Big Ed was writing when there was still a difference between written English and spoken English and he's not an easy read. Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne helped change that. When I worked in a bookstore a teenager asked me if we had any Poe that wasn't in Old English. I started to correct him but then I thought he has a good point there so I just said no.
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there's a whole album by the alan parsons project that's based on his works (often very loosely, but still)
I've liked that album for a long, long time. I should make sure I have it and get it ripped to my mp3 set.

We had to memorize and recite "The Raven" in high school.