Poe is everywhere. The Raven\u2019s \u201cnevermore\u201d echoes as a memory and a meme. His arch detectives invite us to see the weird behind the everyday. Police procedurals and horror tales would not exist today without his work. Poe\u2019s name has become shorthand for a personal universe. This book by Leland, who leads a Poe walking tour of Providence, Rhode Island, offers a basic introduction to the beloved author\u2019s life and work. Complete with bullet points and sidebars, it writes a biography for the PowerPoint generation. It would be best for middle schoolers who have heard of Poe but need to know more. We get the basic outlines of his life, the list of works, and guides to further reading. Interrupting the flow of narrative are sections titled \u201cThe More You Know.\u201d These are little paragraphs, in different type and different color, that offer tidbits of history. Did Poe believe in God? A paragraph raises the question, offers a few tantalizing details (a phrase, a personal letter, an aside), and then concludes: \u201cLike many facets of Poe\u2019s life, it may never be known exactly where he stood on spiritual or religious matters. His love of hoaxes, satire, controversy, and sensationalism often concealed his true beliefs.\u201d Interspersed among these comments are the texts of Poe\u2019s poems, printed in a font that looks like that of an old manual typewriter. The literary criticism goes only so deep: \u201cPoe\u2019s \u2018Annabel Lee\u2019 is a masterpiece of gothic romanticism. The poem delves into Poe\u2019s usual themes of love, loss, and grief, describing a childhood love that transcends time and even death.\u201d The best parts of the book retell the last months of Poe\u2019s life\u2014his nuttiness, his drinking, and his strange love affair with death itself.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Poe is everywhere. The Raven\u2019s \u201cnevermore\u201d echoes as a memory and a meme. His arch detectives invite us to see the weird behind the everyday. Police procedurals and horror tales would not exist today without his work. Poe\u2019s name has become shorthand for a personal universe. This book by Leland, who leads a Poe walking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}