Truly a masterpiece! No stupid myths about Poe. Exceptionally well done! No cringe worthy moments.  I'm proud to be part of this fine telling of Poe's life.

Thanks for such an in-depth documentary. It brought home how deep Poe's influence has been. It's strange how fate works; while everyone's life is tough, a lot of the writers he inspired have enjoyed very comfortable lives being successful decades after, whereas sadly Poe, despite his extraordinary talent, seems to have had a painful and heart-breaking existence by comparison.

Such an excellent documentary! Wonderful, powerful. I want to read/reread all of Poe's works followed by what they inspired. That was such a beautiful way to end it. The voice actors and interviewed experts were all remarkable.

I have the feeling i have seen this film before. But I just now finished watching part two, and I found it absorbing and inspiring.
This excellent film does Poe justice. I have learned from it and I will watch both parts again.
I lived in Providence for years, and I know very well all the Providence locations mentioned and pictured in your film, Whitman's home, the cemeteries, the Atheneum. Poe is a legend in Providence, and some people claim they've seen him walking alone along Benefit Street in the wee hours on foggy nights.
Thanks.

one of my favorite writers. Thank you.

FASCINATING and extremely well-done.
 I attended school (back int the early 60''s called Whittier Jr. High. I was part of the first class there when it first opened. There was discussion about calling it Poe Jr. High when various names were being  proposed which needed to be voted upon by the local community as well as our student body. "Poe" was heavily lobbied against though and overruled when some of the teachers angrily proclaimed that Poe was a drunk and drug addict and therefore  completely unsuited to be  the name of a school. This was so very frustrating to me as I was an avid reader of Poe even at that young age. (I think the name had been suggested because the Roger Corman adaptation of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER had just come out and was getting great reviews and a lot of attention. Or maybe just a  coincidence?)

We hope you enjoy this film, which we consider to be the definitive documentary on Edgar Allan Poe. The film is in two parts and will be coming soon to various platforms and film festivals! Hopefully the documentary will air on many PBS stations, as did our previous film on Walt Whitman. Please enjoy and let us know what you think!

I love this documentary!  Though the speaker’s voice quoting Poe’s work, needs improvement…

En realidad, nunca se demostró a quien está dedicado el poema Anabel Lee, aunque no creo que haya sido a Virginia porque cuando se conocieron, él ya era un tontuelo grande de veinte años y ella una pequeña de siete.

Según el escritor argentino Abelardo Castillo, Poe nunca amó a su esposa: nadie deja muriendo a la persona que dice amar y éso fue lo que éste tipo hizo con Virginia, todo porque según él: "Lo hermoso tenía que morir pronto" y porque "lo que ella padecía no podía ser curado por un médico". Éso es no tener humanidad.

Dude proposed to all the woman he met after his wife died 😂

I have watched and taken careful notes on Part I, and Part II up through that section concerning "The Raven." I find this an impeccably-produced documentary, though it seems to glorify Poe to the point of indulging in myth, at times. For example, we are told that Poe as a young man was given to pranks and to "raiding orchards," but the narrator seriously believes that Poe actually swam six miles against the current in the James River. Far more likely, it was a hoax, and he secretly rode most of the way. It is extremely implausible that this 15-year-old boy still holds the record, today, even against trained athletes! But nobody, seemingly, has questioned Poe's veracity on this claim.

The reason I took the better part of a day to study this film so carefully, is that I fundamentally disagree with it. As an independent researcher, I have discovered that Edgar Allan Poe was not the author of "The Raven." It was all a scam. The real author had been Mathew Franklin Whittier, younger brother of the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. He had written it based on a real-life event, and real-life circumstances, which occurred in December of 1841. Mathew would then have naively shared it with Poe in a private meeting, in early 1842. It was Mathew, not Poe, who published it in the Feb. 1845 edition of "American Review," under the pseudonym "---- Quarles" (not mentioned in the film). Poe merely scooped it by three days, having presumably seen it in an advance copy. He pretended to have permission from the editor of "American Review." But all this is extremely improbable. Poe did not use pseudonyms. No newly-launched literary journal would ever give such permission to a pedestrian daily newspaper. It would also have been the height of cruelty for Poe to publish a poem about grief, while Virginia was still alive and battling consumption. This is a real grief poem, but it is also a poem describing a faith crisis. Poe had no faith to begin with, so he could not have experienced a faith crisis. It's obviously a poem written by an actual grieving widower--it is not a poem about Poe's preoccupation with past losses, nor is it written in anticipatory grief. Finally, if one becomes as familiar with Mathew Franklin Whittier's literary legacy as I am, the matter is obvious. The reasons that Poe scholars cite for Poe supposedly writing this poem, are only the reasons he chose to plagiarize it--why he was attracted enough to it, to steal it. But he didn't fully understand it. Poe had never written any poetry in this style, but Mathew Franklin Whittier had published several poems of very high quality in a similar style. This was, in fact, his preferred style of many years. Finally, Poe's essay, "The Philosophy of Composition," is childish nonsense intended as damage control, to prove that he could possibly have written "The Raven." All he did was to reverse-engineer the poem. The film chooses to ignore this issue--and while many scholars have concluded that Poe wrote this essay as a "hoax," actually it was  yet another scam. This entire issue is not dealt with in the film.