The highs and lows - the life of Edgar Allan Poe

https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-edgar-allan-poe-use-symbol-raven-present-509375

I studied the work of Edgar Allan Poe at the university. But these were exclusively prose works. But our program did not include his poems.

I distinctly remember the first time I heard about his poems, I was watching an episode of the Simpsons and their Halloween special had a reenactment of his poem “The Raven” probably his best know poem and quite rightly so. I was hooked straight away, the fast pace of the poem had me on the edge of my seat, the poem was perfectly read by James Earl Jones. I loved the rhythm and rhyme of the poem .I decided to study his work and biography in more detail.. So I bought the complete works and read up about his life. I was not disappointed, he had stuff just as good as “The Raven”, I particularly love his poetry, and often sit and dip in through his poems. But what drawer me to the man was his life. He was born in 1809 and tragedy was never far away even at such a young age. When he was just a baby his mother died, just a baby unable to understand why his mother has gone away. In his work he often wrote about the afterlife and bringing people back from the dead, maybe he was trying to write his mother back to life.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2014/10/between-popular-and-literary-remembering-edgar-allan-poe-165-years-after-his-death

Poe struggled throughout his life, he struggled with his career, never earning enough to feed his family, and he struggled with alcohol, he used to drink at work and was disliked throughout the community, he biggest struggle though was that the people he loved kept leaving him. “The Raven” was his biggest achievement and it came at a time of great tragedy, his young wife Virginia was dying from TB. How Poe kept his life together until this time is beyond me, how he found the strength to carry on and write and look after his wife.

The biggest fascination for me though lies with his death, I love a mystery and this is one that will never be solved. In his last few days Poe was missing, but he was eventually found wandering the streets of Baltimore, he was in great distress, he was drunk, incoherent, and for some unknown reason wearing someone else’s clothes. He eventually died in hospital, never being able to explain what had happened to him. While this is tragic that such a talent died destitute and alone, the fact that no one will ever know what happened to him fascinates me. He was loved and loathed throughout his life, but he soon became the literary giant that we all love now. He has a statue of himself, previous generations trying to copy his style, such as: Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne, he has societies named in his honour, he even has cartoons react his poems. Thank God they do I may not have found my all time favourite writer and my specialist subject for mastermind.

The Raven BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48860/the-raven