Poe isn’t my favorite author, but I bought his complete works by accident (can’t’ remember why) and so my rule is that everything on the shelf has to have been read. The book presents his works in three stages. His poems, his short fiction and essays and one long from essay and one short novel at the end of the book. I must say I was not a huge fan of his poetry (not that I am any authority) either from confirmation bias or some other mechanism his more popular poems like the Raven and the bells seem to stand head and shoulders over the other works, like a band that made that really good song once upon a time. That isn’t to say there wasn’t anything worthwhile in this section, here is one of my favorites.
“Deep in Earth Deep in earth my love is lying and I must weep alone.”
His short fiction is a completely different story. Known for his macabre and dark themes he does not fail to deliver many great narratives in this style. But much to my surprise there were many other types of stories that were equally entertaining. He wrote what some consider to be the first science fiction story, detective stories that were the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes and much more. He often satirizes his own profession (writer/ journalistic critic) while other times writing more Dicken-esque folky stories. I found his writing to be very flowery, sometimes overly so, other times just right even in a comedic sense. Some of my favorites from this section are Loss of breath, Four Beasts in One- The Homo-Cameleopard, King Pest, How to Write a Blackwood Article, The Devil in the Belfry, Instinct vs Reason - A Black Cat, A Descent into the Maelstrom, The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Oblong Box, The Imp of the Perverse, The Cask of Amontillado. His long form Essay called Eureka was really difficult for me to get through. It was actually fairly impressive as he pretty much intuits the beginnings of modern theories like the big bang, black holes, and many universes, but he does so in an overly flowery way. Talking about something that is very complicated in prose and poetic terms made it extremely hard to follow. One of my least favorite reads in the book. The novel at the end (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket) was very entertaining and a great way to end the book. As far as novels go, probably not the best as it seemed more like ~5 short stories tied into one string of events. A stowaway, a mutiny, a shipwreck, a seal hunting expedition, an exploration mission all in one story. On the whole the man was clearly a genius but did not seem as troubled as I was led to believe in 6th grade. He did marry his 13-year-old cousin, but when all you read is The Raven, Tell Tale heart, etc. you picture a manic person like Van Gogh running around cutting off ears and pulling out hair. His other literature seems to show someone with a deep appreciation for natural beauty, a love of science, but a respect for how it fits into history.