McIntyre Media Inc.

If "The Raven" is not the best-known American poem, then "Annabel Lee" is. Both have endured because they successfully illustrate Poe's esthetic theories of poetics; they use natural, comprehensible language whose music weaves a spell that underscores and heightens the language. These two poems and "The Dream within a Dream" are performed (not merely read!) as Poe himself might have recited them to his peers—with deep passion and intensity, but always with maximum attention to the text itself. The result is to magnify the mood and clarify the meaning, but never to illustrate, which the reader should do in his or her mind's eye.