SOURCE: Claudel, Alice Moser. “Poe as Voyager in ‘To Helen.’” In New Approaches to Poe: A Symposium, edited by Richard P. Benton, pp. 33-37. Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1970.

In the following essay, Claudel suggests that Poe's “To Helen” is a more complex poem than is generally acknowledged.

Unless one looks into literary histories of the United States which include poetry, one finds few of Edgar Allan Poe's poems in recent publications. The editors either do not find his work complex enough, or else, fascinated by the new instant poetry, they do not find it attractive. It may be that, hoping to engage the young with “relevant works,” they exclude Poe's work as too “pure.” If Poe is found in a new anthology, “To Helen” is the poem usually chosen. In some instances, a peculiar snobbery may be at work. If an editor has read Huxley (whose ear may have...