The name “Ulalume” has variously been construed as implying both light and wailing, and this speaker’s inability to reconcile with the female creative and intuitive element in the self has caused his “light” to dim and die. Consequently he is left to “wail,” and the nature of the spoken word, in a poem that constitutes a lament, serves in its monotony as an apt means of rendering the speaker’s muttered sorrow.

Poe’s dictum, that the “most poetic of all themes is the death of a beautiful woman,” is surely represented in many of his poems, but one may well ponder the exact meaning of the phrase. It does not mean that Poe himself was hostile toward women or that symbolic murders and burials in his writings reflected personal hostility. His thinking on this topic might have had strong origins in everyday life around him, when the average life span was short, and that for women often less than that for men. The phrase might also spring from a more jocular impulse (that is, he divined his own abilities in creating such situations). “Poetic” and “poet” might be read or heard as “Poe-tic” and “Poe-t,” and Poe indeed punned on his name on several occasions. Then, too, the phrase may indicate that his female characters, who symbolize a vital constituent in the self, are not dead and gone forever, but temporarily repressed. Rightly, therefore, most of them return to haunt those who were responsible, directly or indirectly, for their “deaths.” A reader may come away from the late poem “Annabel Lee” even more mystified because the survivor-speaker’s lilting tone and attitude verge toward happiness, although this lightness may be a foil for his hysterical reaction to Annabel’s death. The closing lines, too, may seem gruesome because of possible necrophilia (the speaker‘s, not Poe’s) latent in them. We are equally undecided when reading “Eldorado,” perhaps one of Poe’s happier poems, but one in which delight takes what may be a sobering turn in the final stanza (although the Shade’s words to the inquiring knight might also have a rallying intent). “The Bells,” too, leads us adroitly from pleasantness as life begins on to the funereal conclusion of life.

III

Poe’s tales continue to be the most admired part of his literary legacy, however much he wished to be a poet. One may legitimately ask what were his reasons for resorting to prose fiction as a mainstay, most notably to the short story or, as he preferred, the “tale”? The answer is simple: money. Poe received no profits from his early poems, so he turned to a form that was likely to sell better, the short story, and specifically to short fiction in the Gothic vein. Tales featuring a single character (or at least one who stood out from any others), beset by oppressive and mysterious forces, often amid fantastic settings, existed long before Poe found in this paradigm a suitable creative medium. Terror tales had become staples in periodicals, chiefly in a renowned literary magazine in the Anglo-American literary world during the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s, the house organ for the well-established Scottish publishing firm of Blackwood: Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, colloquially called Blackwood’s or Blackwood. It is evident from his writings that Poe’s knowledge of this periodical was extensive. His satiric tale “How to Write a Blackwood Article” and its sequel, “A Predicament,” lampoon not just recurrent themes, motifs, and stylistic techniques of stories from Blackwood‘s, but indeed ridicule Poe’s own hallmark methods and themes in fiction. Compelling satire and parody require expert comprehension of what one wishes to treat comically, and so we might examine Poe’s own fiction to discover what he understood of the production of intriguing Gothic tales.

Apparently, from the time he left West Point in 1831 for his grand-mother Poe’s home in Baltimore, until his name appeared in connection with a literary contest in that city late in 1833, he thoughtfully considered what should constitute effective tales of terror. He gave himself an independent study course in content and methodology in popular Gothic fiction as groundwork for his own. He submitted five tales to a prize contest sponsored by a Philadelphia newspaper, the Saturday Courier, near the end of 1831. Although none won the prize, they all circulated in the paper, perhaps without Poe’s consent or knowledge, during 1832. The first to appear, “Metzengerstein,” seems all too customarily horrific in its “German” setting and its feuding families, connected by supernatural occurrences, who suffer stupendous catastrophes. Horror is evident in young Frederick Metzengerstein’s lips, lacerated in fright during his sensational final journey mounted on a giant supernatural horse, an ominous, repulsive creature. This tale may devolve from the folk motif of the devil riding a giant black horse to claim his victims. Poe alters the traditional black coloring of the horse to fiery shades. The other Courier tales were spoofs on what were then best-selling fictions and their authors, and one was not even Gothic.

In 1833 the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, a weekly newspaper, sponsored a competition with cash prizes for the best poem and tale. Poe’s tale “MS. Found in a Bottle” and his poem “The Coliseum” were ranked the winners until the evaluators discovered that both were written by the same person. They decided that the poetry prize would go elsewhere, although Poe asked that they give the other writer the money for the poem but announce that both of his own works had originally been named first’s. Poe’s wish was ignored, the poetry prize going to “Song of the Winds,” by John Hill Hewitt, editor of the Visiter, leaving Poe outraged. The prize selections appeared on October 19, 1833, and Poe’s poem on October 26.