| Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is the poet of the night world, of the inexplicable, the uncanny. His poems do not analyse, they do not explain: they exist with the intensity of hallucinations. In the breathtakingly seductive beauty of To Helen Like those Nican barks of yore, / that gently oer a perfumed sea..., or the claustrophobic horror of The Raven, Poe offers haunting alternative realities, as strange and strangely familiar as our dreams and nightmares. Yet Poe was more than a poet of American gothic. He was translated by Baudelaire and Mallarm, becoming a key figure in French Symbolism, he was an influential critic. This edition contains all Poes poetry and his three most important essays. With an introduction by the poet C.H. Sisson, it is an indispensable collection of the work of one of the nineteenth centurys most compelling and original poets. |
