Either I exist or I do not exist, and no amount of pap which I happen to be lapping can dull me to the loss.

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

If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.

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

Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realise his wishes- Now that he can realise them, he must either change them or perish

Dissonance / (if you are interested) / leads to discovery.

And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom-- feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind.