As one of the towering figures of the Gothic, a movement of the Romantic period, Edgar Allan Poe embraced the supernatural and macabre.  His stories and poems told of chilling and often horrific occurrences that frequently explored the theme of death.  In his short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe tells of a man’s terrifying stay at a creepy, crumbling “mansion of gloom” (Poe par. 2) that ends with a woman returning from her tomb, proving to have been buried alive.  He writes of the man’s friend’s sister’s return that a “superhuman energy” pulls back the doors where she has been buried to reveal, “the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame” (Poe par. 46).  This dreadful image serves as the story’s crises as the man’s friend, Roderick Usher, is proven to have been right in his suspicions that his sister was still alive. 

          In light of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” it seems quite likely that he would have embraced Lupe Fiasco’s “The Cool.”  In the song, Fiasco writes of a man’s return from his grave after being shot and killed in a drug deal.  He writes of the undead man, “Tarnished gold chain is what he loosened up the earth with/he used his mouth as a shovel to try and hollow it/and when he couldn't dirt-spit, he swallowed it” (Jaco).  The man is literally digging up through the earth to escape his coffin, much as Madeline of Usher did in “The Fall of the House of Usher.”  Fiasco’s story in “The Cool,” fits the defining characteristics of Gothicism as described in The Norton Anthology of English Literature.  Norton explains that, “the Gothic featured accounts of terrifying experiences…connected with subterranean dungeons, secret passageways, flickering lamps, screams, moans, bloody hands, ghosts, graveyards, and the rest” (“The Gothic: Overview”).  “The Cool” sees a man returning from the dead and climbing through the earth of a graveyard, summoning many of Norton’s themes.  As a piece with strong Gothic themes and parallels to his own work, Lupe Fiasco’s “The Cool,” would no doubt make it onto Poe’s iPod.  Were Poe a contemporary hip-hop artist, this is the song that he would have written (Possibly this though). 

          Within Poe’s short stories and poems, he often employed the use of a persona to explore and inhabit the creepy worlds he created.  As Ryan Widuch points out in his message board post, “Fall of the House of Usher/Romanticism,” Poe often interjected “his sentiments and his imaginative descriptions/perception” of his environments into his work (Widuch “Fall of the House of Usher/Romanticism”).  A persona is a voice through which the story is told and does not necessarily reflect the thoughts of the author.  Poe’s persona played a major role in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” where he proved to be mentally unstable and affected by the house, but also in his poem “Annabel Lee.”  In “Annabel Lee” Poe adopted the persona of a man who found a “love that was more than love” at a very young age (Poe l. 9).  The love was so great that even angels became jealous and sent a wind so chilling that it killed the woman he loved, Annabel Lee (ll. 15-20), leaving him to spend “all the night-tide” lying by her corpse on the shore (l. 38).  By employing the persona of a man who has lost the love of his life, Poe is able to explore the themes of death and love from a unique perspective that sheds a new light on the archetypal topics.

          The use of a persona is something that is not foreign to rapper Del The Funky Homosapien who embodies a futuristic renegade named Deltron Zero in his song “3030.”  This song, part of his collaboration with producer Dan The Automator by the name of Deltron 3030, tells of a dystopian future where the world has been overrun by corporate powers.  He writes, “Yo it’s three thousand thirty/I want y’all to meet Deltron Zero, hero, not no small feat/it’s all heat in this day and age/I raid your grave, anything it takes to save the day” (Jones).  Del’s use of the persona allows him to navigate the future world he has created and critique contemporary society from a new perspective.  Aside from his discussion of raiding graves, something that is not all too far from Poe’s sleeping by his lover’s grave, Del’s depiction of the future world employs a variety of science-fiction tropes from mechs to portals.  These science-fiction concepts are derived from the Gothic tradition.  Arguably the first work of science fiction was composed during the romantic period as a piece of Gothic literature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (“The Gothic: Overview”).  As the form has evolved, the fantastical elements seen in Poe’s work and the Romantic’s skepticism of a scientific understanding of the world have gained new life and morphed to explore more contemporary concerns, such as corporatism in “3030.”  Most importantly though, it is the creation of a persona that allows Del to creatively explore and interpret the future world of the song and bring relevance to the futuristic themes.  Not only would this persona draw Poe’s attention, but also the wonderfully imaginative themes of “3030,” which would find the song a home under the “D” artist section of Poe’s iPod.  

          Washington Irving was another important figure to the Romantic Movement.  Where Poe wrote later in its evolution, Irving composed during the early stages of Romanticism’s rise in America.  For Irving, the thinking of the Enlightenment was a common theme in his writing as he both engaged with and responded to it in his stories.  As A Handbook for Literature explains, “Romanticism seeks to find the Absolute, the Ideal, by transcending the actual, whereas realism finds its values in the actual and naturalism in the scientific laws” (Holman).  Irving embraced this dichotomy as he challenged Enlightenment thinking and questioned many of America’s values of the 1800s in his story, “Rip Van Winkle.”  Alex Larsson explains of the character Rip Van Winkle in a discussion board post that he, “is so content with being surrounded by nature that he doesn't mind sitting on a wet rock nor does he mind not catching anything” (Larsson “Romantic thought in ‘Rip van Winkle’”).  Larsson explains that Van Winkle is interested in escaping the hustle and bustle of everyday life and finds happiness in nature.  This thinking embodies that of the Romantic.  Where America was concerned with a bottom line and pursuing happiness in tangible, measurable ways as part of the Enlightenment, Irving wrote Rip Van Winkle as a character who questioned that sort of thinking and instead sought solitude.  He wrote that, “The great error in Rip’s composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor” (Irving Par. 7).   For Rip Van Winkle, and Romantic thinkers, happiness could not be found in a paycheck.

          In his 1999 song, “Mathematics,” Mos Def too expresses a skepticism of a numerical understanding of the world and questions the authority of empirical thinking.  He writes that “Numbers is hard and real and they never have feelings/but you push too hard, even numbers got limits” (Smith).  The song explores the inadequacies of statistics and their inability to account for the human experience.  Mos Def concedes that numbers play a powerful role in our society but insists that, “the body of my text possess extra strength” (Smith).  His words, the human experience and literature, have a power as well.  Just as Rip Van Winkle found happiness and truth in nature, Mos Def finds truth in words as opposed to numbers.  Each of these pieces shows a stern response to the logic and empiricism of Enlightenment thinking and falls well within the parameters of Romanticism.  Though composed hundreds of years later, Mos Def responds to a similar train of thought that Irving challenged in “Rip Van Winkle,” making “Mathematics” a perfect fit for his iPod.

          As a Romantic writer, Washington Irving also displayed a great affinity for imaginative and surreal tales.  Professor Lila Melani explains that during the Romantic Movement, “the imagination was elevated to a position as the supreme faculty of the mind” (“Introduction to Romanticism”).  To Romantic writers, the imagination allowed for the understanding of opposites and the world around them.  It gave the artist the power to construct as though he were a supreme deity (“Introduction to Romanticism”).  In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Irving tells of the “legendary superstition” of a headless horseman (Irving par. 6).  His tale offers up a variety of imaginative details and characters as Ichabod Crane comes face to face with the Spooky Hollow legend, the Headless Horseman.  Here, what was thought to be a mere tale of the townspeople is proven (suspected) to be true as Crane is taken away from the town by the Headless Horseman (Par. 70).  No matter the truth of the tale, Crane’s disappearance brings new life to the tale as “The old country wives…who are the best judges of these matters,” begin to insist that “Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means,” making it a  “favorite story often told about the neighborhood round the winter evening fire” (Par. 73).  Irving has created a town that is defined by a story of the people.

          Jay Electronica too creates wonderfully creative narratives that bring truth to legends and myths.  In the third movement of his song, “Eternal Sunshine,” entitled, “Voodoo Man,” Electronica writes, “Walking on water with a scroll in my hand/the blueprints for a disc shaped-like vessel/that was chiseled out of metal off the coast of Japan” (Thedford).  He tells of a supernatural experience in which he discovered the blueprints to a spaceship.  This classic legend is brought to life in his story as he continues on to say that he, “saw a shiny object floating out of the ocean/I’m sort of like a post man/you can get the message if you want to understand” (Thedford).  He is bringing forth a truth that gives credence to many of the stories we create and imagine surrounding UFOs.  Within “Eternal Sunshine,” these mythical occurrences are real and Electronica serves as an observer.  Most importantly though, he presents the story in a wonderfully creative manner as he weaves in and out of four movements, giving details of supernatural occurrences and surreal happenings, revealing in “FYI” that, “While you was blowin’ X amount of dollars on a bracelet/The sovereign nation of France was openin’ they files on the UFO phenomenon” (Thedford).  UFOs are real in Jay Electronica’s world, and by the final movement of “Eternal Sunshine” the listener has been so immersed in it that she cannot help but believe it.  Given his love for creative storytelling, Washington Irving would thoroughly enjoy listening to Jay Electronica’s brilliant imagination on “Eternal Sunshine,” and absolutely make room for it on his iPod. 

          As two of the towering figures of the Romantic Movement, Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving certainly shared some philosophical viewpoints.  Their beliefs in the power of the word and human experience, creative expression, and a skepticism of Enlightenment thinking made them very comparable thinkers, but each carried traits that made them quite distinct from the other as well.  As seen in his play list, Poe embraced the darker side of human existence and often explored the theme of death in his Gothic pieces.  His interest in “The Cool” by Lupe Fiasco would likely be shared by Irving for its creative story, but the tone of the piece as well as the horrific notion of a man rising from the dead makes it a distinctly Poe song.  On the other hand, “Mathematics” by Mos Def carries a politics that is distinctly Irving.  Where Poe was concerned most with existential issues, Irving put forth a political ideology in his pieces, particularly in “Rip Van Winkle,” that most would not identify with Poe.  While Poe may enjoy the theme of “Mathematics,” the politics and direct reaction to Enlightenment thinking are distinctly Irving.  Nonetheless, Poe’s Gothic themes fell directly under the larger umbrella of the Romantic Movement that Irving was associated with, making both quite likely to enjoy an iPod swap at some point.  Though they may identify with different components of the songs, they certainly would find a great deal of commonality in their tastes, making for a wonderfully colorful musical debate.