The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe [Paperback]

Edgar Allan Poe (Author), Jay Parini (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1996

A unique, inexpensive paperback edition devoted exclusively to the author's haunting poetry contains a new introduction by a literary scholar and the complete verse of the ever-popular storyteller.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Signet Classics (November 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451526406
• ISBN-13: 978-0451526403
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,573,641 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grief be upon those who do not buy this book., April 26, 2000

By 

Dr. Big Balls (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe (Paperback)

From the sorrowful and melancholic lines of "Ulalume" to the exclamatory rhymes of "The Bells," this thin volume has it all. (Well, not exactly all, for this book does not have some of the lesser known poems of Poe such as "To Isadore," "A Paean," and "An Enigma" - but it is nonetheless a great book to have.)

For big Poe fans, especially, this is true. There are so many anthologies which carry about two or three of his poems, but it is not easy to find one that is solely dedicated to his complete poetry. Usually, it is his short stories that attract publishers' attention.

Since Poe's poetry is so beautifully-written and delightful to recite, it's good to have a book on which you could look at whenever you forget a Poe poem, or simply want to read or reread one.

Edgar Allan Poe never left behind as big a bulk of literature as Charles Dickens or Henry James. In fact, compared to many other classic writers, he didn't leave much behind. So, indeed, what little he left can all be contained in within a section of a bookshelf. So why not own his work?

Poe was an excellent literary thinker, whose imagination will never be rivaled. And to those who enjoy good poetry, this book must be in within your bookshelves.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!, May 23, 2008

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe (Paperback)

Most people know that Edgar Allen Poe wrote poetry. Of course, you'd be hard-pressed to make them quote a line that doesn't involve ravens.

Well, it's time for some poetry homework -- "The Raven" is neither Poe's most beautiful nor his most striking poem. That is reserved for other, more obscure works in Poe's "Complete Poetry" -- and while one might expect the ghostly or macabre to be all throughout his work, it's also filled with transcendent beauty, wistfulness, and some truly amazing wordwork.

Over his lifetime, Poe tried out many styles -- there are sonnets, short hymns, long rambling odes written in dramatic, vaguely Shakespearean style ("O, human love! thou spirit given/On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!"), acrostics, little exercises in self-reflection, a lyrical song or two, and some haunting stories rendered in verse like the bittersweet "Annabel Lee."

And the content of these poems is just as diverse. Some of them are distinctly dark -- sunken cities, tolling bells, haunted palaces, thoughts on the lingering spirits of the dead, abandoned valleys, and loved ones that have been stolen away by death (" I pray to God that she may lie/For ever with unopened eye/While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!"). And yes, it has the one about a midnight dreary, and a creepy raven with eyes like "a demon's that is dreaming."

And there are a lot of moments of beauty -- lush descriptions of nature, bittersweet dreams, love for a beautiful girl, and elfin odes to those who "put out the star-light/With the breath from their pale faces/About twelve by the moon-dial..." But in many of these, Poe manages to add a melancholy atmosphere -- just look at "Bridal Ballad," whose narrator assures us that she is happy, but who is haunted by the "dead who is forsaken," her former lover.

Yeah, Poe's verse tends to be about as cheerful as his best known fiction, and often with some of the same preoccupations. He was a little less successful in verse at times, as occasionally you get some very strained verse schemes, like the terribly awkward "Eulalie" ("Now Doubt - now Pain/Come never again/For her soul gives me sigh for sigh").

But like his stories, Poe's poems are spun out of exquisite, dreamlike words that can sometimes evolve into nightmares. This guy could evoke everything from ghosts to fairy-tales, brides to wormlike horrors. Even the more sentimental moments have a dark edge ("Oh, may her sleep/As it is lasting, so be deep!/Soft may the worms about her creep!"). And he also wraps his verse in some truly beautiful natural metaphors -- ancient forests, flowers, misty moons, and many other beautiful touches.

And Poe's poetry even allows a window into his own mind at times, most painfully expressed as "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..." and the "mystery which binds me still."

For anyone who can appreciate his exquisite use of words, the "Complete Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe" is a must-read -- full of dark, meditative little gems and exquisite language.

4.0 out of 5 stars To "Know" Beauty One Must Also "Reach" For It, January 23, 2011

By 

Martin Asiner "Adjunct College Instructor" (Jersey City, NJ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: THE POETIC PRINCIPLE (Kindle Edition)

Edgar Allan Poe wrote "The Poetic Principle" as a series of lectures that were not published until shortly after his death in 1849. In it, he clarifies various stands he had earlier taken on the genesis of his writing. He begins by repeating a basic tenet taken from his "The Philosophy of Composition:" "I hold that a long poem does not exist." Further, the term "a long poem" is "simply a flat contradiction in terms."

What is critical for the poet is that his poem must "elevate" the soul, by which he sees a mathematically determined ratio that uses this elevation to fix its value. Though elevation must surely lead to excitement, it does not follow that this excitement can be sustained indefinitely. In his earlier essay, Poe had written that no poem ought to be so extended in length that one needs more than thirty minutes to finish. In "The Poetic Principle," he reasserts that the longer the poem, the more rapidly the reader will lose interest. For epic poems like Paradise Lost, Poe denies its existence as a single unified work. Rather, he terms such lengthy poems as "a series of minor poems," the reading of which inevitably leads to "a constant alteration of excitement and depression," which to Poe is a serious defect. When a reader faces the daunting prospect of maintaining interest while plowing through a long poem, Poe offers the helpful suggestion that this reader might try reading it out of sequence, thus keeping focused on that one part. Poe mentions the Iliad as an example of an epic poem that is less a single unified work than it is a series of lyrics. From the Iliad, he contemplates the fate of the epic of his era. His conclusion is pessimistic: "But the day of these artistic anomalies is over." Further, he considers it most unlikely that any future "very long poem will ever be popular again." Poe expresses amazement that anyone would equate poetic length with poetic merit.

As an alternative to sheer bulk, Poe suggests that a poem's worth might be better judged more by "the impression it makes--by the effect it produces." Poe shows little respect for poets whose primary contribution to verse is the perseverance required to grind out a poem of interminable length. Oddly enough, he adds that the reverse is not true: "It is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism." For Poe, the epigram was a painful reminder of all that was stultifying of what he deemed the heavy-handed Age of Reason. He quotes Shelley as one who had written verse with such undue brevity.

While Poe does not lament the passing of the "epic mania" from the public consciousness, he is concerned over a new poetic evil--"the heresies of the Didactic." The term "didactic" refers to the use of teaching or moral instruction to make a point. Poe was plainly alarmed at what he saw as a dangerous trend in poetic composition. Many of his contemporaries envisioned "the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth." Poe, rather, held that whatever place Truth took in poetry, there were several other far more important barometers of poetic excellence. He sorrowfully admits that "We Americans especially have patronized this happy idea." To base a poem's evaluation primarily on its alleged "Truth," is to deny the intrinsic worth of the poem itself. Poe does not mean that there is no place for a reduced presence of poetic truth. His objection lies with poets who insist on placing truth front and center, "wreathing her in gems and flowers." Truth, instead, he notes, must be taken down a peg or two, relegating it to "severity rather than efflorescence of language." The poet truth-teller must weave his tapestry of truth into a "simple, precise terse" structure. Such a poet must be "cool, calm, unimpassioned." Those of his contemporaries who failed to acknowledge this were guilty of "attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth."

Poe asserts that it is the bounden duty of all poets to engage in a ceaseless struggle to apprehend the Beautiful in life and to record that struggle in their verse. As a preliminary step, Poe finds it necessary to divide "the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious distinctions." The first is the realm of the Pure Intellect, which concerns itself with the much abused notion of literal Truth. The second is Taste, which "informs us of the Beautiful." The third is the Moral Sense, which is "regardful of Duty."

Poe's apprehension of the Beautiful is not limited merely in acknowledging their existence. For a poet to write of Things Beautiful may be doing no more than penning a shopping list of them: "He who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm, or with however vivid a truth of description, of the sights and sounds, and odors, and colors and sentiments....he, I say, has yet faded to prove his divine title." Beauty, for Poe, is a reaching outward and upward for all that is immortal in man: "It is the desire of the moth for the star." Thus, appreciation of the Beautiful must be wedded to "a wild effort to reach the Beauty above."

This striving for Beauty is not limited to poetry. Poe notes that the Poetic Sentiment may include the sister arts of painting, sculpture, architecture, dance, and music. Of these allied arts, only music approaches poetry in the former's usage of rhythm, meter, and rhyme. Those who are fortunate enough to be moved by words to reach the heights of supernal beauty may be equally moved by the notes of an earthly harp: "There can be little doubt that in the union of Poetry with Music in its popular sense, we shall find the widest field for the Poetic development."

Poe now presents his often-quoted definition of poetry: "I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste." For Poe, there is only a peripheral relation of Intellect and Conscience with poetry, and even less with Duty or Truth. Only the taste of the poet can permit the reader to experience "that pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense." Such pleasure derives from the contemplation of Beauty, which Poe now acknowledges as "the province of the poem." He repeats his earlier belief that though the contemplation of Beauty must reside as the inner core of poetic necessity, there is yet a place, however marginal, for passion, duty, or even truth: "It by no means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced into a poem." His caveat is that "the true artist will always contrive to tone them done in proper subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real essence of the poem."

Poe spends the remainder of his essay considering to what extent various poets embody the tenets of his Poetic Sentiment. He begins with an excerpt from Longfellow's "Waif." He lauds Longfellow for the "delicacy of expression" and "for the graceful insouciance of its meter." Poe notes that such gracefulness does not happen by mere happenstance. Only those who, like Longfellow, possess natural talent may aspire to write so fluidly. Yet, though Poe praises Longfellow, he still severely rebukes him as one who "must necessarily upon many occasions be simply silly, or stupid."

William Cullen Bryant is the second poet that Poe considers. Poe quotes Bryant's "June" as an example of a poem whose rhythmical flow is both voluptuous and melodious, both of which combine to produce an intense melancholy that leads to a "pleasurable sadness." The point that Poe is making is to connect Bryant's preoccupation with sadness as the "highest manifestation of true Beauty" with the corresponding manifestation of his own "The Raven."

Next, Poe analyzes several stanzas from Edward Coate Pinckney's "The Health." Poe sees "The Health" as tainted however brilliant and spirited it otherwise may be. This "taint" Poe ascribes to Pinckney's misfortune both as having been born too far south to suit the whims of a cabal of partisan editors and to his excessive use of hyperbole which is at odds with his enthusiasm.

Poe turns to the "Melodies" of Thomas Moore, as one whose powers to induce fancy have induced readers to assume mistakenly that fancy is all that there is to the man. Poe defends Moore as a poet who has both imagination and fancy to him. As part of his defense, Poe quotes one line from Moore, but strangely regrets that he cannot remember any other lines.

The concept of fancy is noted again, this time in the "Fair Ines" of Thomas Hood. Poe admits that Hood's verse in these lines "had always for me an inexpressible charm." Poe quotes a second poem by Hood, "The Haunted House," which he terms "one of the truest poems ever written." He praises it highly in terms of its artistry, its theme, and its execution. However, just as Poe undercut his own defense of Moore, so does he do with Hood. After granting that "The Haunted House" is powerfully ideal and imaginative," Poe immediately adds that he regrets "that its length renders it unsuitable for the purposes of this lecture." Poe now follows with a lengthy excerpt from Hood's "Bridge of Sighs," a poem that Poe sees its vigor as "no less remarkable than its pathos." He praises its versification as "admirably adapted to the wild insanity which is the thesis of the poem."

Byron is next as Poe quotes from "Stanzas to Augusta." In this poem, Byron's hero has suffered greatly but still has not lost faith in his beloved. It is this unfaltering belief in the primacy of love that Poe lauds: "It is the soul-searching idea that no man can consider himself entitled to... Read more ›