The death of a beautiful woman is the theme that dominates the best of Poe’s poems. There is “the lost Lenore” of “The Raven,” but also Lenore of the poem “Lenore”—Poe thought that the sound or was the most beautiful in the English language. His other famous poem to lost love, “Annabel Lee,” tragically ends when he lies down by the side of his “life” and his “bride” “in the sepulchre there by the sea—/ In her tomb by the sounding sea.”
Poe devoted his longest essay on poetics, “The Rationale of Verse,” to an overly complicated view of rhythm and meter, but the importance of sound in Poe’s poems cannot be overstated. A master of rhythm, Poe’s syllable-by-syllable approach to sound yielded some of the most memorable lines in American poetry. His ear for mimicry is unparalleled. “The Bells” is an onomatopoetic marathon of tinkling tintinnabulation and clanging, banging bells, bells, bells throughout.
Excluding “The Raven,” Poe’s poems are mostly short lyric pieces—meditations on death or beautiful women or the death of beautiful women—almost always less than a page long. He believed that a poem should be readable in one sitting and objected to what he saw as the epic “mania” among such contemporaries as Longfellow, which he felt valued truth and moral didacticism over the exaltation of beauty.
For all the time he spent writing about it, Poe left behind a rather slim corpus of poetry. Perhaps because his standards were so high, a remarkable share of Poe’s poems are excellent in their technique and unity. His poems remain popular in and outside the classroom, and are assured a place in the minds of readers forevermore.
Poe the Critic
“A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents—he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tends not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction.”
—from Poe’s review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
Twice-Told Tales, May 1842
In his day, Poe was known for his poison pen, but a few contemporaries did earn his admiration:
Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist (1804–1864)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet (1806–1861)
Alfred Lord Tennyson, English poet (1809–1892)
Charles Dickens, English novelist (1812–1870)
aJames Russell Lowell, American poet (1819–1891)
Poe’s Long Shadow
Poe has influenced generations of successful detective, horror, and psychological novelists, and sometimes less successful adapters of his own work. Such horror novelists as H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King owe a freely confessed debt to him, and Fyodor Dostoevsky and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have likewise noted the enormous effect of his work on their own. French writers in particular have acknowledged Poe’s example, and the poet Charles Baudelaire remains one of his earliest champions and finest translators.
As with even the best translations of Poe into other languages, his translations into other media may always fall short of the original. But even the weakest of Poe adaptations have the virtue of driving us back to the originals, and artists who in good faith continue to plunder him for material—unlike most of his characters—need feel no guilt. Poe’s short but always visual stories pose particular opportunities and challenges for the unwary adapter. Yet an admirer can easily put together a midnight, or even an all-night, film festival that does Poe credit, if never quite justice.
Two film versions of “The Fall of the House of Usher” may stand in for as many as two hundred attempts so far to translate the author’s work. Remarkably, both “Ushers” have made the Library of Congress’s annual National Film Registry of movies worthy of preservation. A product of the promising yet sadly stillborn Rochester, New York, film industry, the 1928 version holds up well for its striking avant-garde approach and inventive look.
More famously, Roger Corman and Richard Matheson’s House of Usher (1960), starring Vincent Price, started a vogue for Poe that indirectly led to the second golden age of Hollywood. Corman was a journeyman B-movie director-producer when he discovered in Poe the perfect opportunity to combine cheesecake with pure cheese. He hired mellifluous classical ham Vincent Price and great pulp writer Richard Matheson (The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), Duel (1971), The Twilight Zone) and their several resulting Poe adaptations brought out the best in all three. The money made in the process later allowed Corman to bankroll low-budget first films by Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and many of the other filmmakers who ushered in the American film renaissance of the 1970s.
Many musical works interpret Poe’s poetry and fiction. These adaptations include a choral symphony of “The Bells,” by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1913, rev. 1936), and two operas based on “The Fall of the House of Usher”: one finished, by Philip Glass (1987), one not, by Claude Debussy. Perhaps the oddest stab at setting Poe to music has been POEtry (2000), a theater piece and song cycle of selected Poe work by Lou Reed and Robert Wilson, which later became a Reed album called The Raven (2003).
The stage, too, has taken frequent advantage of Poe’s inherent theatricality. Some of these versions have even flourished for a season or more. In the end, though, whether on stage or screen, it’s difficult to make Poe any more dramatic than he already is.
Poe’s Admirers
“Your ‘raven’ has produced a sensation, a ‘fit horror,’ here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it and some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by the ‘Nevermore,’ and one acquaintance of mine who has the misfortune of possessing a ‘bust of Pallas’ never can bear to look at it in the twilight.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“You might call him ‘the leader of the Cult of the Unusual.’ ”
—Jules Verne
“Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“It would also be just to say that Poe sacrificed his life to his work, his human destiny to immortality.”
—Jorge Luis Borges
“It’s because I liked Edgar Allan Poe’s stories so much that I began to make suspense films.”
—Alfred Hitchcock
Poe’s Houses
The Poe Museum
Richmond, Virginia
Poe was raised in Richmond by the Allan family. He moved back in 1835 to work for the Southern Literary Messenger. Most of the landmarks and houses from Poe’s time in Richmond have been lost to history, but Richmond’s Poe Museum offers a collection of his manuscripts and artifacts.
www.poemuseum.org
The Baltimore Poe House and Museum
Baltimore, Maryland
Poe moved to Baltimore to live with his future wife, Virginia, and her mother. There Poe published poems and short stories and won his first literary contest, with “MS. Found in a Bottle.” He lived at what is now the Baltimore Poe House and Museum from about 1832 to 1835.
www.eapoe.org
Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Poe lived in Philadelphia for six years, where he wrote and published some of his most influential work, including “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Gold-Bug.” For the last year or so of his time in the city (c. 1842–1844), he lived with his wife and mother-in-law at what is now the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site maintained by the National Park Service.
www.nps.gov/edal
The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage
Fordham, Bronx
, New York
From 1846 to 1849, Edgar Allan Poe lived in the hills of the Bronx, New York. Here, his young wife died and Poe wrote some of his most lyrical work, such as “Annabel Lee” and “The Bells.” The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage is now preserved by The Bronx County Historical Society.
www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/poecottage.html
The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe
1800s
Alexander Hamilton founds the New York Evening Post, heralding a decade in which the number of U.S. newspapers roughly double, 1801.
With the Louisiana Purchase, Thomas Jefferson’s administration buys from France all or part of what will become fifteen states, 1803.
Edgar Poe born in Boston, January 19, 1809.
Abraham Lincoln born less than a month later, on February 12, 1809.
1810s
Abandoned by her husband, Poe’s mother dies, 1811.
Napoleon’s France is defeated at Waterloo, 1815.
Jefferson founds the University of Virginia, 1819.
Poe lives with the family of his guardian, John Allan, in Great Britain, 1815–1820.
1820s
The Erie Canal completed, opening the Great Lakes to seagoing Atlantic commerce for the first time, 1825.
American Temperance Society founded, 1826.
Poe publishes his first volume of poetry and joins the army, 1827.
1830s
Poe marries his cousin, Virginia Clemm, 1836.
A tightening of foreign credit, which had helped finance American projects including the Erie Canal, creates a financial panic and leads to a five-year depression starting in 1837.
Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, published, 1838.
1840s
Poe finds success but not solvency with “The Raven,” 1845.
Virginia dies from complications of tuberculosis, leaving Poe even more desolate, 1847.
Poe dies under mysterious circumstances in Baltimore on October 7, 1849.
Discussion Questions
Do the narrators from “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado” deserve what they get? Do the characters around them? What might this say about Poe’s view of the world?
In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” why does Poe spend nearly two full pages on the lyrics to “The Haunted Palace,” one of Roderick’s “performances”? Do Poe’s language and content change from one form to the other, or just the medium?
In “The Pit and the Pendulum,” how does the narrator’s clever idea of smearing food on the straps holding him down, so as to induce the hungry rats to chew him loose, anticipate the climactic maneuvers of heroes in suspense and action-adventure stories today?
“The Masque of the Red Death” was originally published as “The Mask of the Red Death.” What is a “masque,” and do you think the pun was intentional?
Are the narrators of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “William Wilson” sane? Do you like the stories better if they’re hallucinating, or if they aren’t? Why?
Read Poe’s essay “The Philosophy of Composition,” in which he details how he came to write “The Raven.” Do you believe him? Why or why not?
Listen closely to the sounds of Poe’s poems “Annabel Lee” and “The Raven.” How does his use of sound influence your reading of the poems?
Poe’s works are haunted by death. Sometimes even his speakers are dead. How does this affect the tone of his work? Does it add to the suspense or take away from it?
Poe often writes about the death of a beautiful woman. His own wife was ill for most of their marriage and died at a young age. How might this affect the emotional intensity of his writing?
Additional Resources
Works by Edgar Allan Poe
Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827)
Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems (1829)
Poems (1831)
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838)
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840)
The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe (1843)
Tales (1845)
The Raven and Other Poems (1845)
Works About Poe
Hutchisson, James M. Poe. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2005.
Ostrom, John Ward, ed. The Collected Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, 2 vols., 3rd ed. Revised and expanded by Burton R. Pollin and Jeffrey A. Savoye. New York: Gordian Press, 2008.
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1941.
Symons, Julian. The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.
Web Sites
The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore
Founded in 1923, the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore grew out of several smaller organizations endeavoring to erect a memorial to Poe at his gravesite. They have been responsible for the preservation of Poe’s Baltimore home and continue to honor Poe’s legacy with an annual lecture series and several publications. The society’s comprehensive Web site features information and essays about Poe’s life and work.
www.eapoe.org
The Poe Museum
Richmond’s Poe Museum hosts a collection of Poe’s manuscripts and artifacts from his life. The museum’s Web site features a brief biography of Poe with special attention paid to his time in Richmond, educational resources, and a selection of Poe’s stories and poems.
www.poemuseum.org
Works Cited
Poe, Edgar Allan. Complete Tales & Poems. New York: Vintage Books, 1975.____. The Portable Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Penguin Classics, 2006.
Works Consulted
Hecker, William F. ed. Private Perry and Mister Poe: The West Point Poems, 1831. Baton Rogue, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Poetry and Tales. New York: Library of America, 1984.
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1941.
Symons, Julian. The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.
Wilbur, Richard. “Edgar Allan Poe” and “The Poe Mystery Case.” Responses: Prose Pieces, 1953–1976. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.
Acknowledgments
David Kipen, NEA Director of Literature, National Reading Initiatives
Writers: David Kipen and Dan Brady for the NEA
Series editor: Erika Koss for the NEA
“ ‘If it is any point requiring reflection … we shall examine it to better purpose in the dark.’ ”
—Edgar Allan Poe, from his story “The Purloined Letter”
The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest.
The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts—both new and established—bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Endowment is the nation’s largest annual funder of the arts, bringing great art to all fifty states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute’s mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The Institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development.
Arts Midwest connects people throughout the Midwest and the world to meaningful arts opportunities, sharing creativity, knowledge, and understanding across boundaries. One of six nonpro
fit regional arts organizations in the United States, Arts Midwest’s history spans more than twenty-five years.
Additional support for The Big Read has also been provided by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe Page 28