Edgar Allen Poe was a true genius of his time. He knew how to capture horror and frighten his readers out of their minds. Edgar Allen Poe wrote a poem, “A Valentine,” that he wrote for his secret lover. This paper argues the differences between Poe’s poem “A Valentine” and his other work, and how it differs from his typical psychologically insane, writing style. Including biographical information about Poe’s life, explaining why he became a fascinating gothic writer. “A Valentine” is a romantic poem for his secret mistress. Poe talks about his lover’s beauty, “For her his rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes, Brightly expressive as the twins of leoda” (lines 1-2). It’s romantic the way he compares his lover to “Leda and the Swan”. But he also gives his readers clues in order to find out who she is. “Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies”(line 3). …show more content…
Poe explains to us that her name is hidden within the “lies” of this poem, basically saying that her name is hidden in the poem that’s the riddle. “Search narrowly the lines!-they hold a treasure” (line 5), he implies that she is treasure to be found within the poem. The reader will also notice Poe’s repetition of the word “poet”, you can make an assumption that his lover is a poet. But for modern readers we would have never understood Poe’s riddle since we wouldn’t think to look at the poem as an acrostic. That’s exactly what Poe did to hide his lover’s name. It was camouflage for words inside his poem, who was written for, Frances Sargent Osgood. He used the first letter of the first line, the second letter of the second and so on, to spell out her name. But I didn’t notice it and you probably didn’t either, and that’s not a bad thing. People probably cared about it when Poe was alive because his lover was married and so was he at the time, that would have been scandalous for them to be