SOURCE: Graham, Jorie. “Edgar Allan Poe's ‘The Raven.’” The Paris Review 42, no. 154 (spring 2000): 237-41.

In the following essay, Graham presents a brief examination of Poe's use of voice and language structure to evoke mood, tone, and meaning in “The Raven.”

What I have beside me is a “page,” by Edgar Allan Poe, for three, four, possibly more speakers. The most recessed of them, the “raven” itself, speaks the most radical truth regarding all that springs from any engagement with utterance (which is of course an engagement with temporality's inevitable ongoingness—be it syntactical or emotional): “nevermore.”

The letter points to changes in the opening of stanza eleven, but subsequent revisions to that stanza are worth glancing at, as they seem to be born with instructive inevitability out of the revision this letter contains. The poem in question, Poe's “The Raven,” not only concerns itself with the issue of...