Ulalume (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

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“Ulalume” is a striking example of what Aldous Huxley characterized as the “vulgarity” of Poe's poetry when he was trying too hard to make his work poetical. It is also an example of what made critic Yvor Winters, in the most severe attack ever launched against Poe, call him an “explicit obscurantist.” Winters's distaste for the poem begins with its use of unidentified places such as Weir, Auber, and ghoul-haunted woodlands, which he says are introduced merely to evoke emotion at small cost. He also claims that the violent emotion suggested by the references to Mount Yaanek...

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