i must say, he was my favorite american author. discuss his works in this thread.

always have loved his work ... the style, the themes, the language!

here is an on-line site with alot of his works & more about him:

http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/poe.html

he was kool.....but his poetry i found medicore......not his epic poems, but just his poetry per se

was a great influence on my work

and it shows......sorry, jk.......shame on me.....but i couldn't resist

One of my favorite works of Edgar Allan Poe is "Berenice". I even tried to convince my professor at university that this story has a vampire theme but I failed And then I read in a book on literary vampires that it actually does have a vampiric theme and I was confused. I didn't know who was right: my proffesor or me?

what was the "vampiric" theme?

The teeth, and the death that wasn't really a death, the character of Berenice itself, when after she fell sick she's perceived by the story teller as a different person... I was a vampire freak at that time and I also saw vampires everywhere so I saw it in this story as well. The true is though that the story teller seems to be sick in his head so the prof. may have been right

hmm, i'll have to look into that

Yeah Poe was bad-ass, its been along time since I've read any of his shit, I think I'm gonna hit up the local library and check something out.

we read "the cask of montiado(sp?) earlier this year. that one was always one of my favorites, that and "the raven"

I read "The Raven" which was so awsome. There are some really beautiful lines in it but overall, the whole poem is awsome, the imagery is great. The Pit And The Pendulum's just a fucking great story as well.

He was the first to recognize that the reason the universe is dark is because the universe is not infinatley old. It was a big discovery because he helped solve Olber's Paradox in Astronomy! See, Poe's work was not just in literature, but in astronomy too.

The Conquerer Worm

Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedlight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At the bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama-oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!-it writhes!-with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out-out are the lights-out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

beautiful..i love it

a pioneer of the dectective story as well as "horror" ... the human (or inhuman) condition ... a major influence on Baudelaire & thus a rare influence of an american writer moving a european ... pre Dostoevsky / Kierkegaard "existentialism" is often cited in two short stories: Bartleby the Scribener by Melville, & The Man of the Crowd by Poe.
This is the first paragraph of that plus the link to the story (short)

IT WAS well said of a certain German book that "er lasst sich nicht lesen"- it does not permit itself to be read. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes- die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed. Now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes up a burden so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the grave. And thus the essence of all crime is undivulged.


http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/m_crowd.html

A Dream Within a Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
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?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave? are
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

A Dream Within A Dream is one of my favorite poems. Yet "Alone" may refer to my life and innerself and this is why it's the best to me.

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;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Exactly. Thank you, Jephree