This is written as a speech in which I am Edgar Allen Poe. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly I heard a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “ ‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, tapping at my chamber door- Only this and nothing more And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling …showed first 75 words of 715 total…

…showed last 75 words of 715 total…over-sexed. I became paranoid and was a necrophiliac. I died a short 2 years later at age 40. After I died, many lesser poets and critics transformed my image from the man who turned the short story into an art, the creator of the murder mystery/ detective story, a writer of both romantic and haunting poetry, and the inventor of science fiction stories, into a lying, half-mad alcoholic who was gifted with a genius and squandered it.