I’ve never been someone who can listen to music while writing, so the following songs are less of an author-curated track list than they are a collection of tunes that go along with the events and personalities of the characters in BENEATH THE POET’S HOUSE. Enjoy, and be warned, the vibe is suitably dark and overwhelmingly emo… what else would you expect from the Poe-and-Whitman-inspired tastes of main characters Saoirse White and Emmit Powell?
“Helena,” My Chemical Romance
Are you even allowed to be a writer of dark thrillers and horror novels, set your opening scene in a graveyard, and not chose “Helena” as the first track on your novel’s playlist? I think not. I have a theory that fans of MCR’s music and Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry overlap significantly, so I’m confident “Helena” (named after band members Gerard and Mikey Way’s late grandmother, Elena Lee Rus, or, “Helen,” as she was known, similar to Sarah Whitman being called “Helen” by her friends) sets the stage for the themes explored within Beneath the Poet’s House. The music video’s black and red aesthetic are a perfect match for the novel’s cover, and its subject matter, about a young woman (the “queenliest dead that ever died so young,” if you will), who, despite being in a coffin, refuses to stay dead, is great foreshadowing for what’s to come at the novel’s climax.
“Blinding,” Florence & The Machine
This song encompasses Saoirse’s mental state at various times throughout the novel. It’s both repetitive and meandering and unexpected, and there are a surprising number of Poe-esque images throughout the song, from the mention of a “dreaming state” versus the waking world to the lines referencing the undoing of death, black birds, and misguided love: “No more dreaming of the dead as if death itself was undone / No more calling like a crow for a boy, for a body in the garden / no more dreaming like a girl so in love, so in love / … No more dreaming like a girl, so in love with the wrong world.” A solid entry on the BENEATH THE POET’S HOUSE playlist.
“Sweet Jane,” Cowboy Junkies
For whatever reason, this song (and specifically the Cowboy Junkies version) was in my head when I wrote the scene during which Saoirse and Emmit first spend the night together. It’s sensual and slow and just screams two people taking their time with one another to learn what makes the other tick. At around the two thirds mark, the song reaches its bridge, and it feels like a release, serving as a transitional passage not just for the song, but for the characters: there was the before, when they were strangers, separate entities, a bit at odds, and there was the after, now bound together, for better or worse. I also like this little piece of trivia in that the Cowboy Junkies version of “Sweet Jane” appears on the soundtrack of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers; while Saoirse and Emmit are certainly not on par with the toxicity of Mickey and Mallory, their relationship is no picnic… which leads me to our next song.
“Bad Romance,” Lady Gaga
This one might be a little too on the nose, but sometimes we know someone is wrong for us, is toxic, is too good to be true, and we can’t help but not only desire that person, but throw ourselves into the relationship, mind, body, and soul. Saoirse finds herself “caught” in a dangerous romance with Emmit, but also pursues it, wants it to work out, because if it does, that means she can let go of the past, can banish the voice in her head that refuses to let her embrace the future. And, beyond the salvation her relationship with Emmit offers, there’s another thing on the table by virtue of dating him: excitement. Gaga’s “Bad Romance” speaks to that little devil on all our shoulders that tempts us with the bad boys (or girls), that dares us to have fun, no matter the price.
“King of the Clouds,” Panic! At the Disco
This song encapsulates the mental state of one character in particular in the most delicious of ways. Emmit Powell is someone who believes very much in his own talent and success; he has taken his millions of readers, his glowing reviews, his Pulitzer Prize, and not just let it go to his head, but let it send him off the deep end. Panic! At the Disco’s Brendon Urie has described the song’s creation as akin to a “verbal vomiting” of ideas that were believed in so deeply by his songwriting partner, they were secretly written down and repurposed into a “tasty,” “frenetic,” and “manic” song about everything from the multiverse to inter-dimensional travel. In short, it’s a song about grandiosity, sung by an individual willing to step into the role needed to sell its wild ideas.
Without giving away anything major about BENEATH THE POET’S HOUSE, Emmit Powell indeed fancies himself (and believed Poe to be) king of something vast and significant, as vast and significant as the clouds. But clouds are intangible, and we all know what happens to them eventually...
They disperse.
Bonus Track: “Nine in the Afternoon,” Panic! At the Disco
The sort of poetic daydream / lofty headspace Saoirse might have found herself in while writing away at 88 Benefit Street, losing track of time, falling backward in time, to the night Poe first spotted Whitman, when her “eyes [were] the size of the moon” under which she tended her roses.
Thanks so very much for coming along on this musical journey through BENEATH THE POET’S HOUSE!
A Thriller
For a grieving writer, the secrets of the past and present converge in a novel of gripping psychological suspense from the author of The Daughters of Block Island.
Unmoored by her husband’s death and suffering from writer’s block, novelist Saoirse White moves to Providence, and into the historic home of Sarah Helen Whitman, the nineteenth-century poet and spiritualist once courted by Edgar Allan Poe. Saoirse’s certain she’ll find inspiration in the quiet rooms, as well as in the tucked-away rose garden and forgotten cemetery at the back of the property.
Saoirse is immediately welcomed by an effusive trio of transcendentalists obsessed with Whitman, the house, and Whitman’s mystic beliefs. Saoirse, emerging from grief and loneliness, welcomes the idea of new friends taking her mind off the past—even as they hope to summon it. When she meets Emmit Powell, a charismatic and charming prize-winning author, Saoirse thinks she’s finally turned a corner.
Emboldened by new romance, Saoirse begins to write again and, through her writing, rediscover herself. But as old fears return, she finds that nothing about her new life is what it seems—and a secret she’s tried so hard to bury may not be the only thing that comes back to haunt her.
Horror [Thomas & Mercer, On Sale: December 10, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781662513275 / ]
Christa Carmen lives in Rhode Island and is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of the short story collection Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked. She has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Boston College, and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine.
When she’s not writing, she keeps chickens; uses a Ouija board to ghost-hug her dear, departed beagle; and sets out on adventures with her husband, daughter, and bloodhound–golden retriever mix. Most of her work comes from gazing upon the ghosts of the past or else into the dark corners of nature, those places where whorls of bark become owl eyes, and deer step through tunnels of hanging leaves and creeping briars only to disappear.
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