Edgar Allan Poe

[Bev Stayart]

Edgar Allan Poe is one of my favorite writers. He has always fascinated me because his work is so different from other American writers of his era. He had a very difficult life, and I think his writing was a reflection of this. He also had a very unusual face with the two sides seemingly somewhat mismatched. This, along with his unsurpassed literary talents, has always endeared him to me. I feel a great sympathy and kinship with him.

[Daniel del Real]

I was searching through the WLF and it's truly incredible we don?t have a thread about Edgar Allan Poe.
Poe is a master of the short story. He defined this genre as we know it nowadays and for me he is the best one.
He also created the detective stories with his tale The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
I'd like to hear which is the favorite story of everyone here. I love a lot but I have to say my favorite is The Fall of the House of Usher.

Great topic to start, although this one belongs to Writers category.

[nnyhav]

I'd like to hear which is the favorite story of everyone here.

My favorite short story by anyone is "The Purloined Letter"; last year I posted a note on what's missing.

[e joseph]

I'd like to hear which is the favorite story of everyone here.

The Tell-Tale Heart. I love that story. The sliver of light shining across the old man's eye in the dark. Most years around Halloween I end up reading a few stories of his and always enjoy.

[Colette Jones]

It's got to be The Raven for me.

[Howard]

I've been meaning to reread all his stories this year. One story that has stayed with me over the years is The Cask of Amontillado: short, sharp and perfect.

[Bjorn]

Today, Masque of the Red Death.

[liehtzu]

I'm not surprised that there's no Poe thread. The forum tends to stick mainly to XX century writers - not that that's a bad thing.

But for Poe I'm going to make a recommendation on a book that amazingly few people seem to have ever heard of: Poe's sole novel, The Narrative of the Life of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, which I curiously happened to read right after Melville's Typee and plays like that book's twisted cousin. Supposedly Arthur Pym was one of Borges's favorite books (I believe Paul Theroux read this to Borges on a stop in Buenos Aires on one of those train journeys of his), and it surely is a marvel. The thing that occasionally gets to me about Poe is that the narrators often tend to sound the same. Usually they're on the verge of cracking up even before they do something horrible. But Arthur is a lad of sixteen, looking for adventure, and it starts out as a nice joyous song of expectancy. Where it goes, however, is dark dark dark places. Hoo hoo shiver me timbers indeed. Word to the wise: don't read anything about it beforehand.

[Jayaprakash]

Tough call, but I think I'll go for The Fall Of The House Of Usher. 'I know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit...'

[Noumenon]

I love Poe. My favourite piece of his is Silence: A Fable, which you can read here if you don't know it.

[Bev Stayart]

My favorite story is not a story at all, but a poem. Of all of the work of Edgar Allan Poe, my favorite is "Annabel Lee." It is regarded as his last complete poem, composed in May 1849. If you have not read it, I highly recommend doing so.

[Daniel del Real]

Very interesting that almost everyone has a different Poe's favorite. That shows us how good all his works are.
I've read the The Narrative of the Life of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket a long time ago and I rembember liking it a lot. However, for me the tales are way better.
I haven't read any of his poetry, just The Raven. I gotta go that way now.
And I understand you Joseph, I return to Poe every Halloween. It makes it feel a little bit more special right?

[hdw]

I'm sure that somebody, or maybe it was somebodies, recently mentioned Poe, but I can't remember who, when and where. Lost the thread, as you might say.

Anyway, I see that his effigy was given a proper send-off in Baltimore yesterday to make up for his apology for a funeral in 1849.

There's a school of thought that his horror stories were inspired by a traumatic two-month visit to Scotland in 1815 with his stepfather, a wealthy Scottish merchant from Irvine in Ayrshire who had settled in Richmond, Virginia. So much did he hate Scotland that he tried to stow away in a ship going back to the States, but only got as far as Glasgow. He was forced to play in a graveyard, I read, and was haunted by apparitions. Some of this is reflected in his poem Romance, and his story The Bargain Lost refers to the ancient custom in Irvine and some other burghs in Scotland where archers shot at a painted wooden "papyngo" or parrot fixed up in a high place, e.g. a church steeple.

I read a scholarly article once about this custom. It was found all over Europe. The "papyngo" (Eng. "popinjay") or parrot was held to be a type of puffed-up pride, so apart from providing useful archery practice - which medieval authorities regarded as A Good Thing - shooting the parrot down also provided an opportunity to act out the saying about "pride goeth before a fall".

Has anybody here read Matthew Pearl's The Poe Shadow? I really struggled with that book. Preferred his The Dante Club.

Harry

[hdw]

Thanks, Stewart, for moving my post to the appropriate thread.

Harry

[Backwords]

I know a pompous "popinjay" very like Fortunato in The Cask of Amontillado, to bad I don't have the Wine or the Catacombs.

I remember Silence a Fable from my childhood. The mysterious biblical Behemoth who along with the "hippopotami heard my call, and came... unto the foot of the rock" stayed with me over the years. Awhile back I learned fossil remains of elephant sized (seven ton) Hippopotamuses were discovered and that these "behemoths" had lived along side prehistoric man.

I understand that Poe's work though immediately well received, read and often quoted, never made him more then a few dollars.

The kinship between 1.Baudelaire and Poe seems to me a bit like an inverse of that between 2.Strindberg and Nietzsche. :

1.Drawing room dandy/Dying in gutter 2.Man of hard living/ man of thought.

[phoenixzeze]

Allow me to contradict the policy of this thread an share with you a poem for Edgar Alan Poe , it is called alone .......

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Edgar Allan Poe

[e joseph]

Anyway, I see that his effigy was given a proper send-off in Baltimore yesterday to make up for his apology for a funeral in 1849.

Oops. I think I was supposed to go to this. Mark your calendars properly people...learn from my mistakes.

[hdw]

Oops. I think I was supposed to go to this. Mark your calendars properly people...learn from my mistakes.

Then they held an all-night vigil. Sorry you missed it.

Harry

[Loki]

I really enjoy reading his stories. I've just read a few, I hope I'll soon have time to read more of them. I like Poe as he cared for the reader, he actually wanted to help the reader in giving no unnecessary detail and in writing short stories, or at least that's what he said.
It's hard to pick one, but my favourite is probably The Cask of Amontillado: I like every single word of the story, just amazing! But the other stories are really good, too.
I haven't enjoyed his three detectives stories, though.

[titania7]

Andrea, Edgard Allan Poe is one of my favorite authors, too! And, I would have to name "The Cast of Amontillado" as one of his most impressive and memorable stories.

Best,
~Alexis

"Experience as shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant." ~Edgar Allan Poe~