Edgar Allan Poe - Poem Quotes

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I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.
I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length.

Edgar Allan Poe
Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.

Edgar Allan Poe
A poem in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth.

Edgar Allan Poe
There neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified — more supremely noble than this very poem — this poem per se — this poem which is a poem and nothing more — this poem written solely for the poem's sake.

Edgar Allan Poe
Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem per se, the circumstance... which, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.

Edgar Allan Poe
It is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring, effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax.

Edgar Allan Poe