstanding, the crux of Hecker’s thesis centers around the fact that “Just as biographers dismiss the important connections between Poe’s military life and his poetic visions, critics, likewise, fail to consider the possibility that military culture might be embedded in his poetry.” For example, Poe’s training in constructing and firing artillery rounds could have contributed to the apocalyptic visions of "The City in the Sea" and "The Fall of the House of Usher."
In the book’s Foreword, noted poet Daniel Hoffman states, “It is remarkable that no biographer, scholar, or critic of Poe’s life and writings has, until now, inquired what…were the effects of his army experiences on his literary work.” Hecker goes far in correcting this situation; one of the more enlightening points he explores is the affinity between Poe’s prosody and his concept of military order, particularly field movement and close-order drill: both needed metrical precision to be effective.
Poe made the puzzling choice to enlist in an era of American history when enlisted service was disdained as a lowly occupation. He lived the arduous regimen of that life, learning the discipline and precision of an artilleryman. Through contemporary documents, Hecker builds an accurate picture of what enlisted life for Poe must have been like. He outlines in detail the reasons behind his enlistment and his ultimate dissatisfaction with that way of life. Hecker also tracks Poe’s changes in motivation and perceptions of the officer corps which would culminate in his dismissal from the Corps of Cadets in 1831 on charges of ‘gross neglect of duty.’
The most valuable part of the book are Hecker’s 60–page Introduction and Gerald A. McGowan’s 38-page Afterword which provides further enlightenment on Poe’s poetic language and identity, as well as his employment of martial names throughout his oeuvre. They provide valuable interpretations of Poe’s life and literary works and valuable insights into his brief place in his American military milieu. In the end, Hecker hopes that “critics would begin to explore and publicly discourse about the critical and symbiotic relationship between the American nation, its literature, and its military.” As for the poetry itself, these 1831 poems will likely prove, for most, to be quaint irrelevancies compared with the Gothic genius most of us have enjoyed so much in ‘The Raven and Other Poems.’ The selections of 1831 poems Hecker discusses in his Introduction could have alone sufficed to get his valuable thesis across to his audience. Still, this is a scholarly work, one that adds to our understanding of American literature’s infamous dark genius.
Jeffrey C. Alfier, a Southwest regionalist poet, divides his time between Tucson and Germany. He holds an MA in Humanities from California State University at Dominguez Hills. A member of Poets Against War, he has been reviewing books of poetry for several years. His first chapbook, "Strangers Within the Gate" (2005), was published by The Moon Publishing and Printing, based in Tucson.
or Register