Edgar Allen Poe is best known as the author of horrifying short stories and as the father of detective fiction. But he was also a poet, and at least one of his poems, "The Raven", is regarded as a classic and appears in most anthologies of American poetry. At once comical and haunting, it describes a visit from a mysterious black bird who answers all questions with the same word: "Nevermore." When "The Raven" appeared in the New York Evening Mirror, and a few days later in The American Review, it was an instant sensation that finally brought Poe some measure of the fame he had long sought. It did little, though, for his wretched financial situation or for the depression and alcoholism that plagued him throughout his life. Although he was an American writing in English, Poe's literary reputation in the U.S. was never as high as it was in France, where Charles Baudelaire's translations of his work were, and continue to be, enormously admired.

A biography of Poe

The version of "The Raven" that appeared in the New York Evening Mirror

Did you know there this is a movement on some college campuses to have Poe expurgated from the American Canon of Literature (a shadowy organization at best) due to his aethistic of women dying?

I know this because I wrote a well-researched, well-written paper in defense of Poe, and was greated with a D+ on it. I'm no Peppermint Patty. That paper was a B paper, at worst.

However, many folks strongly believe that the attitude towards women in America can be traced to the works of folks like Poe. He was quoted as saying a dead woman was the perfect aesthetic end to his stories (his stories of course, being the pre-cursor to the horror genre). Many believe, therefore, that his "misogynistic" attitude is such that he should no longer be taught in schools, despite the fact that he invented the modern detective story, and wrote the most important essay on short story criticism ever.

Can you tell this bothers me?

I like Edgar Allan Poe! Doesn't mean I like drunkards who sleep with their 13 year old cousins! Though I like Jerry Lee Lewis, too. Hmmm.

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What do we all care about? Clear skin, clear skin, clear skin!
--Jennifer Love Hewitt

[This message has been edited by tomije (edited 02-02-2001).]