Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry

Manos Mathew 12/4/00

Dr. S. English 102

Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry

Edgar Allan Poe was obviously not typical in his style of writing nor in his style of life. His father left the family when he was young and his mother was dead by the time Poe was three from tuberculosis. "So precocious a child must have carried with him, deeply imprinted, the waning figure and the coughing paroxysms of his mother." (Darkening 9). For the remainder of his tragic life, things never seemed to improve much. He lost his wife (also his cousin), Virginia, two years before his own death. After his trouble with alcoholism and general bad health, Poe died when he was about 40 years old. The exact events surrounding his death are still uncertain and somewhat mysterious.

Most of Poe's literary works were inspired by life. "Alone" is Poe's way of vocalizing the unique and dismal life that he led.

1848 Daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe at 39, a yea...

Edgar Allan Poe Museum (Richmond, Virginia)

Edgar Allan Poe's house in the Bronx. Photo taken ...

He, from an apparently young age, finds himself with such different feelings about life than most people. In this poem, Poe describes his own condition of loneliness. In the first three stanzas alone, Poe discusses that since his early childhood he didn't see the world as others saw it. Even as a child his emotions were very hard to express. Anything he expressed he kept inside. In the sixth stanza, Poe writes "My sorrow; I could not awaken", meaning that because he had his emotions bottled up, he couldn't even express his sorrow. Because he couldn't express his emotions, anything he loved he couldn't love with another person, he could only love alone. There was no way he could express himself emotionally. Poe continues to reiterate that since his childhood he had this mystery surrounding him, following him wherever he went. When he did...