Reading about the last Poe’s wanderings around (as if Highsmith was personally invested in this sorrowful story), I was reminded of Hart Crane’s “Forgetfulness”:

Forgetfulness is like a song

That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.

Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,

Outspread and motionless, —

A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.

Forgetfulness is rain at night,

Or an old house in a forest, — or a child.

Forgetfulness is white, — white as a blasted tree,

And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,

Or bury the Gods.

I can remember much forgetfulness. ©

And here’s Highsmith’s description of Poe’s last days:

“Poe’s last journey, from which he never returned to Mrs Clemm as he promised he would, was from Fordham, near New York City, to Philadelphia, where he borrowed money from two friends. His objective, besides picking up some money perhaps by a couple of readings, was to make contact with a man named Patterson, of Illinois, who had unexpectedly volunteered money for Poe to launch a literary magazine. Poe “did a mystery” himself, drank here and there, either didn’t know whether he was in New York or Philadelphia or deliberately wrote the wrong city at the top of a letter or two to Mrs Clemm in the hope perhaps of warding off imaginary enemies. The death of Virginia had shattered him, and this trip was one of a few valiant efforts to make himself and Mrs Clemm solvent once more. He also desperately needed, and sought, another female figure in his life (besides Ma Clemm), and once again he approached the now husbandless Elmira Shelton in Richmond. Elmira was unenthusiastic, though Poe chose to fancy them engaged, and so wrote Mrs Clemm to come to Richmond. At the same time Poe wanted, and expressed his wish, to be near one Annie, who lived in Lowell, Massachusetts. It is all a shambles, and in those last days Poe probably didn’t know what town he was in. Annie he might finally have “possessed”, and Elmira would have been another distant but necessary star for him to gaze at. He needed both.” ©