Poe - Erica
Reading the works of Edgar Allen Poe can be challenging. He has a tendency to be very wordy. But I found as I read his works they are unbelivably haunting and there is an amazing dark quality that make them somewhat captivating. In "Ligeia" he discusses the past so that it sets up what happens in the future and why it is so haunting. "The House of Usher" is a great short story that provides some great historical irony. I think that Poe could have been an early Stephen King type. The ability to conjure up these dark and haunting stories is a great quaility. Be it that Poe may have used/abused drugs in order to come up with these concepts or his mental health may have been questionable, the man had a great talent. While some may not understand or appreciate this, it is what sets readers and critics apart in their idea of what is a classically relevant piece of literature.