Apropos to Halloween and our study of poetry . . . "The Raven" and "The Haunted Palace"

"The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe--things that might make this poem more understandable:

 Poe was fascinated by SOUND in poetry and in "The Raven" he set about to write a poem in which the reader becomes as "lost" as the speaker. The speaker of the poem is mourning the loss of a woman named Lenore, whom he has loved, but who has apparently died. [Poe, by the way, felt that the best subject for a poem was the death of a beautiful woman.] As the speaker recounts this particular evening and his experience with "the raven" his hold on sanity slips away. His imagination begins to play tricks on him; he has hallucinations; he imagines the bird from "night's Plutonian shore" has come to him with a dreaded message: he will never be re-united with his love, Lenore. That is enough to send him into a deep depression by the poem's end.  If  the reader approaches this poem and begins reading, he can easily get lost in the sound of the poem and have no idea what was said, what the story was, or what sense there was in the poem.  Sound surpasses sense.

Video Published on Jan 27, 2013

Writer/director Peter Bradley brings Edgar Allan Poe's classic horror poem,THE RAVEN, to chilling life in a faithful, word-for-word adaption. Seen in numerous festivals in seven countries, and used as a teaching aid in Drama and English programs in the U.S., Canada, and the UK, THE RAVEN is greatly inspired by German expressionist cinema of the 1920's. Based not completely in reality, but not completely in fantasy, one man's self-induced torture over the loss of his lover manifests itself and pushes him over the edge of sanity. This stylized piece captures the twisted, tortured world of Poe in a simple, yet highly detailed way that has to be seen and heard to be believed.

A more traditional rendition of "The Raven:"

Poetic Devices in Poe's "Raven:"

repetition -- WHY is it important?  What does repetition do?
alliteration-- Repetition of consonant sounds--usually the initial consonant sounds; e.g., "grim, gaunt, ghastly"
consonance--repetition of the sounds in the middle or ends of words--beguiling, smiling
assonance--repetition of the same vowel sound -- Lenore, nevermore
symbolism--literal and figurative meaning--e.g., the raven
rhyme--internal rhyme and end rhyme - exactly what it sounds like (pun intended)
rhythm--the stressed and unstressed syllables of carefully chosen words selected by the poet
formal diction--choice of words and the arrangement that suggests a proper person/situation, etc.
allusion--reference to the past, usually historical, religious or literary--e.g., Pallas (or with alliteration AND consonance, the "pallid bust of Pallas")
speaker--Poe's narrators are often emotionally unstable, which is the case in the speaker of "The Raven"