# Edgar Allan Poe



## Cervantes (Dec 26, 2007)

Poe is my favorite author. I posses a volume of his works - stories and poems - and I read it everyday. He is an essential literary genius. If anyone has any questions regarding Poe's work, feel free to ask me. I am in the process of writing/creating a critique on his stories. I consider myself a "Poe connoisseur." I know I am not an expert, but I just love his writing; my writing is heavily influenced on his. 

My favorite stories are "The Duc De L'Omelette," "The Cask of Amontillado," "King Pest," "Four Beasts in One: The Homo-Cameleopard," "Bon-Bon," "Never Bet the Devil Your Head," and "The Devil in the Belfry."


----------



## SteMcGrath (Jan 15, 2008)

I've only read a very short biography of him the other day. God- what a life!!! I look forward to reading him though. Just ploughing through Crime and Punishment. Then I might read some Poe. He's worth his mark then?


----------



## Bobber (Jan 17, 2008)

The Raven is the only work of his i really enjoy.
Fall In The House of Usher was simply too weird and slow paced for me, and The Pit and The Pendulum was ok.
He was definately a dark and disturbing person, good ol' Mr. Poe, but i can't say i enjoyed that many of his writings. I must say that i think The Raven might very well be one of the best poems ever written though.


----------



## IrishLad (Jan 20, 2008)

One of the most interesting people I've ever read about.  His life (and death) mirrored his writing.  I own his complete works and read it frequently.  "The Gold Bug" is a particular favorite of mine.  

He truly had command of the written word.  But then, I'm a sucker for tortured souls.


----------



## UnderToad (Feb 8, 2008)

Poe is the father of the mystery genre.  Sure hope you go back and broaden those horizons Bobber.


----------



## Damian_Rucci (Feb 13, 2008)

I have a volume oh his work as well. Amazing author, did you guys know he was buried alive? I thought it was a lie but they dug up his grave and found scratch marks on the inside of his coffin. I heard he was in an opium induced  coma.


----------



## Cervantes (Feb 13, 2008)

Damian_Rucci said:


> I have a volume oh his work as well. Amazing author, did you guys know he was buried alive? I thought it was a lie but they dug up his grave and found scratch marks on the inside of his coffin. I heard he was in an opium induced  coma.



Poe was buried alive? Where did you find this??? :shock:


----------



## Damian_Rucci (Feb 13, 2008)

Well my mom told me so I didn't believe her and I looked online. I forgot where though. Try wikipedia., they'll probably have it, or look on other sites.


----------



## Frabes (Feb 13, 2008)

> a lie but they dug up his grave and found scratch marks on the inside of his coffin. I heard he was in an opium induced  coma.


This is a myth. If you dig up anyone's grave from that age, it'll look like there's scratch marks on the inside of their coffin. The truth is, the wood shrinks and forms cracks on the inside that _look_ like scratch marks.

It's well-known that Poe did have a fear of being buried alive, but there's no way he actually was.


----------



## Damian_Rucci (Feb 14, 2008)

Frabes said:


> This is a myth. If you dig up anyone's grave from that age, it'll look like there's scratch marks on the inside of their coffin. The truth is, the wood shrinks and forms cracks on the inside that _look_ like scratch marks.
> 
> It's well-known that Poe did have a fear of being buried alive, but there's no way he actually was.


you positive about that? Back then there were large amounts of people being buried alive. Because there was no way really for the mortician to totally find out you were dead except listen if your heart wouldn't beat. Poe was a a hardcore opium addict, and mass amounts of opium can put you in a coma. He could of been in a coma and the mortician couldn't recognize if he was dead.


----------



## Frabes (Feb 14, 2008)

> Poe was a a hardcore opium addict



This is also a myth, perpetrated by Rufus Wilmot Griswold, Poe's rival who famously wrote an inflammatory obituary for Poe and later wrote a biography that was filled with lies and half-truths designed to make Poe seem like the lesser of the two writers. All of his claims were lated proved false, but since it's the only biography of Poe from that time period, it's still pretty popular.


> Back then there were large amounts of people being buried alive.



That's not true. There are very, very few cases of that actually happening. People have been pronounced dead and later found to be living many times (at the start of an autopsy, embalming, etc.), but it's almost impossible to be buried alive unintentionally for that same reason.

Poe did write a short story about being buried alive called 'Premature Burial', which is probably where this  myth comes from.


----------



## Artist (Feb 14, 2008)

Edgar Allan Poe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The cask of amontillado was one of his better works.


----------



## Dr. Malone (Feb 15, 2008)

Wikipedia is just shit other people post on there...it's not necessarily true.

And the buried alive thing is a myth. Did they even dig up his grave? Why?

I'm assuming you read or saw something about people being buried alive then coming back as vampires?  Very rare.  The urban legends would spread, until everyone claimed to know first hand of case.  Same thing with Consumption, and buried up bodies being "alive."


----------



## Mark Carter (Feb 15, 2008)

Oh Jeezee.   


 I just joined this forum today because I'm looking for a place to find some discussion on some gothic lit and I see this form has sections for Poe and Lovecraft. So, I rush directly to the Poe thread and instead of criticism I find a discussion of whether or not Poe was buried alive. That's just not encouraging. 


 Poe's life and death are well documented for anyone who takes the time to look. As for the question of could they distinguish a drug induced coma from death in Poe's day all I can say is read Poe himself. You'll be surprised how much medical knowledge was available back then. Poe himself was no dummy and put a fair amount of medical knowledge in his works. If his works seem to imply that people were often buried alive I'd guess that was just because that was his personal fear and he allowed it to skew his works. After all, he was witting horror in those tales and he needed to be creepy.


 I'm reading Poe's complete works right now and I only have about 1/8 left to go. Now that I've read most of it I find it interesting how little of his work is known. His reputation seems to be based mostly upon a handful of horror or detective tales when in fact they seem to make a small part of his total works. In reading him for a study of gothic art that I hope to write I was surprised at how few notes I've taken. The general public remembers him as a gothic/horror/detective writer but most of his work is irrelevant to my study. (I also find that his humor doesn't age well.) I wonder if he would be surprised at how we've chosen to remember him?


----------



## ArlenOrobono (Feb 15, 2008)

It's an easy mistake to make, I suppose.  If you google "Poe buried alive", you come up with countless links that say "Premature burial of Edgar Allan Poe".  Though, the only reason one would make the assumption he was buried alive is because they didn't actually click on the link .  

Poe's one of my favorite writers, absolutely genius.


----------



## Damian_Rucci (Feb 16, 2008)

Malone said:


> Wikipedia is just shit other people post on there...it's not necessarily true.
> 
> And the buried alive thing is a myth. Did they even dig up his grave? Why?
> 
> I'm assuming you read or saw something about people being buried alive then coming back as vampires?  Very rare.  The urban legends would spread, until everyone claimed to know first hand of case.  Same thing with Consumption, and buried up bodies being "alive."



just to clarify something wikipedia has extremely strict mods, so if you change something that is false it will be changed within 5 mins. Also, some college I forgot which, proved wikipedia is more effective to use than other websites.


----------



## seigfried007 (Mar 24, 2008)

I love Poe but I seem to have misplaced my collection of his works (which I've discovered was the much-abridged version). 

I recall loving his poetry though I've seen fairly little of it and never owned a collection of it (though I had the fortune of perusing a cousin's copy once). The Bells is probably my favorite, but Raven and Lenore certainly place.

I remember Usher and the Rue Morgue fondly. Amontillado was chilling (no pun intended). It's killing me not to remember where the heck I put that book so that I could spur my memory enough to recall the ones I _really_ liked....


----------



## Tiamat (Mar 31, 2008)

I had to leave my Poe book back in the states when I moved.  I miss it.  I particularly like Cask of Amontillado, Pit and the Pendulum, The Black Cat, The Imp of the Perverse, and most all of his poems.

Didn't much care for The Fall of the House of Usher, though.  Or Masque of the Red Death.


----------



## Darn Dame (Apr 1, 2008)

*No one?*

No one has mentioned the Tell Tale Heart. I loved that story!


----------



## Tiamat (Apr 1, 2008)

Wow, I completely forgot about that!  I want my book back... :cry:


----------



## nacreous (Apr 23, 2008)

Long live Edgar Poe.
The master of horror...  The inventor of science fiction... and the murder mystery.  Dazzling romantic poet.  Editor, critic, and visionary.  He was the finest American author of his time, and for many many years to come.  Countless others owe their winning styles to him.  Lovecraft idolized him, and even Steven King recognizes Poe's predominance.  Incidentally, about this buried alive thing... Yes, Poe was scared of premature burial.  It often happened in Philly back then.  I am afraid to say that even to this day, my fine neighbors around me manage to overcome another helpless victim,  knocking him over the head with a shovel usually, before burying him in the neighbor's yard.  Yes, a fine city this.  
Poe did his best work here, though.  He never wrote a word of horror before he moved here to the sick city.  Once he came here with his young cousin-wife and her mother, to live on Fairmount avenue, it was then that his sensitive nature began to pick up on the horror all around him.  It is not difficult to feel the horror here.  All one must do is simply close your mind for a moment, and you will hear it as well.
I worked at the Edgar Poe national historical site here for awhile. The house on 7th street, where he wrote The Black Cat and The Cask..., still stands to this day, preserved and yet amazingly decrepit.  It is a great trip, a free museum, open every day of the week.  you are free to wonder and wander as you will, just dont touch the walls, folks.  trust me, dont touch the walls.
True devotes of Poe do not refer to his middle name.  Poe hated the man named Allen.  Don't honor that man's name.  
I have written much about Poe as well, OP, and I hope you are still around on this site.  we may be able to discuss Poe at greater length.  I could write about him for hours.  I have read two biographies of him, and of course, everything he ever wrote.  his articles on writing horror poems are required reading for any horror writer.  We should continue this soon... there is much to be said on Poe, much that we can still learn from.  Perhaps I will write more about him.
here's to the darkness.


----------



## papertears (Apr 24, 2008)

Malone said:


> Wikipedia is just shit other people post on there...it's not necessarily true.



[ot]
I apologize massively for getting OT, but I have to speak up here.  I spend several hours a week double checking, correcting, finding citations, and removing incorrect "shit other people post" on Wikipedia along with several other hundreds (perhaps thousands) of selected volunteers.  It gets vandalized, but so do other sites.   Its not as bad as the rumors, though.  The greater problem is that its incomplete.  
Nothing personal, Malone.  I suppose my hours spent there have made me somewhat defensive.
[/ot]

Back to Poe.  He was wicked with rhythm and rhyme in his poetry.  Murder mysteries are hard for me to get into, but anyone that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spoke so highly of piques my attention.  I read one when I was quite a bit younger and really should read more now.

Though people attribute a lot of his brilliance to his many hardships, I think he must have been born with talent too.  The unfortunate experiences in his life certainly provided inspiration, but his pen did not bleed genius just because of tragedy.  My teachers focused so heavily on his poetry that I never really knew how diverse he was as a writer until I did my own research.  

I've been meaning to find some of his satires for years.   I'm very curious about his sense of humor and how he viewed society or the other subjects his satires were about.  Has anyone read his satirical works?

~pt


----------



## Lemex (Jun 28, 2008)

I love Poe, he is one of my writing heros.
His poem 'The Raven' I have loved in my childhood.


----------



## SevenWritez (Jul 4, 2008)

Can't say I've ever enjoyed Poe. I suppose I'll give him another run down the road.


----------



## Linton Robinson (Jul 5, 2008)

There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge,
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters,
In a way to make people of common-sense damn metres,
Who has written some things quite the best of their kind,
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind,

James Russell Lowell


----------



## edropus (Jul 5, 2008)

Poe's collected works have been sitting in my bathroom for about a year; it's a solid 1000 pages at least and doesn't include his poetry.  I believe I've read the whole thing by now, but might have skipped a story or two.

I never felt that horror was his strong point; his comedy is by far my favorite.  "The Spectacles" and "X-ing a paragrab" are great, although my favorite of all Poe's work, hands-down, is "How to write a Blackwood Article/A Predicament".

Lovecraft, for me, beats Poe hands down when it comes to horror.  I just don't get that rushing panic feeling from Poe's stories that I feel I should when reading them, considering the character's situations.  That being said, you could definitely argue that Lovecraft wouldn't ever have existed without Poe.


----------



## lilacstarflower (Jul 5, 2008)

> nacreous said:
> 
> 
> > Long live Edgar Poe.
> ...


----------



## Linton Robinson (Jul 5, 2008)

Not by many.   Actually the more common names like Welles and Verne generally get the nod.

Not many SF fans would consider anything by Poe or Shelly to be science fiction at all.


Personally, I think Twain had more to do with the creation of the detective fiction than Poe.  Puddinhead Wilson was a crime-solver ushing fingerprints and stuff.


----------



## moderan (Jul 5, 2008)

Brian Aldiss in his book on the history of sf (Trillion Year Spree) made a case for Cyrano de Bergerac as the father of science fiction, though his two books that are cited are satire (_The Other World: The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon_ (1657) and _The Comical History of the States and the Empires of the Sun_" (incomplete at his death).
Frankenstein _is_ considered by many to be sf, though not in the modern tradition_-_that nod goes to Verne and Wells. Good point about Twain...however Voltaire's _Zadig _predates that (1748 )


----------



## Linton Robinson (Jul 10, 2008)

Interesting post.

But would Gulliver's Travel's qualify?  That was like 1720 or something. For that matter, how about Butler's Erewhon?  Though I think that was much later


----------



## Kast13 (Jul 11, 2008)

I have the complete works of Poe back in Canada, I considered bringing it here, but It would have used up 1/4 of my suitcase.  I really love Poe 'The Cask' was one the stories that really made me love writing and reading.


----------



## moderan (Jul 11, 2008)

Butler's Erewhon was published in 1872...the Swift in 1726, amended in 1735. For my money, they should both be included in the canon. I include Frankenstein also. Pym is marginal, but why not? Certainly it influenced At The Mountains of Madness, which is closer to the spirit of sf, and that in turn likely influenced Campbell's Who Goes There?, which is certainly science fiction. It depends on whose opinions you want to subscribe to...Trillion Year Spree is a good read even if you're not into sf, as Aldiss is an extremely good writer. The Swedish writer Sam Lundwall has also published histories of sf which are very good. Here's a discussion that mentions some other originators, such as Lucian of Samosata and Arioso: sf origins...others may consider the Bible or even the Epic of Gilgamesh as the progenitors, though those are more fantasy-oriented in my opinion.
As far as detective fiction, the Gold Bug is generally considered to be the first example of "modern" detective work. Here's a discussion of the origins of detective fiction:classic crime fiction...in which Zadig is mentioned, as well as the memoirs of EF Vidocq, who was the head of the French Surete. No mention of Puddnhead though. Surely that's an oversight.


----------

