The QTR Index: Part 3, The Gold Class

We conclude our classification of all of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems with the “Class I” poems, the top 25, which includes Poe’s best known and loved poems.  The goal, as explained in the prior posts, is to classify the 70 known poems of Edgar Allan Poe: first into three rough “classes”—call them bronze, silver and gold—to distinguish minor poems, above-average poems, and world-class poems; second, to rank every single poem in order, from least to best—though this poem-by-poem ranking is more subjective. [BRONZE] [SILVER]

25. “To ——”

Poe was 19 years-old when he penned this nearly perfect poem (“I heed not that my earthly lot”), which laments his own station in life, and encapsulates the fatalism and self-pity that characterizes Poe’s worldview. In its simplicity, the poem recalls the elegance of a Petrarchan sonnet, managing to imbue the tragic verse with a sweet tinge.

24. “Silence”

Includes transcendental observations like, “There is a two-fold Silence — sea and shore —/Body and Soul.” Poe posits that there is something worse than the silence of solitude, and that is the “shadow” of silence, “That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod/No foot of man.” Ethereal but eloquent.

23. “The Valley of Unrest”

One of Poe’s netherworld poems, this one paints a Chernobyl-like apocalyptic landscape, which reads like a cautionary tale of inhabitants who went off “unto the wars/Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,” but instead ended up with a lifeless panorama where once had “smiled a silent dell.”

22. “Tamerlane”

Poe’s epic poem, written when he was all of 18 years old, imagines the mind of Timur the Conqueror (1336-1405), but fills in the gaps using Poe’s own thoughts, including his troubled relationship with his foster father and his intuition that his personal pride ruins his romantic life. Somewhat cumbersome, but there are hidden gems.

21. “Dreams”

From the “dream” series, this 1827 poem stakes out Poe’s basic thesis, that he is haunted by a dream-like past which casts its shadow over his daily waking reality, but the dream memory confirms a hopeful note: “I have been happy, tho’ in a dream./ I have been happy—and I love the theme.”

20. “Al Aaraaf”

Like “Tamerlane” above, “Aaraaf” is a long piece from the poet’s youth (Poe was 20 when he wrote it), and it reflects Poe’s interest in near East themes (also seen in “Israfel” and “Tamerlane”). Based on the apparition of a supernova, its middle stanzas, the “song” from “Al Aaraaf”, a fairyland jig, are whimsically delightful.

19. “Israfel”

Poe imagines switching places with the angel the Koran says has “the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures” and concludes he would be a better angel than the angel a mortal. I always loved the second to last stanza and the line that, “the shadow of thy perfect bliss/Is the sunshine of ours.”

18. “Sonnet — To Science”

One of Poe’s few sonnets, this reflection laments the advent of the scientific era, with its “dull realities,” threatening to wipe out the Romanticism of human imagination, dreams, mythology and even to eradicate “the poet” (Poe)’s private “dream” by unmasking all the mysteries of life.

17. “The City in the Sea”

From the netherworld series (see also “Dream-Land,” “Fairy Land,” “The Haunted Palace,” “The Valley of Unrest”), this one is chuck full of quotable lines like “the good and the bad and the worst and the best,” “The viol, the violet, and the vine,” and—my favorite—“Death looks gigantically down.”

16. “Dream-Land”

“Dream-Land” and “The Haunted Palace” below are sort of companion pieces, with many structural and thematic parallels.  “Dream-Land” is, as the title suggests, about dreams, a prevalent motif in Poe’s verse, which he tells us in this poem provide an important relief, almost a therapy to help deal with life.

15. “The Haunted Palace”

“The Haunted Palace” is a netherworld poem like the last two on the list and it describes Poe’s sense of living a “haunted” existence, one which a pall seems to hang over. Poe creates the effect by summoning overbearing images of powerful “monarchs,” angels, robe-draped figures, and spirits; aloof figures that somehow shape his fate (see also “The Conqueror Worm,” #9 below).

14. “To One in Paradise”

This poem and a few others from Poe that use a paradise/island theme harken both to the Romanticism of his youth (“Paradise” is from 1833) and to the “dead lover” sequence. The title here is a double entendre because it refers to the paradisiacal island as a metaphor, and to the afterlife.

13. “Eldorado”

An unusually light offering, “Eldorado” actually contains the usual cocktail of Poe themes, including strong Medieval revivalist imagery and light fatalism parsed out amidst lyrical meter. Poe proposes, as he does elsewhere, that life is an open-ended quest that may lead to nowhere (see “The Conqueror Worm”).

12. “To Helen”

For once from Poe, a love poem without a catch! The subject is not dead or dying or a ghost or figment of his imagination. The only drawback, some would argue, is that Poe conceives of the perfect woman as a highly idealized and unrealistic figure on a pedestal. But, let’s not get picky!

11. “For Annie”

In contrast to “Helen,” the “Annie” character comes across as a real, down-to-earth, flesh-and-blood woman. The problem is that the narrator might be already dead! Poe sets up a striking out-of-body narrative in this poem which powerfully relates the disembodied feeling of the illness “Annie” nurses him back from.

10. “The Lake”

We enter the Top Ten with this early (1827) poem in which 18 year-old Poe looks back at his childhood and celebrates his nature boy origins as well as his roots in English Romanticism (Poe spent a couple of years in England growing up). Also a great insight into Poe’s future in the macabre.

9. “The Conqueror Worm”

Life is a play in which all the characters are disposable and the only thing that survives is the specter of death, which rampages across the scene, leaving all spectators aghast. Many interesting things going on in this near perfect offering, including Poe’s chorus or jury of angels, which suggests something of Poe’s eschatological views.

8. “Lenore”

In 1843, Poe reworked “A Pæan” (# 26, in a prior list) from twelve years before, producing a richer, more dense version of his commentary on the death of a beautiful woman heightened by the class divide. In the “five stages of grief” spectrum, Poe is channeling genuine anger, giving his grief horror sequence real authenticity.

7. “Alone”

An ode to misfits everywhere, the 20 year-old Poe’s apologia for being strange and unable to fit in is also a powerful declaration of his authentic personality and independent streak, a celebration of the value of being different even if that uniqueness comes at the expense of feeling like a forever outsider.

6. “The Sleeper”

This poem enjoys the singular honor of having been Poe’s personal favorite among his poems, but it would hold this ranking even without such a good reference. It embodies Poe’s lyricism, heavy gothic ambiance, and even a thick streak of dark humor running down the middle of this macabre nocturne.

5. “Ulalume”

Take “The Sleeper” and flush out the gallows humor and easy lyricism and replace it with a gloomy and foreboding atmosphere and heavy and droning layers of verse—“a carapace of jeweled sound” is what Aldous Huxley called “Ulalume,” a “ballad” about being so lost in grief that you don’t know where you are.

4. “A Dream Within A Dream”

Simplicity distinguishes this memorable Poe offering which is easy to remember because of its strong visual images, together with its metrical and elegant phrasing. It also blends major Poe themes, including the dream fascination, fatalism and the notion that poetry should reflect the beauty of life, however absurd.

3. “The Bells”

Poe’s conviction that “Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words” is embodied in this poem, one of his most mesmerizing because of its metrical precision and enthralling riffs. Its metaphor of bells economically synthesizes a panoply of human experiences, like four stations  or compass points of life.

2. “Annabel Lee”

The genius of this perennially popular poem is that it conveys both Poe’s fatalistic “dead lover” motif together with an undying romantic ideal: love conquers all—even death, even heaven and hell, even angels and demons, and, wealthy “highborn kinsmen?” P’shaw!

1. “The Raven”

“The Raven” is obviously Poe’s most popular poem, but like the other selections in this top twenty-five, it qualified for inclusion based on objective criteria, also used to establish ranking, including: (1) inclusion in mainstream poetry anthologies; (2) private polling conducted by the Quoth The Raven blog; and (3) the assessment of the blog’s editor based on his analysis of the importance of each poem within Poe’s overarching gridwork of poetic themes.

With that, you have all of Poe’s recognized poetic oeuvre, all in one place, ranked from least to best, for your consideration and enjoyment!