"Once upon a midnight dreary." I love Poe. How could anyone not? I loved it so much, I memorized it! I've forgotten most of it since then, but it compelled me to take it to heart. Dark yet enchanting, Poe has a way of drawing the reader it. It lacks the gore of modern horror and suspense but is much more effective and endearing. This is a schoolyard classic, and if you haven't read it you are missing out. Pick this up now and read it! I can still hear the words in my head being spoken in a spooky manner. This is simply wonderful!

Sensibilidad en estado puro. Oscuro y melancólico como sólo Poe puede ser. Piel de gallina por el talento y la altísima sensibilidad. Inspiración siempre.

Not the first time I dislike a book with high ratings on goodreads (The Fault in our Stars for instance), and surely not the first time I find myself unimpressed by an acclaimed and famous classical author (Franz Kafka for example). But I really believed I'd appreciate Poe's work more since it is anchored in a nineteenth century macabre atmosphere and since he led a dandy life, much like my beloved Baudelaire. However, with the exception of The Raven and Anabel Lee that undisputably deserve a five-star rating, his poems were too.. average, dull and repetitive. I didn't enjoy his poetry and turning page after page felt more and more like a burden to my rampant apathy.

I am going to read Poe's collection of short stories in the hopes that it will ameliorate my initial opinion concerning the author.

Ho avuto il mio primo approccio a Poe con le sue piccole novelle thriller, ma devo ammettere che ho scoperto la sua vera essenza nella sua poetica: la malinconia e profonda tristezza, l’amore sofferente di cui ho tanto sentito parlare.
Sono state tante le poesie che mi hanno colpito e ho adorato soprattutto la doppia interpretazione di ogni poesia, penso che se le avessi lette solo in italiano o solo in inglese non avrebbero avuto lo stesso effetto. Interessante anche la loro presentazione nell’appendice

Favourite lines
(This isn't going to be short..)

A Dream

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed—
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

A Dream Within a Dream

You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream:
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?

"In Youth I Have Known One"

Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
A passionate light such for his spirit was fit—
And yet that spirit knew—not in the hour
Of its own fervor—what had o'er it power.

(...)
Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

Spirits of the Dead

Thy soul shall find itself alone
'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.

"The Happiest Day, the Happiest Hour"

Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween
But they have vanished long, alas!
The visions of my youth have been—
But let them pass.

And pride, what have I now with thee?
Another brow may ev'n inherit
The venom thou hast poured on me—
Be still my spirit!

(...)

For on its wing was dark alloy
And as it fluttered—fell
An essence—powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well.

Al Aaraaf

O Death! from eye of God upon that star:
Sweet was that error—sweeter still that death—
Sweet was that error—even with us the breath
Of Science dims the mirror of our joy—
To them 'twere the Simoom, and would destroy—
For what (to them) availeth it to know
That Truth is Falsehood—or that Bliss is Woe?
Sweet was their death—with them to die was rife
With the last ecstasy of satiate life—
Beyond that death no immortality—
But sleep that pondereth and is not "to be"!—
And there—oh! may my weary spirit dwell—
Apart from Heaven's Eternity—and yet how far from Hell!

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—

To ——

That years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute:—

The Sleeper

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lills upon the wave;

(...)
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.

To Frances S. Osgood

Thou wouldst be loved?—then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not!
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love—a simple duty.

Sonnet — Silence

There are some qualities—some incorporate things,
That have a double life, which thus is made
A type of that twin entity which springs
From matter and light, envinced in solid and shade.
There is twofold Silence—sea and shore—
Body and soul.

A Valentine

This is the one that's a riddle, and has a name hidden in it

To Helen

Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight --
Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow)
That bade me pause before that garden-gate
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,
Save only thee and me -- O Heaven! O God!
How my heart beats in coupling those two words! --
Save only thee and me. I paused, I looked,
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)
The pearly lustre of the moon went out:
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses' odors
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All, all expired save thee -- save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes,
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes:
I saw but them -- they were the world to me:
I saw but them, saw only them for hours,
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres;
How dark a woe, yet how sublime a hope;
How silently serene a sea of pride;
How daring an ambition; yet how deep,
How fathomless a capacity for love!

The Bells

Hear the tolling of the bells—
                 Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
        In the silence of the night,
        How we shiver with affright
  At the melancholy menace of their tone!
        For every sound that floats
        From the rust within their throats
                 Is a groan.
(...)
To the throbbing of the bells—
          Of the bells, bells, bells—
            To the sobbing of the bells;
          Keeping time, time, time,
            As he knells, knells, knells,
          In a happy Runic rhyme,
            To the rolling of the bells—
          Of the bells, bells, bells—
            To the tolling of the bells,
      Of the bells, bells, bells, bells—
              Bells, bells, bells—
  To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Edgar Allan Poe was my faithful companion back in 1990s. How many of his stories I devoured again and again! "The Tell-Tale Heart" still reverberates in my memory!

This set of poems in a lovely, illustrated edition by Peter Pauper contains haunting verse - macabre and spooky. 'The Raven' remains one of my favorite poems ever, and there are other classics such as 'A Dream Within A Dream' (Which also is one of my favorite songs) and Annabel Lee. One for the collector in you, this is a delight.

Though I love the Raven, the other poems and the play piece felt very experimental/convoluted. While evocative, I thought they did not live up to his other works.

Me he reconciliado con Poe gracias a estos poemas.
El Ciervo sobresale, pero Annabell Lee es bellísimo.

And my soul, shall be lifted — nevermore

Ah I loved this poem

Published in January, 1845,"The Raven", by Edgar Allan Poe, is a poem, a lament, telling of loss, isolation, and loneliness. The opening lines identify the speaker as someone who feels tired and weak but is still awake in the middle of a gloomy night. He passes the time by reading a strange book of ancient knowledge. Poe uses alliteration to convey the effect of unsteadiness. This line also sets the poem's rhythmical pattern and provides the first example of the use of internal rhyme in "dreary" and "weary."

The speaker tells of becoming more tired and beginning to doze but being wakened by a sound that he assumes is a quiet knock. Internal rhymes of "napping," "tapping," and "rapping" along with repetition of these last two words, create a musical effect. This effect is also produced by alliteration of n. These sound devices and the steady rhythm of these lines are almost hypnotic. The Raven speaks only one word: “nevermore.” This word punctuates the poem. Each time the speaker asks a question, the strange bird repeats the word “nevermore”.


Near the end of this poem, when the fear of the poem's speaker has reached a level of near hysteria, he shouts "Leave my loneliness unbroken!" In one sense, this could just be an emotional outburst, like the lines that lead up to it, but the interesting thing about this particular line is that the speaker, in his terror, is for once reflecting upon himself. This, and the line's location at the climax of the poem, indicates to us that "my loneliness" is not just another expression that he shrieks: it is the key, the secret that he has been trying to guard all along. Throughout the poem, we see the speaker being drawn out of his isolation by the raven and the one word that it speaks. Once the bird enters his chambers, nothing really changes in the scene except the speaker's attitude, which grows increasingly nervous.


 It is unknown how long Poe worked on "The Raven"; speculation ranges from a single day to ten years.

“In part due to its dual printing, "The Raven" made Edgar Allan Poe a household name almost immediately and turned Poe into a national celebrity. Readers began to identify poem with poet, earning Poe the nickname "The Raven". The poem was soon widely reprinted, imitated, and parodied. Though it made Poe popular in his day, it did not bring him significant financial success. As he later lamented, ‘have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life – except in hope, which is by no means bankable.’

“The New World said, "Everyone reads the Poem and praises it ... justly, we think, for it seems to us full of originality and power." The Pennsylvania Inquirer reprinted it with the heading "A Beautiful Poem". Elizabeth Barrett wrote to Poe, "Your 'Raven' has produced a sensation, a fit o' 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 'Nevermore'."

 “Poe's popularity resulted in invitations to recite "The Raven" and to lecture – in public and at private social gatherings. At one literary salon, a guest noted, "to hear [Poe] repeat the Raven ... is an event in one's life." It was recalled by someone who experienced it, "He would turn down the lamps till the room was almost dark, then standing in the center of the apartment he would recite ... in the most melodious of voices ... So marvelus was his power as a reader that the auditors would be afraid to draw breath lest the enchanted spell be broken.

“‘The Raven’ has influenced many modern works, including Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in 1955, Bernard Malamud's "The Jewbird" in 1963 and Ray Bradbury's "The Parrot Who Knew Papa" in 1976. The poem is additionally referenced throughout popular culture in films, television, music and more.”
WIKI

"And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee."

When it comes to poetry, I haven't read anything so profound, filled with raw emotions and macabre, bizarre imagery in a long time. At his peak creative genius, Edgar Allan Poe, using poetry, managed to convey a vast array of human emotions, starting with love, despair, depression, etc. marked with a deep sense of beauty. Probably his most famous pieces of poetry, "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven" are prime examples of aforementioned feelings. His love poems are always about lost love, that died, passed away, and by Fate wasn't meant to be. Anyone who knows what he had went through in his personal life would understand where all those feelings came from. All in all, Poe's poetry will always stand as a monument to his genius.

poe's writing is so incredible, both his poems and his short stories. i loved so many poems in this collection, but i'll always have a special place in my heart for "the raven" ♡