Actually the stories of him being a drunken drug addict was made up by Poe’s frienemy, Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Poe was basically allergic to alcohol and if he had one drink he’d be instantly drunk and feel incredibly ill afterwards. Griswold never actually liked Poe due to Poe writing a critical response to an anthology Griswold wrote and for the longest time people believed Griswold because he wrote about Poe quite a bit and how he was a miserable drunk and drug addict, but when Poe’s real friends found out about this they set the record straight that he wasn’t a drunk nor did drugs. Unfortunately, what Griswold said is still being perpetrated to this day with people believing Poe did drugs and drank himself into a stupor to write his poems and stories. ~ Jared Wignall

Poe is one of my favorite authors! I think my favorite of his stories is “The Black Cat”, but there is a poem that surpasses everything for the spot of favorite:

I heed not that my earthly lot hath little of earth in it
That years of love have been forgot in the hatred of a minute
I mourn not that the desolate are happier, sweet than I
But that you who suffer my fate
Who am a passerby
~ Kitsu Yuutsu

I always enjoyed Edgar Allan Poe’s work; he seemed to have knowledge of certain rare medical conditions and some of his main characters seemed to be afflicted with such, particularly Madeleine Usher; her twin brother Roderick had his own set of medical issues. I had read the original “Fall of the House of Usher” when I was a sixth grader, though I forgot much of what was in it, namely where this structure was located other than out in the wilderness on the shore of a stagnant lake; I saw the movie version in 1960 and it was implied that it was in Massachusetts by a polluted pond out in the country; in my older years I thought I had seen the place when we went on frequent train trips back to the New England states; just outside of Framingham, Mass. there was an old decrepit stone house, again on the shore of a body of water of doubtful quality. I later on re-read the original story and found there is no mention of even what country this would have taken place in, just when I had decided to do a painting of the house outside of Framingham. ~ Cheryl Montoya