Product Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on January 1, 2002. The length of the article is 1249 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Thomas A. Underwood: Allen Tate: Orphan of the South.
Author: John L Brown
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2002
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 76Issue: 1Page: 161(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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Product Description
This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Foundation for Cultural Review on September 1, 2001. The length of the article is 5766 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The violence of Allen Tate.(writer)
Author: David Yezzi
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2001
Publisher: Foundation for Cultural Review
Volume: 20Issue: 1Page: 66

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Product Description
A unique, inexpensive paperback edition devoted exclusively to the author's haunting poetry contains a new introduction by a literary scholar and the complete verse of the ever-popular storyteller. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

No product
The book was discontinued but I was promptly notified and refunded. I have no complaints with the seller.

gorgeous sentences
i'm not a poem buff but picked this one up in hopes to inspire my artistic side. even with no experience i can tell that poe is a master, no doubt. each poem i read i start to drift off into a fantasy world, and it takes effort to come back to the words themselves! hard to believe they're just words sometimes.

What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
Most people know that Edgar Allen Poe wrote poetry. Of course, you'd be hard-pressed to make them quote a line that doesn't involve ravens.

Well, it's time for some poetry homework -- "The Raven" is neither Poe's most beautiful nor his most striking poem. That is reserved for other, more obscure works in Poe's "Complete Poetry" -- and while one might expect the ghostly or macabre to be all throughout his work, it's also filled with transcendent beauty, wistfulness, and some truly amazing wordwork.

Over his lifetime, Poe tried out many styles -- there are sonnets, short hymns, long rambling odes written in dramatic, vaguely Shakespearean style ("O, human love! thou spirit given/On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!"), acrostics, little exercises in self-reflection, a lyrical song or two, and some haunting stories rendered in verse like the bittersweet "Annabel Lee."

And the content of these poems is just as diverse. Some of them are distinctly dark --sunken cities, tolling bells, haunted palaces, thoughts on the lingering spirits of the dead, abandoned valleys, and loved ones that have been stolen away by death (" I pray to God that she may lie/For ever with unopened eye/While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!"). And yes, it has the one about a midnight dreary, and a creepy raven with eyes like "a demon's that is dreaming."

And there are a lot of moments of beauty -- lush descriptions of nature, bittersweet dreams, love for a beautiful girl, and elfin odes to those who "put out the star-light/With the breath from their pale faces/About twelve by the moon-dial..." But in many of these, Poe manages to add a melancholy atmosphere -- just look at "Bridal Ballad," whose narrator assures us that she is happy, but who is haunted by the "dead who is forsaken," her former lover.

Yeah, Poe's verse tends to be about as cheerful as his best known fiction, and often with some of the same preoccupations. He was a little less successful in verse at times, as occasionally you get some very strained verse schemes, like the terribly awkward "Eulalie" ("Now Doubt - now Pain/Come never again/For her soul gives me sigh for sigh").

But like his stories, Poe's poems are spun out of exquisite, dreamlike words that can sometimes evolve into nightmares. This guy could evoke everything from ghosts to fairy-tales, brides to wormlike horrors. Even the more sentimental moments have a dark edge ("Oh, may her sleep/As it is lasting, so be deep!/Soft may the worms about her creep!"). And he also wraps his verse in some truly beautiful natural metaphors -- ancient forests, flowers, misty moons, and many other beautiful touches.

And Poe's poetry even allows a window into his own mind at times, most painfully expressed as "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..." and the "mystery which binds me still."

For anyone who can appreciate his exquisite use of words, the "Complete Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe" is a must-read -- full of dark, meditative little gems and exquisite language.

Grief be upon those who do not buy this book.
From the sorrowful and melancholic lines of "Ulalume" to the exclamatory rhymes of "The Bells," this thin volume has it all. (Well, not exactly all, for this book does not have some of the lesser known poems of Poe such as "To Isadore," "A Paean," and"An Enigma" - but it is nonetheless a great book to have.)

Forbig Poe fans, especially, this is true. There are so many anthologies whichcarry about two or three of his poems, but it is not easy to find one thatis solely dedicated to his complete poetry. Usually, it is his shortstories that attract publishers' attention.

Since Poe's poetry is sobeautifully-written and delightful to recite, it's good to have a book onwhich you could look at whenever you forget a Poe poem, or simply want toread or reread one.

Edgar Allan Poe never left behind as big a bulk ofliterature as Charles Dickens or Henry James. In fact, compared to manyother classic writers, he didn't leave much behind. So, indeed, what littlehe left can all be contained in within a section of a bookshelf. So why notown his work?

Poe was an excellent literary thinker, whose imaginationwill never be rivaled. And to those who enjoy good poetry, this book mustbe in within your bookshelves. ... Read more