Spirits of the Dead: Tales and Poems (Penguin Popular Classics)

Forever cursed to the bowels of under appreciation, Edgar Allan Poe stands in the literary world very much, as it seems, as he did in life, alone.

Though not of all of his works in this volume reach the ecstatic brilliance of "The Raven" or "Loss of Breath" or "Dream within a Dream" and some of it can be downright bad, this does nothing to alter the beauty of Poe's Gothic visions and macabre notions about people, the world, and his own understandings of how he perceived everything around him.

As said, Poe is not without his flaws, and they are glaring, he states in three paragraphs what can be said in one sentence. In five words what can be implied with none. And his word choice can be over reaching and even amateurish in his relentless show more striving to plumb the depths of the English lexicon for the word big enough and clumsy enough to describe something that something else in three or four letters could do just as effectively.

But the fact that he died early and underrated is a sin. Because within Poe's works lie the beginnings of greatness. Had he lived, survived rather, and had people seen through to the austere purity of his ideas and the visceral power of his vision, then i think Poe would've amazed everyone with true masterworks. Read Poe, and think what could have been. show less

This is a review just for the poem 'Spirits of the Dead' (as this page is the only entry for the poem by the author) instead of the collection, just to be clear.

It's a nice poem, and Poe makes good use of rhyming. Poetry itself can be pretty difficult to write, and when you add the constraint of rhyme to the formula, it can be tricky to find the right words, but Poe makes good use of it in this poem about a freshly-dead spirit.

More poems than tales, actually, and apart from obvious stuff like “The Raven”, it’s more of Poe’s lighter, romantic side. Which is okay at times, but Poe tends to go for the kind of satire that you need degrees in Classic Greek Literature and World History to get the joke. It’s still a bit twisted, but I prefer the horror stories, personally.