“The glow of the fireside poets failed to warm a world coping with the cold realities of a new century. Their light faded as we became less sure of comforting messages and more intrigued by Poe's troubling questions. 'We recognize Poe's modern view of the dark side of humanity,' said Jeffrey A. Savoye of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. 'We don't expect sentimental moralizing. So we've embraced the very thing that made Poe distasteful in his own era.”