American writer, poet and critic Edgar Allan Poe is famous for his tales and poems of horror and mystery. His imaginative storytelling and tales of mystery and horror gave birth to the modern detective story. Many of Poe’s works became literary classics. Some aspects of Poe’s life, like his literature, is shrouded in mystery, and the lines between fact and fiction have been blurred substantially since his death. The Poem For Annie was first published as part of the Collection Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe in Boston 1849 by the Publisher Houghton Mifflin. The Subject of the poem is a dying man speaking his last words about what his last experience is. His view of death is controversial, in that, death to him is a cure of the “illness” of life, and even after and during his demise his mind is still very much active while his body is not. The title of the poem is a dedication to the second figure in the poem who is the focus of the last five stanzas. Annie is the lover of the dying man, and because of her love and his mind lives on, more alive than ever. To demonstrate this living of his brain, the dying man uses active, strong words that suggest/reference life, such as “throbbing, burned, fever, torture, passion.” In addition, he also uses two flowers to express his thoughts, pansies and rosemaries. Enjoy free online English audiobook “For Annie”, a poem by Edgar Allan Poe.
