A Poe Taster by Daniel Hoffman
Didn't you know that Edgar Allan Poe
Sought grief counselling, took Lexapro?
--By endless mourning then no longer smitten,
Could leave all lachrymose laments to diverse
Obsequies by Thomas Holly Chivers.
But we've not seen the poems he must have written:
Like Nathaniel Parker Willis's, say?
No, no, much wittier, his vers de société;
Surely, his jeux d'esprit deserve a tranche
Of the renown of Christopher Pearse Cranch.
Were he but free of personal disaster
He might well be our minor light verse master--
Poe's döppelganger--and his abiding dream,
Thwarted, for aye, by that one relentless theme.
