What would you consider one of his scariest poems

-- Anonymous, April 02, 2002

Answers

Aieee! Oh well, some of Poe's poems have similarities in plotting, character and effect similar to his horror tales. Some of his poems are included inside his horror tales(The Haunted Palace in Usher, eg.) Ppeople usually consider "The Raven" that kind of masterpiece. eeven more suggestive poems that are not so dramatized or ornate have a profoundly disturbing end that creates that thrill or chill in a mystery. "El Dorado" is like that. A romantic lament like "Annabel Lee" puts the narrator in a state of utmost horror wedded to his faithful love, the juxtaposition of opposites in an eternal hopeless rebellion.

"The Conqueror Worm" goes the limit though it is too allegorical to have the personal immediacy. "The City in the Sea" as a landscape of the imagination expresses the peculiar fascination Poe had with static corruption and sudden calamity. The Raven seems the best to me because it dramatically involves the reader in a growing hysteria and descent into despair.

-- Anonymous, April 03, 2002

Well, this is a difficult question to answer--many of his poems are scary in their own right. The one that originaly frightened me the most was "The Conqueror Worm"--although it seems to be allegorical, and it is, on a level it can be perceived as a collective but individual tradgedy--then again, just about any allegory can be perceived that way. And I am a sap, and I tend to be particularly touched by large-scale tragedies and intrigued by stage references, beind a drama geek myself.

However, lately I've found the most frightening poem to be "Ulalume." I don't really understand it to be frank--I have a vague idea of its meaning, but when I try to take it apart stanza by stanza, it stops making sense to me. However, the last, oft omitted, stanza, is what bothers me. It seems to essentially be about the abandonment of mankind by nature, which is a very frightening, very lonely concept to me. The passage that bothers me is as follows.

Said we then--the two then--"Ah, can it- Have been that the woodlandish gouls The pitiful, the merciful ghouls To bar up our way and to ban it From the secret that lies in these wolds-- From the terror that lies hidden in these wolds-- To draw up from the spectre of a planet From the limbo of lunary souls-- This sinfully scintillant planet From the hell of the planetary souls?

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2003