I am writing a 3-5 page research paper on Edgar allan Poe and if he was obsessed with death, can you give me some websites and resourses that would be helpful please!

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2004

Answers

www.eapoe.org, links from there especially to Poe studies online for select articles, poedecoder.com.

Try to not view the topic implkistically. Was Poe haunted by loved ones taken too soon, a grief process never completed such as when his mother died when he was a baby? Was he worried about his own loneliness, failure, lost ambitions, health? All valid and very real experiences. I am not sure it is easy to sum Poe up and the temptation with the morbid fashions of Gothic and Dark Romanticism is to say it is all and only Poe. They were mere literary negres common to many writers. In fact, compare some writers and see what is unique about Poe and even what he lacks. For instance, his view of the afterlife is brutally this world perspective, minus much of faith and the supernatural. He uses surprising few superantural appurtenances or gimmicks of the craze for hyperbolic similes. Poe hardly uses similes at all in spite of being both a Romantic and structured idea poet. Imagery is also restrained, even stark, varying from vertigo and fearful grand vistas to the most cramped and claustrophobic traps.

Humor plays with his so-called obsessions as in the macabre self-mocking "The Premature Burial". Poe is his own best source, but comparing him for yourself to other Romantics like Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Thomas Moore, even Tennyson(In Memoriam) should put things into harsh perspective.

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2004

i may die a sad way i may die a happy way even though there is no such thing of a happy death you may hate me you may love me you may not even have a clue who iam but i am haunting you where ever you are where ever you go even though i don't even know you so if you expect me to care about you when you never even started you can forget it. because iam just a girl that doesn't want anything to do with you get out of my head i am losing my mind i am falling behind i am so lost inside is there real help is there such time is there a real god is there true help please help but if you read this you will be tuck in my mind and world forever in eterity!!!! do you need help do you need a miracle well its to late because your stuck and you can never get out

-- Anonymous, February 07, 2005