How many volumes of Anne Rice were in that shelf? Was it just that someone misplaced a novel, or were a ton of her novels in that shelf?
Anyway - I think that the standards for what goes i nthe category of "literature" on the bookshelf is mostly determined by the store that's selling the book =P (and probably mostly for their own ease of categorization)
Reverting back to Poe's "The Bells" again -- I realize he was probably heavily medicated when he wrote it, and that he was passing through time and space etc. I also get that the poem, as with any other poem, is meant to breach the barrier of language and image.
Just that personally, to me, the meter of the poem doesn't seem to work that well (but heck, neither do DaPenguins =P). Also, his use of repetition doesn't feel, to me, like it is successfully conveying the chime of bells (which was his goal).
"The Raven," however, is magnificent, along with so many other poems he wrote or was commissioned to write.
I stand firmly on one point tho - his one novel is a disaster. Poe's style of writing can work for short stories, but not for an entire novel =P