"The Philosophy of Composition" — the Key to Poe's Method?, Part 2

This week, we continue our examination of "The Philosophy of Composition" — specifically, Poe's ostensible account of the process he used in writing "The Raven" — this time with a focus on his use of sounds in the poem.

"The Philosophy of Composition" first appeared in Graham's Magazine, which was published in Philadelphia.  I was just in Philly a couple of weeks ago doing some recon for a Mind Inclined trip I will be co-leading with historian Chris Young in April 2026.  Please click here to learn more about this trip.

What's in a sound?

When it comes to language, sounds are the smallest bits of information.  Sounds — or phonemes, to use a technical, more nuanced term — make up morphemes, which make up words, which make up phrases, which make up sentences.  Unless you are a linguist or a literary scholar, you probably focus primarily on sentences, but meaning and effect can be conveyed by all of these components, even those itty-bitty sounds.

Just ask Edgar Allan Poe.

It Just Sounds Right

In "The Philosophy of Composition," in which he claimed to have enumerated the steps he took in writing "The Raven," Poe went so far as to say that he chose the word "Nevermore" as the refrain of his poem partly because of its sounds, specifically the o and the r.  He explains:

Having made up my mind to a refrain, the division of the poem into stanzas was, of course, a corollary: the refrain forming the close to each stanza. That such a close, to have force, must be sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt: and these considerations inevitably led me to the long o as the most sonorous vowel, in connection with r as the most producible consonant.

The sound of the refrain being thus determined, it became necessary to select a word embodying this sound, and at the same time in the fullest possible keeping with that melancholy which I had predetermined as the tone of the poem. In such a search it would have been absolutely impossible to overlook the word “Nevermore.” In fact, it was the very first which presented itself.

Poe's discussion of a refrain featuring a "sonorous" sound "susceptible of protracted emphasis," may seem arcane — a poet's version of what we sometimes call "inside baseball" today — but imagine how the poem would sound and indeed feel different if his refrain had been, say, "twinkle."  Wait, don't laugh!  That word actually occurs at the end of a line in one of Poe's best-known poems, "The Bells":

While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight;

It works here, but it would not work as the refrain in "The Raven."  Why not?  I'll spare you an intricate discussion of the kinds of speech sounds and the way we make them with our mouths and tongues (as much fun as that would be for me) and instead simply underline Poe's point about "protracted emphasis."  We can extend the final syllable of "Nevermore": "Nevermoooorrrre."  Technically, we could extend the final syllable of "twinkle," as well, but doing so sounds unnatural: "twinkllllllle."  The word works in "The Bells," on the other hand, because the l sound resembles the resonance of a bell after it has been rung.

In the case of "Nevermore," sound contributes to sense, as the extension of those final sounds suggest extended time — a long span that continues into eternity.  That's a long time to be without Lenore (the lover the speaker of the poem has lost), a long time to be haunted by the Raven, a long time to remain in "that shadow that lies floating on the floor."  Furthermore, although Poe doesn't say as much, the long o is the vowel that most closely resembles a moan.  Compare it with, say, a long a or a long e sound.

Poe's use of sound goes well beyond his famous refrain.  Consider the following words:

lore

door

floor

shaven

craven

What do they all have in common?  They all occur in the "The Raven," and they all end in sounds that can be extended (as opposed to sounds such as p, t, and k, which are known as "stops" in linguistic terminology).  LIke "Nevermore," these words leave their lines and phrases open-ended in terms of sound, hinting at extended time.

The Insistence of Rhyme

You probably noticed something else that many of these words have in common: lore, door, and floor all rhyme, as do shaven and craven.  The aural phenomenon of rhyme is fascinating, and it deserves more discussion than I will give it here, but we all know that it involves similarity of sound, specifically one or more final sounds in words occurring in particular positions, usually the ends of lines.  Not all poems have regular rhyme, but "The Raven" certainly does.  Indeed, in "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe explicitly refers to this aspect of his poem, alluding to some "unusual, and some altogether novel effects, arising from an extension of the application of the principles of rhyme and alliteration."

Here again sound complements sense.  The sheer amount of rhyme is notable in its own right.  Poe not only manages to write his 108 lines so that most rhyme with other lines — creating what we call "end rhyme" — but also crams additional rhyming words into the middles of lines, creating internal rhyme.  Try reading the first stanza aloud:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door — Only this, and nothing more.”

It's hard to miss the internal rhyme: dreary/weary, napping/tapping/rapping.  Other stanzas follow the same pattern: two internal rhymes in the first line, along with three more rhyming words in the third and fourth lines.

Insistent, persistent, ineluctable rhyme complements the meaning of "The Raven," a poem about "Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance," as Poe puts it in "The Philosophy of Composition." Like the memory of the "lost Lenore," the rhyme just keeps coming back.

This discussion of sound and Poe's discussion of it in "The Philosophy of Composition" bring us back to the perennial question I presented at the beginning of last week's column: "Did the authors really mean to say everything we are interpreting in their works?"  Whether Poe was providing a truthful account of his process of writing "The Raven," hoaxing us, or embellishing an otherwise truthful account, his discussion of content and sound (as well as other aspects, which I have not discussed in these columns) shows that he clearly thought about the choices that an author can make and the implications of those choices.  In short, he conceived of crafting a poem to achieve one's ends.

I suspect that Poe did take a deliberate approach to writing "The Raven" and many of his other works.  Yes, he may have embellished his account of crafting "The Raven" when he wrote "The Philosophy of Composition," but it doesn't strike me as far-fetched that he chose his sounds intentionally and arranged them thoughtfully to convey both meaning and effect.

Indeed, we might even argue that the proof is in the pudding-or, in this case, in the poem.  "The Raven" has been called the "probably the best-known poem ever written in the Western Hemisphere," and I can think of no English word so closely and widely associated with a single poet than "Nevermore."

I think Poe knew what he was doing and was very good at doing it.

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For more in sound in poetry, see "'We Real Cool' — A Poem for the Ears" in the April 12 issue of Mind Travel.  For more on "The Raven," see the "Once Upon a Midnight Dreary: The Genius and Legacy of 'The Raven'" in the October 31, 2024, issue.