I can't vouch for the quality of Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe by Daniel Hoffman, as I sadly left this great moment in book-cover art on the shelf, but I can alert you to some awesome deals. Argosy Books, on 59th between Park and Lex, has biographies -- mostly hardcovers -- on its outdoors racks. They're $3 apiece. A small price to pay to learn about someone else's fabulous (or tragic, or complicated) life!
I picked up Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by John Wain, and Elinor Wylie: The Portrait of an Unknown Lady, by Nancy Hoyt (I confess to picking this blindly based on a quick Google search that yielded the following summation of Wylie: "She was changeable, self-absorbed, and dangerously romantic ... in the end, few acquaintances had much patience or, for that matter, much good to say about her"). I've been on a biography kick lately; for my birthday, I got Joan Schenkar's The Talented Miss Highsmith (on the life of Patricia Highsmith) and Jane Fletcher Geniesse's The Passionate Nomad (on the wanderings of Freya Stark).
Well, what are you waiting for? Go! Read!