“A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

The Poetic Principle (1850)

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Edgar Allan Poe 126

American author, poet, editor and literary critic 1809–1849

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“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.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

The Poetic Principle (1850)
Context: 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.

“This poem has widely been credited to Nash as a poem with the title "Fleas", but is actually the work of Strickland Gillilan and was originally titled "Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

It has been dated to at least 1927 http://www.fun-with-words.com/shortest_poem.html, as published in the Mt Rainier Nature News Notes (1 July 1927).
Misattributed

“Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power not confident but agent.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.
This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they contain.

“It’s a cauld barren blast that blaws nobody good.” - title of poem.”

John Lyon (poet) (1803–1889) Scottish Latter Day Saint poet and hymn writer

The Harp of Zion (1853)

“It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled RAIN pour in from across the nation.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

1950-07-06
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“The writing of a novel or short story or poem or whatever should elevate the audience, not drag the writer down to some level beneath herself.”

Caitlín R. Kiernan (1964) writer

(10 January 2005)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2005
Context: The writing of a novel or short story or poem or whatever should elevate the audience, not drag the writer down to some level beneath herself. And she — the author — should fight always to prevent that dragging down, especially when the only possible benefit of allowing it to happen is monetary.