Poetry Pairing: Annabel Lee

Edgar Allan Poe is the first poet I discovered during my elementary school years. I purchased a small book of his poems from the Scholastic book fair held in the library and fell in love, most especially with "Annabel Lee." Who wouldn't want to be loved "with a love that was more than love"? (Oh, I now feel sorry for all my pre-teen and teen loves!) All these years later, this poem still enchants me.

I recently downloaded Stevie Nicks' new album "In Your Dreams" and after the first song I was hooked. After hearing "Annabel Lee" in the lucky number 7 slot, I fell hard. Perfect voice to sing this haunting tale. Listen for yourself:

I was even more thrilled to come across Yusef Komunyakaa's essay on his first love, this very poem by Edgar Allan Poe. He writes: "At nine years old, I knew next to nothing about this kind of love, although I had been lightly touched by an element of it in the blues that drifted out of the radios in our kitchen and living room. To know this great longing through words made me tremble inside my skin, and I believe it helped me traverse some new territory in my imagination."

What poem or story was your first love?

First Loves in Poetry

I just read an article by Billy Collins about his "first love" of poems on the Poetry Society of America's website.  Billy Collins writes that John Donne's "The Flea" was the poem to ignite his love affair with poetry, to stimulate "...the first symptom of what was to develop into a chronic love sickness for poetry."

For me, the first poem to "turn me green" as Collins would say was Sylvia Plath's "Daddy."  At that time in my life, the suffocating sense of the poem was something I could easily relate to.  I had to read the poem for a college class and upon first read, kept going back and rereading the previous stanza.  I read it repeatedly that night and like Billy Collins, still have that very book on my bookshelf complete with my lines and squiggles to highlight my favorite lines along with notes about how the poem made me feel.  I chose this poem to recite for the class at the end of the semester.  From then on, I was hooked.  From then on, I looked to any poem that fell into my hands as a treasure to help me to understand myself, process my feelings, and interpret the world.

With what did you begin your love affair?