Lost Love

Poe offers a glimpse into his life with "Annabel Lee". He was as passionate in his writing about the love of his life as he was in his writings of murderous tales of terror. While some would view "Annabel Lee" with a perverseness that is very Poe, I do not. Poe wrote this poem out of tribute and mourning for a lost love. "Annabel Lee" unfolds the secrets of Poe's heart with vivid anguish over his "lost" love.

Many critics believe this work to be about Poe's wife, Virginia Clemm. (Hoffman 26-27). I feel that there is some credence to this theory, yet there is a part of me that wonders if parts of this poem refer to the lost love of his childhood, Sarah Shelton.(Regan 179-180) There is a suggestion that Poe himself was a child in a childhood relationship, "I was a child and she was a child...".(Poe) On the other hand, lines that reference the object of Poe's affection as a maiden would suggest someone that had never been married, which would exclude Sarah Shelton. Ms. Shelton was not reunited with Edgar Poe until 1849 about the time that this work was written.

"Annabel Lee" was not excluded from ambiguity which was almost always present in works by Poe. The evidence seems to point more to Virginia Clemm, Poe's child bride, being the inspiration for this work. This troubles me since he was double her age. She was a mere 13 or 14 at the time of marriage. And the marriage brings us problems with the "maiden" from the poem. So to continue with the analysis that this poem is about his wife, means accepting that he was married for several years and his "wife" remained a virgin until her premature death. “But we loved with a love that was more than love-“(Poe) does suggest that there ‘love’ was beyond what the mere mortals view as love. I wonder if Edgar Poe was on a plane above the rest of us. Was his intellect so superior that we just don’t get it? That is hard to swallow so, this brings acceptance that Poe was bizarre in his life as well as his works and may never be understood completely. He loved and lost and grieved as passionately as he loved.

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