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  *All quotations are taken from The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (New York: Modern Library, 1992).

  *All italics in quotations are mine.

  *Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays (New York: Library of America, 1995), p. 742.

  *From The Varieties of Religious Experience, in William James: Writings, 1902–1910 (New York: Library of America, 1987). The particular phrases quoted can be found on pp. 343–44.

  *Ibid., p. 357.

  *The number of pages devoted to this poem in Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose (New York: Library of America, 1982).

  *Poem lengths are taken from the volume previously cited.

  *Probably Parasteatoda tepidariorum.

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