Why did Poe write Alone???

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2003

Answers

This unpublished poem appeared in a personal album of Lucy Holmes about 1829 along with a poem by Poe's brother. It was discovered long after Poe's death so we don't know anything about it other than the rough date. Being an early poem taking after certain verses by Byron("Manfred" II,ii,50-56 and "The Prisoner of Chillon", X, 44-49) it is Poe's own exprression of his poetic nature and his particular vision. Probably, just as a generation finds their personal music in some current rock star or fashion, Poe found a guide to undertstanding his own nature. A loner off the beaten track with his melancholy and rebellious uniqueness.

After that however it is all Poe's own genuine art and statement, never imitative but innovative and starkly original. It seems a retrospective with little philosophizing but letting the impressions of youth speak for themselves, sweeping time and space in a panorama from his background to a special revelatory scene.

Where Byron uses the simile of the lonely cloud Poe observes a REAL cloud that has- without speaking- an electric effect of bonding the poet and the sight with a visionary experience that needs no device or explanation. Poe usually foref=goes similies and makes his imagery over more than a metaphor, sparely delineated, emotionally charged in a symbolic connection.

-- Anonymous, November 11, 2003

This unpublished poem appeared in a personal album of Lucy Holmes about 1829 along with a poem by Poe's brother. It was discovered long after Poe's death so we don't know anything about it other than the rough date. Being an early poem taking after certain verses by Byron("Manfred" II,ii,50-56 and "The Prisoner of Chillon", X, 44-49) it is Poe's own exprression of his poetic nature and his particular vision. Probably, just as a generation finds their personal music in some current rock star or fashion, Poe found a guide to undertstanding his own nature. A loner off the beaten track with his melancholy and rebellious uniqueness.

After that however it is all Poe's own genuine art and statement, never imitative but innovative and starkly original. It seems a retrospective with little philosophizing but letting the impressions of youth speak for themselves, sweeping time and space in a panorama from his background to a special revelatory scene.

Where Byron uses the simile of the lonely cloud Poe observes a REAL cloud that has- without speaking- an electric effect of bonding the poet and the sight with a visionary experience that needs no device or explanation. Poe usually avoids similes and makes his imagery over more than a metaphor, sparely delineated, emotionally charged in a symbolic connection.

-- Anonymous, November 11, 2003