SOURCE: Hoffman, Daniel. “‘O! Nothing Earthly …’/ The Poems.” In Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, pp. 18-80. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972.

In the following essay, Hoffman discusses Poe's reputation as a poet, both in France and in America, claiming that many of Poe's rhymes, apparently drawn from his own experiences, are banal and are possibly deliberate hoaxes on his reading public.

November 1956. I am brooding on the poems of Edgar Poe in Dijon, living with my wife and two babies in the only maison bourgeoise in a farm village three kilometres beyond the end of the bus line. All the other houses in Saint Apollinaire are attached to barns and have cows in the front yard, but our yard is given to a garden, the beds crowded between pebbled walks. It's getting chill. There's hoarfrost on the beet fields and morning mists hang from Madame Pag...