Al Aaraaf
Some, however, noted the potential in the young poet, including author and critic John Neal, to whom Poe had shown "Al Aaraaf" prior to publication.
He held a strong dislike for New England poets and the New England–based Transcendental movement and hoped by presenting a poem he had written in his youth would prove Bostonians did not know good literature.
"Al Aaraaf" is the longest poem Poe wrote[1] and was inspired by Tycho Brahe's identification of a supernova in 1572 which was visible for about seventeen months.
Two souls, however, fail to respond: the "maiden-angel" Ianthe and her "seraph-lover" Angelo (Michelangelo), who describes his death on earth and the flight of his spirit to Al Aaraaf.
"Al Aaraaf" is thick with allusions and, because of this, is often avoided by scholars because, as writer Arthur Hobson Quinn notes, it can be "unintelligible".
[11] As critic Floyd Stovall wrote, the theme of the poem is "one of disillusionment with the world and escape into some more congenial realm of dream or of the imagination".
[12] The star which prompted Poe to write "Al Aaraaf" was believed to foretell disaster or that humanity would be punished for breaking God's laws.
[5] Additionally, Poe was indebted to Irish poet Thomas Moore, whose poem Lalla-Rookh inspired, among other parts of "Al Aaraaf", the catalogue of flowers near the beginning.
[14] Structurally, the 422-line "Al Aaraaf"[15] has no discernible or consistent poetic rhythm,[6] though the meter resembles a section of Lord Byron's Manfred.
[17] Poe addressed the obscurity in "Al Aaraaf" by including multiple footnotes, many of which were left untranslated from French, Latin, and Spanish.
"[25] Before publication, Poe had sought the advice of William Wirt, who had earned a reputation as a distinguished man of letters in Baltimore.
[27] Sarah Josepha Hale of Godey's Lady's Book noted that "Al Aaraaf" must have been written by a young author because it was "boyish, feeble, and altogether deficient in the common characteristics of poetry".
[28] A reviewer for the American Ladies' Magazine also commented on the poet's age: "[the] author who appears to be very young, is evidently a fine genius, but he wants judgment, experience, tact".
[29] He believed that if future poems by Poe were as good as some of his best lines in "Al Aaraaf": He will deserve to stand high—very high—in the estimation of the shining brotherhood.
[33] In the 20th century, poet Daniel Hoffman referred to "Al Aaraaf" as "Poe's most ambitious failure", suggesting it is a "fractured" attempt at an epic poem that "ran out of gas".
[37] The critical failure of both "Al Aaraaf" and "Tamerlane" convinced Poe that long poems are inherently flawed because they cannot sustain a proper mood or a high quality poetic form.
[43] Fresh off his public feud with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his dislike of the Massachusetts-based Transcendentalism movement,[44] Poe instead decided to play a trick on his Boston audience.
The program, held October 16 at Boston's Odeon Theater, was a grand event and featured a speech by Massachusetts statesman Caleb Cushing[35] which was two and a half hours long.
Poe read "Al Aaraaf", renamed "The Messenger Star" for the event, and tried to convince his Boston audience that the poem he wrote as a young man was new.
[35] Poe ended with "The Raven", as the theater manager noted, "thus enabling us to make some show of front after a most lamentable defeat.
The editor of the Boston Courier reviewed "The Messenger Star" as "an elegant and classic production, based on the right principles, containing the essence of true poetry, mingled with a gorgeous imagination".
