A Personal Opinion on the Style, Tone, and Imagery of Edgar Allan Poe's Poetry

I first heard of Edgar Allen Poe through my father, he read poetry of his and he really liked a poem called “Annabel Lee”. When he first read it to me when I was younger I thought it was a cute little love poem and that was it, I didn’t think much of it. When given this assignment, I felt this was the perfect time to do something I always wanted to do and I was very excited to look at some of Poe’s other work.

The thing that I liked about his poetry is the raw emotion he puts into his poems; his poems were based on life situations and how he felt. He used his gift as a poet and used poetry as his own personal diary, where he could write everything he felt and thought and no one would judge him.

Poets such as Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou are well known, more modern style poets who write poems that can be relatable and inspiring while Edgar Allen Poe came from a dark & older period of time and that definitely shows in his poetry which is what catches my attention.

For example, in his poem “The Haunted Place” he puts you in a sad and somber mood seeing as though something that was once so beautiful, loved, and appreciated by everyone has now become a dark depressing, haunted, and scary place that people would rather avoid:

“But evil things in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch’s high estate!

Ah, let us mourn—for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him desolate” (Poe, 33-36)

The drastic but smooth transition is very appealing to me as well as how he had such a way with words when he was trying to express his love for someone, especially at such a young age.

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In a lot of Poe’s poetry, he uses dashes which makes you pause and take in what you just read. His poems tend to be very dramatic in tone and diction so I think it was very beneficial for him to add the dashes. Poe’s poetry is not for you to skim through or rush through so by adding the dashes he is forcing you to take in his work and really try to understand the meaning of his poems. As I stated earlier, his poems were like diary entries of his life that he was willing to share with the world so that people would read and maybe understand him better. I genuinely enjoyed his poems and doing this project and will hopefully get more people into his poetry.