Hi. For an English test I need to know of some poems or stories written by Poe that represent his life experiences and I'm having trouble finding ones. If anyone knows of some offhand, that'd help me out a lot. The only one I've come up with so far is "Eldorado", which is about the California gold rush, but I'm using that as a last resort, because it wasn't really HIS life experience. Thank you.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2003

Answers

Arghhh. Many scholars have wasted(emphasize WASTED) their time identifying the various women referred to in W B Yeats' famous poems. he himself stated the futility and meaninglessness of the basic endeavor. Whta started out as a movement of the heart turns into a universal artwork meant to stand on its own, for itself and thus much of the biographical material is altered to fit the needs of the work.

So too Poe. Especially Poe. But if you must you must. Leonore, The Assignation, The Raven?- A Byronesque take on his loss of Elmira Royster to another. In fact she did not die, commit suicide or otherwise resemble the fictional heroines. Virginia Poe- Eulalie(brief happiness of married life rescues Poe), Deep in earth(memorailepigram to her death- the problematic Annabel Lee at least portrays Poe's emotional state after her death. The Pym novel shows evidence of the impoverished Poe's natural obsession with food and borrows from his already borrowed work on Conchology. "The Bells" portrays local bells poetically rendered. Hop Frog portrays himself his wife and his "enemies" in the characters, ridicules and rehashes many of his past works and turns them upside down, shows the bitterness of Poe toward everything except his lost love and his art. That last work is a plum tmine of pprivate emotion. The red wine splashed onto Tripetta is a gory symbol of the tuberculosis that killed her his mother and others. Other uses of red(Madeleine Usher, Berenice, Red Death) and pallor also relate to this? Various friendly poems to real women(Valentines, To Helen, To My Mother). Eureka is his attempt to reconcile his life to creation and mystical (aesthetic)philosophy.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2003

what you want to know you will never learn

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2003

His Poem "Alone" I feel reflects on his feelings towards the loss of his parents at an early age. I dunno..hope it helps

-- Anonymous, March 05, 2004

check out the poem "a dream within a dream". it's basically stating that our life is based on a dream and he comtemplates wheather or not we are real.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2004