Al Aaraaf - Critical Response

Critical Response

Upon publication, "Al Aaraaf" and the other poems in Poe's collection drew harsh criticism because of how difficult it was to understand. Among the early reviewers was John Hill Hewitt, who wrote of Poe that "no man has been more shamefully overestimated". In trying to explain the title poem, he wrote, "all our brain-cudgeling could not compel us to understand it line by line or the sum total". A reviewer for the Baltimore Minerva and Emerald asked, "Has the poet been struck dumb with palsy?" Before publication, Poe had sought the advice of William Wirt, who had earned a reputation as a distinguished man of letters in Baltimore. On "Al Aaraaf", Wirt wrote that he was not the best judge of poetry but believed that it might be accepted by modern-thinking readers. As he wrote, "but to deal candidly... (as I am bound to do) I should doubt whether the poem will take with old-fashioned readers like myself". 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". Nevertheless, she still called the author a genius. A reviewer for the American Ladies' Magazine also commented on the poet's age: " author who appears to be very young, is evidently a fine genius, but he wants judgment, experience, tact".

Poe's boasted that these early poems were superior to most other examples in American poetry. Critic John Neal, who was a friend of Poe's cousin George Poe, responded to Poe's claim in his review of "Al Aaraaf" for the Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette. He said Poe's boast was "rather exquisite nonsense" but that the young author showed promise and predicted that some day Poe might "make a beautiful and perhaps a magnificent poem" to prove his claim. 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. Whether he will do so however, must depend, not so much upon his words now in mere poetry, as upon his worth hereafter in something yet loftier and more generous—we allude to the stronger properties of the mind, to the magnanimous determination that enables a youth to endure the present, whatever the present may be, in the hope, or rather in the belief, the fixed, unwavering belief, that in the future he will find his reward.

Neal's encouragement, which came prior to publication, led Poe to include a dedication to Neal in the collection Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. Poe's cousin Neilson Poe was impressed by Neal's endorsement and wrote, "Our name will be a great one yet." Edgar Poe would refer to Neal's comments as "the very first words of encouragement I remember to have heard." Poe himself admitted that "Al Aaraaf" had some "good poetry" in it as well as "much extravagance, which I have not had time to throw away".

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". Biographer Jeffrey Meyers called it Poe's "most turgid and opaque poem".