what are some common motifs of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry?

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

Answers

It wouldn't hurt to look over Poe's poems at www.eapoe.org, read his essays on poetry and composition, and simply write down the common ideas and images. In his small body of short poems you may find a lot of repetition, variation on a theme, and many other things in common.

His avowed favorite, the mood of melancholy best expressed in the death(rather, contemplating the death) of a young woman. Denial or suspension of death, remaining fixed on the borderline between the lost happy past and possible future hope in the world beyond. The narrator(lover, poet) or the hero(knight of El Dorado)themselves are trapped precisely there. Their response is alternately hope in the Beauty beyond or despair that loss(with the remnant of memory)is all he can know. Or otherwise put, the defiance of the spirit or the oppression of the spirit by overwhelming loss that palpably weighs down his present life. This view of time is in The Bells, this view of the dead beloved is in The Raven or Annabel Lee, the ambiguity of the dead but undead, suspended beloved(The Sleeper, For Annie). The point of view usually remains the same, that of the poet emotionally experiencing this melancholy tinged with dread but exulting in the power of the vision, not philosphical reflection or clarity.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2002

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-- Anonymous, May 04, 2002