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[nikolino840]

Who wrote Better?
Any preferences?

 

[Airola]

Poe.

Lovecraft is overrated as fuck.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

Poe, easily, I say this as a massive Lovecraft fan that plays Call of Cthulhu and Arkham Horror Card Game, but Poe was the better writer.
I love both, though, and even without including the mythos, Lovecraft’s vision of cosmic horror is incredibly influential.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Oscar Wilde and Mary Shelley any day of the week. Poe and Lovecraft are great though, too. Dunno who I prefer.

 

[Tesseract]

poe was internal and deluded, craft external and lawbreaking

poe was the better poet, adherent to what we can see and feel

lovecraft wrote about hyper dimensional aliens and the like, terrors from unknown worlds

different strokes, i read a bunch of both in elementary school

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

Oscar Wilde and Mary Shelley any day of the week. Poe and Lovecraft are great though, too. Dunno who I prefer.

Yeah, I think Wilde is the best of them all, and Frankenstein is a goddamn masterpiece, period, but I think I’d put Poe up with Wilde and Shelley. Maybe.

While Lovecraft has his faults as a writer, no doubt, his vision and craft were unique and inimitable. I mean, you can copy Lovecraft, do Lovecraft homages all day, but there’s no mistaking the man himself.
Same with Poe.
I think that being inimitable, completely true to your own vision is one of the hallmarks of great artists, so I’d put both Poe and Lovecraft in that group.

 

[Mr Hyde]

I never really clicked with Poe. He was a good writer with some stylish prose but I never cared for him. Lovecraft resonated more with me, he had an intense and vivid imagination and his themes and ideas are unique and still relevant to this day. The love for Lovecraft though came very late in my life, I never fully appreciated his work growing up, except Herbert West and Innsmouth.

 

[Radical Dreamer]

I love Lovecraft stories. Haven't read anything from Poe, though. What books would you guys recommend from him?

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

I love Lovecraft stories. Haven't read anything from Poe, though. What books would you guys recommend from him?

I’d just go with a collection of his most famous short stories, and you’ll be good to go. Fall of the House of Usher, Ligea, Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Raven, Ms Found in a Bottle, etc.

 

[Robot Carnival]

I think Poe is better but I like Lovecraft stuff also.

 

[triplestation]

such things should be settled in the octagon

 

[Karma Jawa]

Tough call.

Poe was a much better writer with more interesting stories, but I’d have to go with Lovecraft because he created a more intriguing and distinctive world.

Thankfully I can enjoy both!

 

[Flying Toaster]

Poe hands down is a much better writer. Lovecraft on the other hand is a much better world builder and shows a grander imagination. Both are equally talented in different areas of creativity when it comes to writing.

 

[desertdroog]

Poe was the master at crafting ideas with the English language.

Lovecraft's worlds are much more interesting.

Both are great, and If Samuel Clemens had decided to write horror, he would have crushed each of them.

 

[spandexmonkey]

I love them both, Poe was my favorite when I was younger but as I get older I find Lovecraft to be the more interesting. It's a window into a doomed mind. His life was truly miserable from beginning to end. That sense of hopelessness is expressed in his work. So many people try to emulate his work but only ever get the strange creatures but often lack that feeling of no hope.

 

[softwarepagan]

Don't make me pick; I love them both so much! They're both such quintessentially American writers, too.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

Victor Hugo I guess.

 

[Spaceman292]

Poe.

Lovecraft is overrated as fuck.

This but the opposite.

 

[Stiflers Mom]

Poe was the better writer, Lovecraft imagined way more crazier shit.
Personally, I like Lovecraft a lot more.

 

[Melubas]

Very hard question. I love them both but for slightly different reasons. Poe was a better, more skilled writer, hands down. He pretty much sums up gothic horror for me, and I found his collected works extremely unsettling, but not disturbing. Plus he kind of invented the detective genre which is cool. Lovecraft however I love for the mythos he created. He is not as good a writer as Poe but the sheer amount of amazing stories he's written makes him pretty much the king of horror in my book. I mean, read Pickman's Model, The Music of Erich Zann, A Shadow Over Innsmouth or At the Mountains of Madness and tell me that isn't prime storytelling. I hate to pit them against each other but I think that Lovecraft takes it for me.

 

[Alebrije]

Lovercraft created a better lore most of his works are correlated and share the same sense of fear. Poe moved from one story to another with better writting.

Hard to tell who is better since both are great on different skills...I like Lovercraft more than Poe because his horror is original hard to find other writer with the same imagination.

 

[Shuttershy]

I am in love with Lovecraft stories, but his writing style doesn't really click with me. I think I like Poe better. His atmosphere and his writing. My gf just made me fall in love with Poe I guess, she really like his work.

 

[Croatoan]

Lovecraft was a racist and if you like his work, or gain any inspiration from it, you are literally worse than Hitler.

 

[MudoSkills]

Poe, like Arthur Conan Doyle, is a writer who has fantastic ideas and makes them absolutely boring as fuck to read.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

Poe, like Arthur Conan Doyle, is a writer who has fantastic ideas and makes them absolutely boring as fuck to read.

Nah. They're different styles that demand full attention, but I think they're as exciting now as they were in their day. If you listen to a collection of Doyle on audiobook, it might click for you. Same with Poe to a degree. Hearing Poe out loud is wonderful.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

Lovecraft was a racist and if you like his work, or gain any inspiration from it, you are literally worse than Hitler.

Let's stay on topic of highly skilled horror writers. No one thinks that. He was an awful, fearful racist, and xenophobia and fear of the other deeply informs his work. No one should downplay that.
It is also fine to appreciate his work.

 

[Tesseract]

for what it's worth, i think they would have gotten along

both men defaulted to evil