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Poems & Essays
His reputation has never settled, seeing as many reversals after his death as during his life. Though read and enjoyed ny many, fewer admire him openly. This volume includes all of his poetry and his most important essays.
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
First published January 1, 1902
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12 people want to read
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
9,814 books28.7k followersThe name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...
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June 19, 2018
POEMS
“The Raven” — man engaged in deep study in the middle of a December night to distract him from missing his lost Lenore is interrupted by a talking Raven who can only say “nevermore” repeatedly. He keeps asking the raven questions about the whereabout of Lenore. He asks if they will be reunited, but all the bird can say is nevermore. He loses all hope.
“Ulalume” — speaker inadvertently walks to the grave of his dead beloved in the middle of the woods at night a year after the fact.
“Bells” — Absurdly incantatory jingle in which the sound of the bells devolves from cheerful tinkling to solemn and relentless tolling.
“Annabel Lee” — A poem of paradise lost, with his youthful child bride Annabel Lee.
“The Haunted Palace” — The poem is recited in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The poem centers on King who is haunted by evil thoughts that chase away the happiness of his younger days.
“The Conqueror Worm” — This poem appears in “Ligeia.” It is a poetic allegory a la “The Masque of the Red Death,” in which life is dramatized as a masquerade which Death intrudes upon and spoils.
“The City in the Sea” — Here we have an allegorical tableau of death presenting over a dreary cemetery-like city in the middle of the sea.
“A Dream within a Dream” — Poem about the ephemerality of life, slipping interminably away from you all the time.
“Eulalie” — A poem that ends before the fall. A lonely man marries the beautiful Eulalie which restores him to happiness.
“Eldorodo” — The search for gold leads to death.
ESSAYS
"The Philosophy of Composition"
Not only is Poe's method for composing "The Raven" mechanical to the point of hilarity; it's also somewhat counterintuitive in its sequential arrangement. He knows what "effects" he'd like to create on his reader and then picks subject matter suited to the achievement of that effect, so that his form precedes his content in an odd way. Poe thinks that in literary works and in poems in particular a piece should be able to be read in a single sitting; this allows readers to hold a single unified impression in their mind at once. This adherence to unity of form is Aristotelian and can be traced back to the Poetics. Poe's essay is eccentric for the way it presents a number of highly subjective opinions as irrefutable facts, as when, for instance, he asserts that
"melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all poetical tones"
or when he famously claims that "the death ... of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, an equally is ti beyond a doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover."
What Poe' offers us in this essay is a behind-the-scenes look at the composition process--something that he claims authors are constitutionally disinclined to reveal (If only Poe could have read James's prefaces...):
"Most writers — poets in especial — prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy — an ecstatic intuition — and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought — at the true purposes seized only at the last moment — at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view — at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable — at the cautious selections and rejections — at the painful erasures and interpolations — in a word, at the wheels and pinions — the tackle for scene-shifting — the step-ladders and demon-traps — the cock’s feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, constitute the properties of the literary historio."
Implicit in Poe's essay, then, is a claim that poetic composition is something of a science when one investigates it carefully enough. Certainly when characterizing his own method he makes it seem as if every compositional choice on his part is purely logical and scientific. And yet Poe's ostensibly scientific choices are almost always highly idiosyncratic; they unwittingly reveal an artistry or creative intuition that cannot be entirely accounted for on a rational level is that is at odds with the supposedly straightforward nature of his compositional method.
For all that, the kinds of measurements and manipulations the poem describes as part of the authorial process DO take place in the act of composition, and the essay is significant for the way it dares to expose some of the highly prosaic decisions that are often behind the most exquisite lines of poetry; but I don't think the composition of great works can be reduced to decisions of this kind; I think Poe himself depends on resources he doesn't acknowledge in this piece.
"Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales"
In this essay, Poe identifies the short story as the form best suited to the demonstration of literary genius. This is in part because of its brevity; it is short enough to be read in a singe sitting, which Poe identifies as an hour or so, and can therefore produce a unified effect on readers. It's also for the thematic versatility it afford. (Poe is highly idiosyncratic here. He claims that while poetry must concern itself with beauty, short stories can concern themselves with a range of themes and tones that are "prohibited" in poetry. They can focus on "terror, or passion, or horror, or a multitude of such other points."
The essay, of course, also focuses on Hawthorne and his stories. Poe calls Hawthorne a genius and identifies him, along with Irving, as one of the only genuine literary geniuses to have been produced by America. He writes "as Americans, we feel proud of this book." While he observes that Hawthorne's stories are somewhat lacking in variety of tone and subject matter, he praises them for their bold originality.
“The Raven” — man engaged in deep study in the middle of a December night to distract him from missing his lost Lenore is interrupted by a talking Raven who can only say “nevermore” repeatedly. He keeps asking the raven questions about the whereabout of Lenore. He asks if they will be reunited, but all the bird can say is nevermore. He loses all hope.
“Ulalume” — speaker inadvertently walks to the grave of his dead beloved in the middle of the woods at night a year after the fact.
“Bells” — Absurdly incantatory jingle in which the sound of the bells devolves from cheerful tinkling to solemn and relentless tolling.
“Annabel Lee” — A poem of paradise lost, with his youthful child bride Annabel Lee.
“The Haunted Palace” — The poem is recited in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The poem centers on King who is haunted by evil thoughts that chase away the happiness of his younger days.
“The Conqueror Worm” — This poem appears in “Ligeia.” It is a poetic allegory a la “The Masque of the Red Death,” in which life is dramatized as a masquerade which Death intrudes upon and spoils.
“The City in the Sea” — Here we have an allegorical tableau of death presenting over a dreary cemetery-like city in the middle of the sea.
“A Dream within a Dream” — Poem about the ephemerality of life, slipping interminably away from you all the time.
“Eulalie” — A poem that ends before the fall. A lonely man marries the beautiful Eulalie which restores him to happiness.
“Eldorodo” — The search for gold leads to death.
ESSAYS
"The Philosophy of Composition"
Not only is Poe's method for composing "The Raven" mechanical to the point of hilarity; it's also somewhat counterintuitive in its sequential arrangement. He knows what "effects" he'd like to create on his reader and then picks subject matter suited to the achievement of that effect, so that his form precedes his content in an odd way. Poe thinks that in literary works and in poems in particular a piece should be able to be read in a single sitting; this allows readers to hold a single unified impression in their mind at once. This adherence to unity of form is Aristotelian and can be traced back to the Poetics. Poe's essay is eccentric for the way it presents a number of highly subjective opinions as irrefutable facts, as when, for instance, he asserts that
"melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all poetical tones"
or when he famously claims that "the death ... of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, an equally is ti beyond a doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover."
What Poe' offers us in this essay is a behind-the-scenes look at the composition process--something that he claims authors are constitutionally disinclined to reveal (If only Poe could have read James's prefaces...):
"Most writers — poets in especial — prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy — an ecstatic intuition — and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought — at the true purposes seized only at the last moment — at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view — at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable — at the cautious selections and rejections — at the painful erasures and interpolations — in a word, at the wheels and pinions — the tackle for scene-shifting — the step-ladders and demon-traps — the cock’s feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, constitute the properties of the literary historio."
Implicit in Poe's essay, then, is a claim that poetic composition is something of a science when one investigates it carefully enough. Certainly when characterizing his own method he makes it seem as if every compositional choice on his part is purely logical and scientific. And yet Poe's ostensibly scientific choices are almost always highly idiosyncratic; they unwittingly reveal an artistry or creative intuition that cannot be entirely accounted for on a rational level is that is at odds with the supposedly straightforward nature of his compositional method.
For all that, the kinds of measurements and manipulations the poem describes as part of the authorial process DO take place in the act of composition, and the essay is significant for the way it dares to expose some of the highly prosaic decisions that are often behind the most exquisite lines of poetry; but I don't think the composition of great works can be reduced to decisions of this kind; I think Poe himself depends on resources he doesn't acknowledge in this piece.
"Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales"
In this essay, Poe identifies the short story as the form best suited to the demonstration of literary genius. This is in part because of its brevity; it is short enough to be read in a singe sitting, which Poe identifies as an hour or so, and can therefore produce a unified effect on readers. It's also for the thematic versatility it afford. (Poe is highly idiosyncratic here. He claims that while poetry must concern itself with beauty, short stories can concern themselves with a range of themes and tones that are "prohibited" in poetry. They can focus on "terror, or passion, or horror, or a multitude of such other points."
The essay, of course, also focuses on Hawthorne and his stories. Poe calls Hawthorne a genius and identifies him, along with Irving, as one of the only genuine literary geniuses to have been produced by America. He writes "as Americans, we feel proud of this book." While he observes that Hawthorne's stories are somewhat lacking in variety of tone and subject matter, he praises them for their bold originality.
Displaying 1 of 1 review