Edgar Allan Poe in New York

There are four qualities -- rules, perhaps -- that, in my eyes, make for an exceptional audiobook:

A woman with a British accent reading something from the Romantic or Victorian period, especially if that person does different accents for different characters (as in, each of the Bennet sisters).
Bruce Springsteen reading his own autobiography in his distinctly graveled voice (that he originally believed, interestingly, to be something that would prevent him from becoming a worthy lead singer).
Maya Angelou reading anything at all. And when she sings some of those hymns -- my GOODNESS.
Someone reading Edgar Allan Poe, which coincides with either (1) a walk around any of his remaining houses (like the one in Richmond that has scratchable black cats roaming around the backyard), or (2) a walk around a city, with vacant buildings and bricked-over windows and attics and basements and warehouses and fireplaces and second-story rooms with windows that let in ravens, and chamber doors for them to perch above.

This is certainly a rather detailed list, but one that has taken shape over a few years and that I continue to believe in quite staunchly. Needless to say, when I saw this podcast -- and now that I've been to his homes in Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York -- I was completely fascinated by it.

One of the black cats in the backyard of the Poe Museum in Richmond.

He's an author I've come to truly admire. His mind -- in all its brilliance and darkness -- was a real forerunner for so much that followed, and I find myself revisiting some of his more psychologically horrific pieces on occasion. When he writes, you can hear the taps on the windows and the screams behind walls, the creaking branches outside and the harrowing internal conflicts. It's not often to find this (perhaps Dostoevsky?), and it's a genius of its own kind.

Even Mary Oliver was affected by him, drawing a rather lovely set of truths from his terror-ridden writing:

We are given two gifts: the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions.

And like much of what she writes, I tend to agree.