f two sittings is required, the affairs of the world interfere, and like everything like totality is at once destroyed” (Hart 129). Thus, length was the very key to enjoyment of a poem or a short story. Unity was also very important in Poe’s writing. As Hart explains, “The single unifying factor in all of Poe’s works is the concept of unity itself” (11). He was very concerned with the relationship of words and their effect on the reader. Poe drove himself to create a dream world, one self-contained within writing itself, without the help of external forces. He did this because he did not want his writing to be dependant on any outside variable. Now that short fiction and poetry have become an accepted genre, Poe’s theories have become even more important. When creating, Poe believed, that one should use an inverse approach to writing. He thought that the writer should have one “single effect”, which motivated the entire piece of literature. He thought that the best approach to this would be by coming up with an ending first, and then go about finding the means in which to achieve it. He once stated that, “A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents: but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then inverts such incidents- he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect” (May 124). Poe's poetry uses a theme that appears to deal primarily with his fear of loss, not of himself, but of loved ones. In many of the verses, he refuses to deny the finality of death. Perhaps it is because he sees a perpetuation of life in the remembrance of those departed. In effect, death simply becomes a barrier that only temporarily separates the grieving survivor from the more fortunate departed. In his poem ...
