Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Poets and Poems: Meeting Edgar Allen Poe


A drunkard. A poet. An editor. A reporter. A military man. An orphan. A lecturer. The father of the detective novel. The Shakespeare of America. A slanderer and libeler. The husband of a 13-year-old bride.

And a writer. Above all, a writer.

We associate Edgar Allen Poe with 19th century gothic. His stories – “Fall of the House of Usher,” “Twice-Told Tales,” “Masque of the Red Death,” “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” among many others – are full of mystery, passion, horror, violence, death, and the supernatural. And yet his poems, especially “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee,” made him famous in pre-Civil War America and established his literary reputation.

Questions and mystery surrounded Poe’s own life and death and continue even today – we may never know who left three roses and a bottle of cognac on his grave in Baltimore for decades until 2011 (alas, the “Poe Toaster” disappeared or died, to be seen nevermore).


To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

1 comment:

  1. I like to read biographies and memoirs and your post shows me that Poe's biographies would be interesting.

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