Poe

                               Poe
 Edgar Allan Poe was an american author and poet who's work is very famous today. Poe's poems are known for being dark and creepy or dealing with the supernatural. The pieces Poe wrote fit the ideas that were common during the romanticism period in United States. I would think that Poe's poems were not only influenced by the new ideas of his time but also the life he lived. I think what Edgar Poe has been through during his lifetime (along with his intelligence) enabled him to write his stories.
   Poe didnt live the easiest life but rather a life of hardship and loneliness. A lot of the events and circumstances that he endured in his life were reflected in his poems. For starters, his mother died before he was even 3 years old then he was adopted by a married couple. His new mother also eventually died while he was in his teens and his "father" didnt really like him. Poe had to deal with the absence of  a loving womanly figure on several occasion in his life and so did subjects in his poems. In The Raven the narrator is mourning the lost of his beloved Lenore and in Ligeia the main character loses his love interest twice. Isolation was another recurring factor in Edgar Poe's life. Poe lost two sets of parents and grew up with few friends so isolation was probably his closest companion. In The Raven the narrator seems to be isolated from society due to his mood and in The Fall of the House of Usher the narrators friend is very seclusive. Also in the Fall of the House of Usher the partaking of incest is suggested and Edgar Allan Poe married his 13 year old cousin (he was 27 at the time). Im not sure if that was normal at the time or not.
   I think Edgar's life really shaped the themes in his poems and it just so happened to accommodate the new ideas being developed by other artist of his time. Many of the things Edgar Allan Poe lived through can be seen in his poems.