that he supported himself in a
hand-to-mouth fashion by writing for and editing newspapers and
periodicals, living successively in Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia,
and New York. The publication of his remarkable poem, "The Raven," in
1845, brought him fame, and for a short time he was a literary lion.
But in 1847 his wife died, and his two remaining years were a gradual
descent._

_Poe's work falls into three divisions: poems, tales, and criticism.
The poems are chiefly remarkable for the amazing technical skill with
which haunting rhythms and studied successions of vowel and consonant
sounds are made to suggest atmospheres and emotional moods, with a
minimum of thought. In the writing of fiction, Poe is the great master
of the weird tale, no writer having surpassed him in the power of
shaking the reader's nerves with suggestions of the supernatural and
the horrible. In these stories, as in the poems, he shows an
extraordinary sense of form, and his effects are produced not merely by
the violently sensational, but by carefully calculated attacks upon the
reader's imaginative sensibilities._

_In criticism Poe was, if not a scholarly, at least a stimulating and
suggestive, writer, with a fine ear and, within his range, keen
insight. His essay on "The Poetic Principle" is his poetic confession
of faith. He makes clear and defends his conception of poetry; a
conception which excludes many great kinds of verse, but which,
illuminated as it is by abundant examples of his favorite poems, throws
light in turn upon some of the fundamental elements of poetry._

_It is worth noting that no American author seems to have enjoyed so
great a European vogue as Poe._

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE

In speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no design to be either
thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at random, the
essentiality of what we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to
cite for consideration some few of those minor English or American
poems which best suit my own taste, or which upon my own fancy have
left the most definite impression. By "minor poems" I mean, of course,
poems of little length. And here in the beginning permit me to say a
few words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether
rightfully or wrongfully, has always had its influence in my own
critical estimate of the poem. I hold that a long poem does not exist.
I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a f