I'm having fun with our conversations as well! You might have changed your mind by the end of this reply, once you've read the Crane poem below. ;-)

I hereby thank my wonderful high-school English teacher, who loved Stephen Crane (or so I guess, as we went through a number of his poems).

Yes, Crane is brutal. I still remember this one:

Many workmen
Built a huge ball of masonry
Upon a mountaintop.
Then they went to the valley below,
And turned to behold their work.
"It is grand," they said;
They loved the thing.

Of a sudden, it moved.
It came upon them swiftly;
It crushed them all to blood.
But some had opportunity to squeal.
----

If SC and Poe had lived at the same time they would have had the most terrifying conversations.