Literary Style

Literary Styles

            Poe was a rather dark figure. Most of his short stories and poems have a very dark feeling or tone to them. Poe’s poetry often acts as a map to his own life struggles. An example of this is the poem “The Bells”. Poe wrote the bells after his wife died of tuberculosis. That is why the poem goes from being peaceful and happy to very dark and menacing. Poe frequently used parallelism, alliteration, and symbolism in his writings. He almost always personified an object in his poems. Poe’s poems generally follow a fairly strict rhyme scheme. Poe seldomly ever used free verse, and generally followed a more traditional writing style. A few common themes in Poe’s poems are life, death, love, hate, lonlieness, sorrow, despair, and a general sense of darkness about the world.

Links to other Poe poems:

Dream Within a Dream

To my Mother

The Raven