Hi, my name is Brian Dean Fogg Jr. and am in the eigth grade doing a paper on Edgar Allan Poe. I chose him because he is my faviorite author. Well I was woundering if you can help me with this question about how and who influenced Poe to become a writer.

Thanks Brian

-- Anonymous, March 06, 2003

Answers

I would say the British Romantic poets at the time like Byron and Shelley. Poe was a natural and had the same heart and psychology of his contmeporary poets too. In some ways more a life of melancholy and loss.Much is made of the influence of Mrs. Jane Stanard who encouraged him in his youth with the classics. She also died and thus became an emotional wellspring because of that as well. Poe's liberal arts education in America and Britain was broad and deep as it would be for any well bred citizen of the time. After dropping out of West Point and a military career he was disappointed with his youthful poetry's reception. Yet he turned wholeheartedly to magazine writing, stories, articles and extras. The Gothic genre was very popular already(German Romanticism). Poe cleaned it up, satirized,elevated the form of the short story while maintaining popularity. He also wrote humor and other genres, inventing his own- the detective story. Poe reacted against long poems where the effect dissipated from fatigue and didactic poems that presumed content must tyrannize over beauty and art. So you have to study what Poe was studying and learn about the life experiences related to his path. Get a good biiography. The Baltimore web sites are extremely good: www.eapoe.org and the colorful interactive "knowingpoe" website. He describes writing as the highest choice anyone can make and was singularly devoted to it whatever the setbacks. He knew his worth.

-- Anonymous, March 07, 2003

When he saw your face he got scared and turned to poetry....

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2003