Stephanie Jane reviewed Complete Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Hit and miss for me
3 stars
I tried listening to an Audible download of an Edgar Allan Poe poetry collection several years ago and almost completely failed to get into his writing. When this similar poetry collection was offered as the free daily ForgottenBooks download in September, I thought I should give Poe another chance. His work is so popular worldwide that there must be some essence I had missed.
I am pleased that I did get on better with written Poe poetry than spoken. Being able to revisit lines and ideas definitely helped me to understand and I enjoyed reading his classics such as The Raven and Annabel Lee. (I love Annabel Lee as a Sarah Jarosz song too and hadn't previously realised the origin of its lyrics.) Other poems which particularly spoke to me were The Coliseum and A Dream Within A Dream. However, I didn't like much of the included early poetry written …
I tried listening to an Audible download of an Edgar Allan Poe poetry collection several years ago and almost completely failed to get into his writing. When this similar poetry collection was offered as the free daily ForgottenBooks download in September, I thought I should give Poe another chance. His work is so popular worldwide that there must be some essence I had missed.
I am pleased that I did get on better with written Poe poetry than spoken. Being able to revisit lines and ideas definitely helped me to understand and I enjoyed reading his classics such as The Raven and Annabel Lee. (I love Annabel Lee as a Sarah Jarosz song too and hadn't previously realised the origin of its lyrics.) Other poems which particularly spoke to me were The Coliseum and A Dream Within A Dream. However, I didn't like much of the included early poetry written in Poe's youth, and the lengthy Al Aaraaf was lost on me! I passed on most of a play excerpt too - The Politian.
This collection ended with a lengthy essay, by Poe, discussing his poetic principles and quoting from other poets whom he admired. Despite its pompous tone, I did find the ideas interesting and preferred several of the quoted works here to Poe's own. I suppose he is simply not the poet for me!