A Life In Edgar Allen Poe's Poetry

Edgar Allen Poe was an American writer who lived from 1809 to 1849. Over the course of his relatively short life he wrote more than seventy poems, with many such as the Raven, acquiring international fame. Poe is well known for his turbulent childhood and the later financial and emotional hardships he endured in his later life. His life had a massive influence on his writing and various events in his life were the inspiration for a large number of his poems. One year after Poe was born his father had completely abandoned his family. This made his mother his sole care-taker who died only months later, leaving Poe an orphan. He was taken in but never officially adopted by John Frances Allen. He lived with Allen into his early adulthood years until he was admitted to the University of Virginia. He later dropped out of the university and became a cadet at the United States Military Academy. At this time he also started to write and publish works. He later was expelled from the Academy in 1829 due to poor performance and he parted ways with John Allen.

The poem’s main theme is of loss as the poem is all about how he responds to the death of Annabel Lee. A line where the narrator reflects upon his love for her is “Our love it was stronger by far than the love of those who were older than we - Of many wiser than we”. The narrator also vows that he can never be separated from Annabelle Lee in the line “Nor the demons down under the sea Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee“ (lines 32-34). The poem does not have a set rhyme scheme; however, the second line in each stanza tends to rhyme with every other subsequent line. The poem is structured like a ballad in its use of the repetition of lines such as “In this kingdom by the sea” and the word “Of” in the beginning of many of the lines to create a sorrowful