Poe certainly was competent in the horror and weirdness genre. His poems and prose are standards in high school literature. “For the love of God, Montresor” (The Cask of Amontillado). The love of God was possibly only an abstract, distant thing to Poe during his known life. Did the tragedy of his final days finally bring Poe kneeling in a plea for mercy to God’s throne before he passed away? That’s something only God, and Poe, knows. Sometimes God works a save by allowing a person their fill of hell on earth.
Well, his last words were a prayer to Jesus.
I read that it took him five years to write The Raven.
Poe, strangely, was ambushed all most from the beginning of his life and sometimes never knew who was doing it.
A biographer wrote about him and savagely lied about him and it marred his reputation until the lies were finally discovered after Poe’s death.
It is somehow gratifying to know that Poe went after the pompous, insufferable Ralph Waldo Emerson.