Edgar Allan Poe vs. Rufus Griswold

Duncan Trussell, glass in hand, tells the story of Edgar Allan Poe (Jesse Plemons) and his nemesis Rufus Griswold (Jason Ritter). The perpetually broke Poe hands over some poems for Griswold's big anthology of American poetry, only to find three of his pieces buried at the back while a friend of Griswold's gets fifty. Griswold then pays Poe to review the book, and Poe pockets the money and pans it. Poe tours the country trashing Griswold in lectures, but the anthology is a hit, and when Poe returns to his magazine job he finds Griswold behind his desk, on a bigger salary. After his wife dies, Poe sinks into drinking and laudanum and is found in a Baltimore gutter, dying soon after. Griswold gets the last word with scathing biographies painting Poe as a drunken wreck, which only make readers want his books and turn Poe into one of America's great writers. Griswold dies alone of tuberculosis with Poe's portrait watching him, and Trussell closes by declaring that nobody will remember any of us.

Griswold's 1842 anthology The Poets and Poetry of America was later nicknamed a "graveyard of poets", because most of its writers have since been forgotten. When Griswold died in 1857, the only decorations in his room were portraits of himself, the poet Frances Osgood and Poe.