“This is thrilling criticism, done with a wizardly gusto. The swoops and swirls of the antic style by no means vitiate the wonderful grasp Hoffman demonstrates upon these almost ungraspable poems.”—John Updike

“A very exciting reading of Poe, truly serious and liberated from many traditional critical and scholarly solemnities. . . . A rather nutty and completely necessary book.”—John Hollander, New York Times Book Review

“The most refreshing and original volume of literary study to appear for a long time. . . . It will set a new style in literary criticism.”—R.W.B. Lewis, The American Scholar

“The vitality of tone, the pressure of insight and the compassionate truth-telling are astonishing.”—Richard Howard 

Daniel Hoffman has published a dozen books of poetry, including Beyond Silence, his collected shorter poems, and Brotherly Love, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has recently received the Arthur Anse prize for "a distinctive poet" from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, from the Sewanee Review, the Aiken-Taylor Award for Contemporary American Poetry. The best known of his six critical studies is Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe, also a National Book Award finalist. He has taught at Swarthmore College and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is the Felix Schelling Professor of English Emeritus. Hoffman lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, and on Cape Rosier in Maine.