Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most widely read authors of the twentieth century. He has written enough memorable short stories and poems to warrant entire college courses dedicated to him. Although he was born in Boston and lived much of his childhood in England, he is included in the Norton Anthology of the Literature of the American South -- perhaps because Poe insisted: "I am a Virginian, at least I call myself one" (Andrews 97). Hundreds of critics have written about Poe and his works, and each critic has his or her own way of interpreting Poe.

William L. Andrews, editor of The Literature of the American South, says that early in his career Poe suffered a "series of literary associations that, though initially productive, ended in disappointment" (98). Andrews says that some critics claim Poe "courted failure out of a perverse compulsion toward...’professional derailment’" (98). In his book, Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe, Daniel Hoffman agrees with Andrews, saying that Poe led the most luckless life of any writer. Hoffman maintains that "his only talent was for suffering" (xii). This may be evident in the fact that he had more enemies than supporters during his lifetime. He distanced himself from respected writers of the day by writing stinging and often unfair critiques of their pieces. Poe changed jobs quite frequently and several times, he was unemployed for a stretch of time. At one point, along with his wife, Virginia Clemm and his mother-in-law, Poe lived on a diet of bread and molasses (Hoffman 38).

Poe’s luckless life is illustrated through the main characters in his short stories. He uses himself as the recurring character in all of his works. His characters are twice self-doomed. First, their spirit of perversity compels them to commit atrocious and unreasonable crimes (to torture the cat, to murder the wife, to terrify and kill the benevolent old man). Second, after having committed the Perfect Crime, inexorably, they incriminate themselves by leading the policeman to the exact spot where the victim is entombed (Hoffman 12). Yet, Poe does have his supporters who argue that it is false to call Poe little more than an artist of nightmares and insane crimes (Buranelli 21).

Where Hoffman takes Poe extremely seriously, Charles E. May contends that "it is often difficult to tell when Poe is being serious and when he is playing. [The reader] is also never sure when Poe is presenting fact or fiction" (39). Poe makes much ado about what seems to be nothing. He is absolutely particular about seemingly irrelevant details, and he creates metaphors out of everyday acts (May 30). Poe treats the central metaphorical predicament in his "A Predicament" flippantly, but much more seriously in "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Masque of Red Death," and "The Tale-Tell Heart." The metaphorical predicament is that the character is being caught by the inevitable progression of time (May 30). May believes that Poe is a self-conscious artist whose aesthetic vision and knowledge of the nature of narrative made him, in spite of the condescension of his critics, the most influential American writer of the nineteenth century (108).

Although Poe’s creative fiction is popular today, his reviews and critiques of his contemporaries were the most influential of his pieces during his lifetime. He is by nature as much a critic as a writer. He wrote more criticism than fiction. Poe was the first of the New Critics of contemporary American literature, of those who rebel against sociological and other non-literary criteria and who place little stock in the historical background approach to literature (Buranelli 113). Poe maintains that each piece of art should be comprehensive within itself. He has no patience for reviewing the author, only the piece itself. Poe, the critic, is often belligerent toward his contemporaries, whose work he considers inferior to his own. He wields negative criticism like a scalpel, thus earning him the nickname, "The Tomahawk" (Buranelli 114). He has a long record of personal criticism. He too often appears mean and petty (Buranelli 121). One of Poe’s greatest annoyances is nationalism. He regards nationalism as one of the most pestiferous of non-literary criteria and one of the worst corruptions of criticism that has caused literature to deteriorate. He never misses a chance to degrade works by those who use nationalism as a theme in their literature (Buranelli 115). Some of Poe’s criticism adheres strictly to literary criteria; however, most of it reveals a personal bias that has nothing to do with poetic feet or unity in the short story (Buranelli 117). In his book entitled Edgar Allan Poe, Vincent Buranelli accuses Poe of being much too lenient with the female writers he critiqued. Buranelli asserts that Poe’s greatest flaw in criticism is that he can scarcely criticize a woman however incompetent she may be without softening the blow by saying something complimentary (127).

Poe wrote poetry as well as critiques and short fiction. When criticizing poetry, Poe believes that critics must possess the poetic sentiment (Buranelli 114). Julian Symons, author of The Tell-Tale Heart, commented that Poe’s poems are "in general, intrinsically vague and incapable of interpretation" (Carlson 171). This idea is agreed upon, to a lesser degree, by Richard Wilbur who maintains that Poe may be slow to release the meaning of his poems. Poe’s machinery of suggestion and idea can often be submerged and sly (Carlson 161). Poe is vehemently opposed to thinking in poetry. There are very few of his poems, however, which are forthright and do not require contemplation. Poe himself, as a critic, contends that "every work of art should contain within itself all that is required for comprehension." His poems, however, do not yield all of their suggested ideas unless one brings a general familiarity with Poe to bear to it (Carlson 163). Wilbur sums up his opinion by saying "Poe is the most secretive and difficult of our great symbolic writers (Carlson 171)."

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most talked about writers of this century. Hundreds of critics have written hundreds of articles, speeches, stories, and biographies about him. Whether the critics love him or hate him, they all agree that Poe’s writing style is unique to him and that his talents, or lack thereof have earned him a place in literature’s history and future.