Complete Poems

Edgar Allan Poe was a great lyric poet in addition to being internationally acclaimed as the father of the detective Story and the modern gothic horror tale. Poe’s life was tragic and tormented and part of the popular fascination with him is his image as a tortured genius. But this view undermines the full extent of Poe’s brilliance and his enormous influence. The poet WH. Auden said, “No one in his time, put so much energy and insight into making his contemporary poets take their craft seriously.” Indeed, Poe had an affinity for verse. “With me, poetry has been not a purpose but a passion,” he wrote. His poetry is rich with musical phiases and sensuous, evocative imagery. Poe’s poems, which are all collected in this volume. are more personal than his prose. The themes of love, death, and despair which recur throughout reflect the anguish he suffered in his own troubled life. “Annabel Lee” is a haunting lament for his young wife, Virginia, who died of tuberculosis. “The Bells” is an eerie and melancholy meditation which recreates with brilliant musical language the hypnotic, funereal aura of ringing bells. “The Raven” is a comic tour de force in which the protagonist turns his strange visitor into a symbol of his own sorrow and loss. This collection makes clear why Poe’s best poems remain among the most popular and technically accomplished in the English language.