What would be his three best poems to write an essay on? The task set is to research an American poet and in essay form, evaluate what the poet's contibution to american literature.

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2002

Answers

"To Helen" seems to rival "The Raven" for top honors as best poem. "The Bells" is a tour de force. Poe himself would include "Ulalume", "The Sleeper". Of course "Annabel Lee" and "El Dorado", "City in the Sea" and Conqueror Worm" are popular. I would suggest reading all of Poe's canon. There are not many. The long poems are early ones so you might leave those and study the maturer works. Perhaps making a hard choice you might take one from the lover theme("To Helen"), one from the dark fantasy category(The City in the Sea) and one onamatopoeic work(The Bells) which contains a lot of everything. An alternate would be one of the dream poems(A Dream within a Dream)

Articles and texts online at www.eapoe.org, www.poecentral.com, www.poedecoder.com and other links.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2002