-:- Poe Reading List by Katharena -:-

Edgar Allan Poe: Main Page | an Impressive Edgar Allan Poe Poetry Sampler | Thought Provoking Quotes by Poe | Poe's Sumptuous Beauty and Suggestiveness | Edgar Allan Poe : mysterious, dreamlike, and often macabre forces | Poe's Later Life and Mature Works | Edgar Allan Poe : Books and Reviews | Poe had an air of Objectivity and Spontaneity | Poe Admired Originality | Edgar Allan Poe Concerned with Terror and Sadness | Poe's Puzzle a Secret Nevermore | Katharena's Essential Poe, for the Morbidly Curious

• Meet Edgar Allan Poe
• Poetic Styles
• 100 Poems of Love
• Quotes by Poets
• Meet all the Poets
• I can't write Poetry!
• Publish Your Poetry!

On the other side, Edgar Allan Poe is conspicuous for a close observation of minute details, as in the long narratives and in many of the descriptions that introduce the tales or constitute their settings. Closely connected with this is his power of ratiocination. He prided himself on his logic and carefully handled this real accomplishment so as to impress the public with his possessing still more of it than he had; hence the would-be feats of thought reading, problem unravelling, and cryptography that he attributed to his Legrand and Dupin. This suggested to him the analytical tales, which created the detective story, and his science fiction tales.

The same duality is evinced in his art. He was capable of writing angelic or weird poetry, with a supreme sense of rhythm and word appeal, or prose of sumptuous beauty and suggestiveness, with the apparent abandon of compelling inspiration; yet he would write down a problem of morbid psychology or the outlines of an unrelenting plot in a hard and dry style. In Poe's masterpieces the double contents of his temper, of his mind, and of his art are fused into a oneness of tone, structure, and movement, the more effective, perhaps, as it is compounded of various elements.