Poe "Annabel Lee"

Edgar Allen Poe is a classic piece of literature that is covered in almost every high school. High schoolers, classically, love Poe for the dark elements that create his stories and poems because of this I think that Poe is one of the most important authors that we discuss and use within high schools. As students are often so interested in Poe and the strange elements that are in his works implementing and using Poe will help keep students engaged with the text. As we have learned throughout the class part of encouraging students to relearn how to love reading and in order to do this we as teachers have to provide texts that interest the students.

The Poe piece that I read was “Annabel Lee”. This piece was my favorite Poe poem that I read in high school during the Poe unit. I would teach this in my classroom because Poe is such an engaging writer for high school students making his works so important in a high school classroom. This piece in particular I would include, not just because it is my favorite, but because it also can engage the females in the classroom more than his other pieces might. “Annabel Lee” is the love interest of the speaker who has passed away, giving the poem a very long-lost love feeling that many high school girls dream about.

To teach this poem I would incorporate it with other Poe poems to work with gothic elements and themes. Or with other poems to work with interpreting poems. I think that learning to read and understand poems and how everyone brings their own piece to a poem is an enlightening and wonderful skill to have. Using poetry to teach students how their classmates have been through different things and thus have different perspectives and things to bring to not only poetry readings but everything is an important thing to learn and understand.