Edgar Allan Poe: Objective Views on His Life and Achievements

Earlier, when I thought of Edgar Allan Poe I thought of a very skilled and creative writer of horror stories. I did not know that he uses other styles of writing before I read about him in the "Norton Anthology of American Literature".

Edgar Allan Poe is yet another example of writers who have had a very rough life, but turn out to be very successful. I believe that the malicious experiences that Poe had in his life contributed to his very unique and successful writings. He lost his parents at a very young age and was adopted by foster parents who he didn't get along with very well. I think these events contributed to his repeated self-destruction of his own life. Even though he was admitted to the University of West Point, he never clearly realized what kind of opportunity he was granted and he skipped his lectures and didn't focus on his studies. Also, the loss of his wife Virginia was a main contributor to his ill mannered behavior. After losing his wife he started drinking very heavily and got into various quarrels.

Poe talks a lot about the beauty of poems when criticizing other poems and prose. He wanted to read and write poems solely for the beauty of them, not to hear overly preachy and moralistic poems and so forth. Poe viewed a poem as a mathematical concept and dictated that there were specific guidelines that were supposed to be followed when writing an aesthetic poem.