Poe gives the sense for the first time in America, that literature is serious, not a matter of courtesy but of truth.

A new world is only a new mind.

There is no thing that with a twist of the imagination cannot be something else. Porpoises risen in a green sea, the wind at nightfall bending the rose- red grasses and you- in your apron hurrying to catch- say it seems to you to be your son. How ridiculous! You will pass up into a cloud and look back at me, not count the scribbling foolish that put wings at your heels, at your knees.

Outside, the north wind, coming and passing, swelling and dying, lifts the frozen sand drives it a-rattle against the lidless windows and we may dear sit stroking the cat stroking the cat and smiling sleepily, prrrr.

A profusion of pink roses being ragged in the rain speaks to me of all gentleness and its enduring.

Poetry demands a different material than prose. It uses another facet of the same fact... the spontaneous conformation of language as it is heard.

A poem is a small machine made of words.