Why is the poem anabel lee instead of virgina clemm? and doesn't make sense at all about the kingdom by the sea. What is the poem written the way it is? Is he just telling the way he would of liked his love life to be?

-- Anonymous, May 15, 2001

Answers

Annabel was the name of his lost. She wasn't a true person but in Poe's retrospective, Annabel Lee fit into a long line of rhyme schemes. The poem is all about his loved one catching Hypothermia (I believe) and she passes away leaving a very upset Poe. The Kingdom by the sea is just an analogy for his place by the sea...aka ocean. I hope I helped.

-- Anonymous, May 15, 2001

The Kingdom by the Sea plus the fragment The Lighthouse shows Poe in his last year on the brink of despair. On the shore between life and death. His love in their precarious haven against the world is dead.

As typical with other lost loves their eyes are reflected in the comfort of starry skies. His triumph as in Annie is being joined to his love- but the clear subtext, with an element of horror, is that it is his death.

My high school teacher ridiculed the wave sounding meter of this poem and the name. It very nearly is too much, especially for those who cannot empathize with the building of sorrow and dread and the mixed feeling of the ending that very much typifies Poe's hopes and dread of death and the hauntings of those he lost.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2001

I am a junior at Harlan Community High School and we just got done "analyzing" the poem Anabel Lee. Basically what we came up with-- which is the class' opinion, not true facts--was that when he wrote the poem it was basically him expressing his love for Anabel Lee. He wanted the people to know that even though she was taken from him he would still love her regardless of her being gone. We also thought that the whole "kingdom by the sea" was basically a place where he could be calm and accepting with the death of his love and that was the place that she was buried.

-- Anonymous, August 22, 2001