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Who wrote the best poems of all time? Picking the greatest poems ever written is a very subjective task and a
matter of personal taste and fancy (so if you disagree with my choices, please feel free to compile your own).
Perhaps the most interesting thing about my personal canon is that many of the poems are fairly recent. This leads
me to believe that the "death" of poetry has been greatly exaggerated. I'm including modern English translations of
ancient classics such as "Wulf and Eadwacer" and "Sweet Rose of Virtue" because many readers may not have
read them, and that's a shame. Now here, without further ado, are my personal choices for the best poems ever
written ...
Sappho of Lesbos is perhaps the first great female poet known to us today, and she remains one of the very best
poets of all time, regardless of gender. As you can see from the utterly stellar epigrams below, she remains a
timeless treasure:
Sappho, fragment 42
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Sappho, fragment 58
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Pain
drains
me
to
the
last
drop
.
Lyric poetry begins with (and derives its name from) short poems that were either recited or sung to the strummings
of the lyre, a harp-like instrument. The most famous of the ancient Greek lyric poets is Sappho, who was born on
the island of Lesbos around 600 BC. The homoerotic nature of some of her poems have given the words "lesbian"
and "sapphic" denotations and connotations of female homosexuality. But Sappho was far from a one-trick pony.
The second poem above is timeless and might have been written by any modern girl or woman who found herself
caught in an unflattering light with someone else watching.
My personal top ten lyric poets of all time: William Blake, Louise Bogan, Robert Burns, Hart Crane, A. E.
Housman, Robert Frost, Sappho, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, William Butler Yeats
Honorable Mention: The Archpoet, W. H. Auden, Basho, Elizabeth Bishop, Lord Byron, e. e. cummings, Emily
Dickinson, John Donne, Ernest Dowson, T. S. Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Langston Hughes,
John Keats, John Milton, Wilfred Owen, Sylvia Plath, William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Walt Whitman,
Oscar Wilde, William Wordsworth, Thomas Wyatt
William Butler Yeats was the most famous Irish poet of all time, and his poems of unrequited love for the beautiful
and dangerous revolutionary Maud Gonne helped make her almost as famous as he was in Ireland. The first poem
below is Yeats' loose translation of a Pierre Ronsard poem, in which Yeats imagines the love of his life in her later
years, tending a waning fire. The second poem, "The Wild Swans at Coole" is surely one of the most beautiful
poems ever written, in any language.
http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/barretts-of-wimpole-street-norma-shearer.jpg
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an early advocate of women's rights, and a staunch opponent of slavery. When she
married Robert Browning, theirs became the most famous coupling in the annals of English poetry. She is most
famous for the poem below, which appeared in her Sonnets from the Portuguese.
Anne Sexton was a model who became a confessional poet, writing about intimate aspects of her life, after her
doctor suggested that she take up poetry as a form of therapy. She studied under Robert Lowell at Boston
University, where Sylvia Plath was one of her classmates. Sexton won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1967, but
later committed suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning. Topics she covered in her poems included adultery,
masturbation, menstruation, abortion, despair and suicide.
The Truth the Dead Know
by Anne Sexton
Mary Elizabeth Frye is, perhaps, the most mysterious poet who appears on this page, and perhaps in the annals of
poetry. Rather than spoiling the mystery, I will present her poem first, then provide the details ...
This consoling elegy had a very mysterious genesis, as it was written by a Baltimore housewife who lacked a formal
education, having been orphaned at age three. She had never written poetry before. Frye wrote the poem on a
ripped-off piece of a brown grocery bag, in a burst of compassion for a Jewish girl who had fled the Holocaust
only to receive news that her mother had died in Germany. The girl was weeping inconsolably because she couldn't
visit her mother's grave to share her tears of love and bereavement. When the poem was named Britain's most
popular poem in a 1996 Bookworm poll, with more than 30,000 call-in votes despite not having been one of the
critics' nominations, an unlettered orphan girl had seemingly surpassed all England's many cultured and degreed
ivory towerists in the public's estimation. Although the poem's origin was disputed for some time (it had been
attributed to Native American and other sources), Frye's authorship was confirmed in 1998 after investigative
research by Abigail Van Buren, the newspaper columnist better known as "Dear Abby." The poem has also been
called "I Am" due to its rather biblical repetitions of the phrase. Frye never formally published or copyrighted the
poem, so we believe it is in the public domain and can be shared, although we recommend that it not be used for
commercial purposes, since Frye never tried to profit from it herself.
Here is a printable version of Mary Elizabeth Frye's "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep" which is not
copyrighted and is thus in the public domain.
Dylan Thomas's elegy to his dying father is the best villanelle in the English language, in my opinion, and one of the
most powerful and haunting poems ever written in any language. In poems like "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good
Night," "In My Craft or Sullen Art" and "Fern Hill," the Welsh poet ranks with any poet who wrote in English.
Several of his poems can be found on the Masters page of The HyperTexts. Dylan Thomas was fond of the
unusual word "spindrift" and used it in a number of his poems, including the second one below.
Edward Thomas is not as well-known as some of the other poets on this page, but "Adlestrop" was among the top
ten most requested poems at Poetry Please, so he continues to have fans. "Adlestrop" is a somewhat mysterious
poem, because nothing really happens and yet it seems extraordinarily sad. Thomas was a literary critic, biographer
and book reviewer who became a close friend of Robert Frost when he moved to England. It was Frost who
persuaded Thomas to begin writing poetry around 1913-14, and Thomas was on his way to meet Frost when he
wrote the poem below. Thomas was also close to the "tramp" or "hobo" poet W. H. Davies, and help bring him to
the attention of the reading public. Thomas died at the battle of Arras in 1917, so all his poems were written within
a very narrow window of time. It is said that he decided to enlist at the age of 37 after reading a pre-publication
version of Frost's famous poem about indecision, "The Road Not Taken." Thomas died never having seen any of
his poems in print.
Adlestrop
by Edward Thomas
Robert Frost has often been portrayed as a pragmatic farmer-poet, which he may have been. He certainly comes
off that way in some of his poems about rural life. But "To Earthward" is one of the loveliest love poems in the
English language and poems like "Birches" and "After Apple Picking" also reveal his dreamy, romantic side.
To Earthward
by Robert Frost
Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley may have been the most notorious married couple of their
era. He was a dashing romantic poet and heretic who wrote a tract, "The Necessity of Atheism," that got him
expelled from Oxford. He also wrote in favor of nonviolence and against monarchies, imperialism and war. She
was the daughter of one of the earliest feminist writers of note, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the liberal philosopher
William Godwin. In 1814, at age seventeen, she became romantically involved with Percy Shelley, who was
married at the time but threatened to commit suicide if she spurned his advances. They spent time together in
France and Switzerland; when they returned, Mary was pregnant. Percy's wife Harriet, who was also pregnant,
committed suicide in 1816; Percy and Mary married soon thereafter. The same year they spent the summer with
Lord Byron. It was at this time that Mary conceived the story that became her famous gothic novel Frankenstein.
In 1822, Percy drowned at sea at age thirty. Who knows what he would have accomplished if he had lived longer,
but he is still considered to be one of the greatest English poets. Here is one especially lovely example of his
wonderful touch with rhythm and rhyme:
Edna St. Vincent Millay was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry. She was openly bisexual and had
affairs with other women and married men. When she finally married, hers was an open marriage. Her 1920 poetry
collection A Few Figs From Thistles drew controversy for its novel exploration of female sexuality. She was one
of the earliest and strongest voices for what became known as feminism. One of the recurring themes of her poetry
was that men might use her body, but not possess her or have any claim over her. (And perhaps that their desire
for her body gave her the upper hand in relationships.)
Millay is not just another penner of sonnets. Her sonnets sparkle with life and lust amid the foreshadowing of death.
She also has an interesting quality of resolve: she seems willing to give herself to men, but not to give herself away.
If she is playing games, she is playing them knowingly, and probably understands the rules better than her partners.
Louise Bogan is one of the best unknown or under-known poets of all time. Her best poems make her a major
poet, in my opinion. She's a poet who deserves to be read and studied. In particular, her "After the Persian,"
"Juan's Song" and "Song for the Last Act" are "must reads."
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English romantic poet, painter, illustrator and translator. He was also one of the
founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His art was characterized by sensuality and medieval revivalism. He
frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his works of visual art. In 1850 he met Elizabeth Siddal (pictured above),
who became his model, his passion, and eventually in 1860, his wife. But his sister Christina Rossetti may have
been the better poet.
Sudden Light
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
Song
by Christina Rossetti
William Dunbar's wonderful "Sweet Rose of Virtue" is one of my favorite poems from the good auld days of
English poetry.
Conrad Aiken, in his best poems, rivals Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane as masters of modern English poetic
meter. Aiken's "Bread and Music" is one of my very favorite poems, regardless of era.
D. H. Lawrence is better known today for his novels than for his poetry, but "Piano" is an immortal poem, and thus
makes Lawrence an immortal poet.
Piano
by D. H. Lawrence
Sylvia Plath was one of the first and best of the modern confessional poets. She won a Pulitzer Prize posthumously
for her Collected Poems after committing suicide at the age of 31, something she seemed to have been predicting
in her writing and practicing for in real life.
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, [Whoever longs to hunt , I know where there is a female deer]
But as for me, alas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I, may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am, [Touch me not, for I belong to the King]
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
Noli me tangere means "Touch me not." According to the Bible, this is what Jesus said to Mary Magdalene when
she tried to embrace him after the resurrection. So perhaps after her betrothal to Henry, religious vows also entered
into the picture, and left Wyatt out.
In my opinion, Hart Crane's "Voyages" is the best love poem of all time, and the second-best love poem isn't even
close. Because of its length, "Voyages" appears on the following page. Other poems of Crane's such as "To
Brooklyn Bridge" and "The Broken Tower" also rank with the best poems in the English language.
To Brooklyn Bridge
by Hart Crane
Requiescat
by Oscar Wilde
To continue reading the Best Poems Ever (listed below), please click the hyperlinked page title ...
Related pages: The Best Poem of All Time, The Best Poems Ever Written, The Best Poets, The Best of the
Masters, The Most Beautiful Poems in the English Language, The Best American Poetry, The Best Poetry
Translations, The Best Ancient Greek Epigrams and Epitaphs, The Best Anglo-Saxon Riddles and Kennings, The
Best Old English Poetry, The Best Lyric Poetry, The Best Free Verse, The Best Story Poems, The Best Narrative
Poems, The Best Epic Poems, The Best Epigrams, The Best Haiku, The Best Humorous Poems of All Time, The
Best Poems for Kids, The Best Nonsense Verse, The Best Limericks, The Most Beautiful Lines in the English
Language, The Best Quatrains Ever, The Most Beautiful Sonnets in the English Language, The Best Elegies, Dirges
& Laments, The Best Rondels and Roundels, The Best Holocaust Poetry, The Best Hiroshima Poetry, The Best
Anti-War Poetry, The Best Religious Poetry, The Best Spiritual Poetry, The Best Heretical Poetry, The Best
Thanksgiving Poems, The Best Autumnal Poems, The Best Fall/Autumn Poetry, The Best Dark Poetry, The Best
Halloween Poetry, The Best Supernatural Poetry, The Best Dark Christmas Poems, The Best Vampire Poetry,
The Best Love Poems, The Best Urdu Love Poetry, The Best Erotic Poems, The Best Romantic Poetry, The Best
Love Songs Ever, The Greatest Movies of All Time, Visions of Beauty
The HyperTexts