During the mid-1970s, Robert Motherwell created a series of Abstract-Expressionist collages inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe as well as a lithograph entitled Poe's Abyss. These creative efforts indicate Motherwell's lifelong fascination with Poe's writings, which he first encountered in his youth and returned to as a young man after discovering Charles Baudelaire and Stephane Mallarmé, both of whom also received homage at Motherwell's hands. Being interviewed near the end of his life, Motherwell reiterated his devotion to Poe, naming him as a poet with whom he felt especially close.

“He keeps coming back, doesn't he?” the interviewer, aware of Motherwell's longstanding interest in Poe, observed. “What do you care especially for: the tales, the poetry?”

“Everything, really, the whole man,” Motherwell responded. “I think he was a one-man modernist, at a moment when America was moving in the opposite direction. His English is so alive, sophisticated.”