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Cool! I’ve been covering Poe in my American Literature class the past few weeks. He’s really fucking good.
Teaching this course has made regret hating English class so much back in high school.
My class just made a short, black & white noir-styled graphic poem based on The Raven.
Bonus story: Edgar Allan Poe struggled financially for most of his early literary life. He wrote a poem titled “To Lenore” but couldn’t get anyone to buy it.
One day, Poe met Charles Dickens (somehow, not sure). Dickens was impressed with Poe’s work. Dickens was sad at the time because of a terrible accident that killed his family’s beloved pet. It regarded something ridiculous about going on vacation and leaving an opened paint can behind.
Anyway, Poe feigned empathy (since he was so used to death) by asking what animal it was, dog or cat? Dickens replied, “It was a raven.”
Boom. Poe had never thought about ravens before (according to his journals). He retitled “To Lenore” to “The Raven,” included the raven in the poem saying “Nevermore” a lot, and it was literally an overnight success.
(Unfortunately he wanted to get it out so quickly that he put it in the newspaper, which had no copyright laws. He missed out on a lot of money because some printer jerks used his poem. But he finally got the prestige he was looking for anyway.)
If you like Poe and run out of stuff to read, try Ambrose Bierce. He’s equally fantastic.