Reviewing "Alone" by Edgar Alan Poe

"Alone" was my first poem by Edgar Alan Poe, discovered on a session break from school basking in a late February sunset in a book about a girl who read and wrote poetry amongst gravestones, and that my dear readers, is exactly how you read Poe."Alone" is said to be autobiographically written by a 20 year old Edgar,  and left almost hatefully unnamed, presumably.  It was published after his death and titled "Alone".

Edgar starts off with the reference of his tragic and grief stricken childhood. With deprivation of emotional connections, bereavement has been a common theme in most of his works. Despite his critical essays demonstrating his  literary critical prowess, most of his letters reflect the sorrow that he describes here. In a life filled with abandonments and despair, he felt that his dynamic imagination was a curse.

But it is commendable how he draws his inspiration for even the most raw pieces from snippets of his life, the imagery he paints of landscapes that he must have come across in one of his lonesome rendezvous.

Alone has to be one of those works of Poe which escapes the recurring themes of death of women, horror, madness and life after death. Here, he speaks vividly of the lonliness and disparity that fills his life.  And as he speaks of deriving his passions from an uncommon source and his emotions being oriented due to all the experiences he's had as of yet, one line strikes a cord in my brain, 

"And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—"

Edgar blatantly speaks of his failed attempts at acquiring love, for the love in his life either slipped away from him towards death or he pushed love away and allowed the madness to truly drown him. The momentum of the poem is very similar to Poe's experience, leaving him breathlessly grief stricken and in a deep retrospection. 

As the poem comes to a conclusion, we believe that Edgar was distracted whilst lost in the reverie of his own glum thoughts, trying to decipher them once again in his lifetime through his writing. The ending, however, still leaves me perplexed. After reading several unconfidently vivid and vague analysis on this poem, I draw the conclusion that Poe had more to say, that "Alone" was left unnamed because it was probably incomplete.