'Annabel Lee' (Stacy)

Stacy writes:
I was wondering if Poe was so into taking the traditional framework of a poem and making it UNIQUE, why is his poem "Annabel Lee" in such a usual ballad form? What is that significance?

There are 2 things to consider here: ballad meter (iambic tetrameter, or iambic tetrameter alternating with trimeter, 4-3) and ballad stanza. Poe writes it in ballad meter, but his stanzas--if you count the number of lines per stanza--are totally whacked. 4 lines per stanza is the norm; or maybe 6--it's almost always an even number.

But whatever stanza length you choose for a ballad, the stanzas are usually equal in size. Not so here. And the poem is end-rhymed, like most ballads, but the stanzas each have their own individual rhyme schemes.

When people talk about the "eerie feeling" they have in reading Annabel Lee, that feeling is created in part by the sense that there's something familiar and yet something "off" happening at the same time.