Edgar Allan Poe's Poetry

Edgar Allan Poe's poetry gives sound an unusually prominent role in the movement of feeling. In The Raven, repeated questions and a recurring answer turn a night-time encounter into an increasingly troubled meditation on loss. Annabel Lee uses the cadence of a remembered story to sustain a speaker's attachment to the dead, while A Dream Within a Dream questions what can be held against the passing of time. Refrains, internal rhyme, and precise changes of rhythm create effects that are inseparable from meaning. The poems' dark situations belong to their dramatic imagination, where a speaking voice may reveal anguish without providing a settled account of reality.