No, I agree. Poe is one of the finest and most legendary American writers. And the Masque of the Red Death was one of my favorites too. I loved the imagery of the different colored rooms.
The Raven and The Black Cat stand out as two firm favourites. I was introduced to the former through The Simpsons, and that helped, since their voice actor did a good job of making it accessible; I was about 12 when I first watched it. After that I read The Pit and the Pendulum at school, which isn't his best, but it remained with me for several years until I finally decided to buy two of his collections.
The Cask of Amontillado is not a favourite of mine, and yet everyone I ask who likes Poe names it as an example; I, however, really didn't like that at all. I thought his descriptions in the story were weak, and the story was reused from other tales. Poe did seem to use the same motifs and images a lot.
I respect him for his contribution to horror literature, but I am admittedly not a huge fan of his work. He has a strong sense of atmosphere, and his poetry shows great skill, but the stories just don't do it for me. Though I am a big fan of his novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Truly masterful, that one.
I plan to read that soon, hopefully I'll enjoy it too because you are the only person I know of to talk it up.
Poe is definitely my main influence. I carried a Poe collection around so much in seventh grade that it got all raggedy and the cover came off. I memorized The Raven. And one of the first CDs I bought when I got a CD player was the Alan Parsons Project's Poe album. My most favorite poem of all time is his Alone. It doesn't show up in collections much - I tend to buy every collection I see that includes it. My favorite stories, hmm - Hop-Frog, The Cask of Amontillado, and Masque of the Red Death. In that order. I'm also a fan of his criticism. In the Sims community, criticism is verboten and you're supposed to be all nice and complimentary all the time. And apparently that was like the culture back in his day and everyone would puff up everyone else's work in reviews. And then he came along and was honest and sometimes quite brutal, and he took a lot of flak for it. I definitely identify with that. *whistles*
I've read several poems and stories by Poe, some of his well-known ones and ones that weren't so well-known. He's a great story-writer, but a mediocre poet, although he has some good ones. Don't get me wrong, Annabel Lee and The Raven were masterpieces of poetry, and The Bells was not far off, but most of it just lacked something. His stories are fabulous. Never before have I been so purely addicted to a short story while I read it as I was with The Telltale Heart. No matter how gruesome he is, he's still a genius. One of his lesser-known stories, Lionizing, was very odd but still good. Personally, I think his best story is The Telltalle Heart.
I memorized The Raven too! And the Telltale Heart was one of the first stories of his I ever read, and I loved it.
