Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;–vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore–
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore–
Nameless here for evermore.

–from “The Raven”

His name conjures up images of premature burial, black cats, forbidden crypts, and crumbling old houses where terrifying secrets dwell. Almost one hundred and fifty years after his death, Edgar Allan Poe’s prose and poetry continue to frighten, influence and inspire writers, composers, artists, poets, and readers all over the world. Despite the very small amount of recognition he received during his lifetime, Poe is today considered one of America’s greatest writers.

Born on January 19, 1809, Poe was the son of professional actors in Boston, Massachusetts. After his mother passed away, his father left, orphaning him at the age of three. Separated from his brother and sister, he went to live with a well-to-do family in Virginia. The Allans (from which Poe took his middle name) brought him to England and provided him with a strong education, but were resistant to his literary aspirations. By the time he attended the University of Virginia, he had already begun to grow apart from his guardian, John Allan.

After losing most of his money to gambling, and becoming estranged from the Allans, Poe left college and enlisted in the United States Army. There he progressed rapidly, becoming a sergeant major. It was then that he self-published his first book, TAMERLANE AND OTHER POEMS. Like most of Poe’s publishing efforts, this book was met coolly by the literary community. After his discharge from the Army, Poe worked briefly at West Point and then moved to Baltimore where he found work as a reviewer and literary editor. In 1833, he married his thirteen-year-old cousin and moved her and her mother to Virginia.

Throughout the late 1830s and early 1840s, Poe wrote much of his best work, including THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM and the stories “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “The Gold Bug.” While other writers of the time were writing straight forward realistic representations of life in America, Poe was concerning himself with the subconscious— dreams, nightmares, and the unspoken. His work plumbed the depths of human fears and desires, often allowing the “reality” of the stories to fade away and make room for a reality only found within the mind. Though he had a handful of admirers, Poe’s interest in the unspoken and psychological left him unable to successfully sell his work.

To support his new wife and mother-in-law, Poe moved to New York and took a number of jobs as a magazine editor, working at publications including NEW YORK MIRROR, BURTON’S GENTLEMEN’S MAGAZINE, and GODEY’S LADY’S BOOK. Though both his skill as an editor and administrator were exceptional, he often found himself at odds with others within the literary world. He was a heavy drinker and rarely lasted more than a year and a half at any one job. In 1844 Poe received some attention for his masterful poem “The Raven.” But with the slight advances in his career during the mid-1840s also came the setbacks of his continued drinking, employment problems, and most of all, the ill health of his wife, Virginia.

In January of 1847 his wife died, and Poe returned to Virginia. There he continued to write, producing one of his masterpieces, “Eureka.” On a trip back north to New York in 1849, Poe stopped in Baltimore where he was found on October 3rd, passed out on a street outside a bar. He died four days later. Though some have suggested foul play, no one is exactly certain of the circumstances of his death. Sadly, it was not until years later, with the help of French poets such as Baudelaire, that Poe’s rank as a great artist became solidified. A man profoundly ahead of his time, Edgar Allan Poe pointed to the mysteries of the psyche, to the dark truths that float in our dreams, to our unredeamable fears; and for this, the art of writing will remain eternally grateful.

“Making the world’s available resources serve one hundred percent of an exploding population can only be accomplished by a boldly accelerated design revolution.”

There are few men who can justly claim to have revolutionized their discipline. R. Buckminster Fuller revolutionized many. “Bucky,” as he was known to most, was a designer, architect, poet, educator, engineer, philosopher, environmentalist, and, above all, humanitarian. Driven by the belief that humanity’s major problems were hunger and homelessness he dedicated his life to solving those problems through inexpensive and efficient design.

The grandnephew of the American Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, Bucky was born on July 12, 1895 in Milton, Massachusetts. He was twice expelled from Harvard. Later, Bucky married Anne Hewlett in 1917 and went into the construction business with her father. A decade later he witnessed the first of many business failures, when, due to economic difficulties, he was forced out of the company. Despondent over these failures and family problems, he resolved to focus his energies on a search for socially responsible answers to the major design problems of his time.

Recognizing the inefficiency of the automobile, Bucky spent the late twenties designing a car that would incorporate the engineering advances of the airplane. In 1933, he presented the first prototype of the Dymaxion car. The Dymaxion car could hold twelve passengers, go 120 miles per hour and used half the gas of the standard car, utilizing aerodynamics construction and only three wheels. While demonstrating the car to investors, it crashed, taking one life. Though the crash was later determined not to be the fault of the car, he was never able to find adequate funding.

As World War II ended and housing crises in America became more acute, he turned his sights to what would remain his life-long dream. Using airplane construction methods and materials, Bucky set out to create a pre-fabricated house that could be easily delivered to any location. It would be fireproof and inexpensive and constructed out of light weight materials. In 1945 however, with thousands of orders in place for his new Dymaxion House, Fuller once again ran into difficulties with investors and had to end the project.

Unsure of his next step and without a job, Bucky accepted a position at a small college in North Carolina, Black Mountain College. There, with the support of an amazing group of professors and students, he began work on the project that was to make him famous and revolutionize the field of engineering. Using lightweight plastics in the simple form of a tetrahedron (a triangular pyramid) he created a small dome. As his work continued it became clear that he had made the first building that could sustain its own weight with no practical limits. The U.S. government recognized the importance of the discovery and employed him to make small domes for the army. Within a few years there were thousands of these domes around the world.

Having finally received recognition for his endeavors, Buckminster Fuller spent the final fifteen years of his life traveling around the world lecturing on ways to better use the world’s resources. A favorite of the radical youth of the late 60’s and 70’s, Fuller worked to expand social activism to an international scope. Among his most famous books were NO MORE SECONDHAND GOD(1963) OPERATING MANUAL FOR THE SPACESHIP EARTH (1969), and EARTH, INC. (1973) in which he writes “In reality, the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon are nothing else than a most fantastically well-designed and space-programmed team of vehicles. All of us are, always have been, and so long as we exist, always will be–nothing else but–astronauts.”