The 100 best poems of all time

The 100 best poems of all time

Book - 2001

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Subjects
Poetry > Collections.
Poetry > Translations into English.
Published
New York : Warner Books [2001]
Language
English
Other Authors
Leslie Pockell (-)
Physical Description
189 pages
Bibliography
Includes index.
ISBN
9780446676816
  • Introduction
  • From The Iliad
  • He Is More Than a Hero
  • Psalm 23
  • From The Song of Songs [Chapter One]
  • Song 5 to Lesbia
  • From The Aeneid
  • From Metamorphoses
  • Drinking Alone in the Moonlight
  • Moonlit Night
  • Madly Singing in the Mountains
  • Rubaiyat 51
  • From Inferno
  • Remembrance
  • From The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
  • The Ballad of Ladies of the Past
  • Sonnet 18
  • Go and Catch a Falling Star
  • Song to Celia II
  • To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
  • Jordan
  • When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
  • From The Prologue
  • To Althea, from Prison
  • To His Coy Mistress
  • An Old Pond
  • Epigram: Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness
  • Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
  • To Jeoffry His Cat
  • Amazing Grace
  • Tyger! Tyger!
  • To a Mouse
  • Ode to Joy
  • Don't Kill That Fly!
  • The World Is Too Much with Us
  • From The Lay of the Last Minstrel
  • Kubla Khan
  • A Visit from St. Nicholas
  • Abou Ben Adhem
  • She Walks in Beauty
  • Ozymandias
  • Thanatopsis
  • Ode on a Grecian Urn
  • Concord Hymn
  • How Do I Love Thee?
  • Paul Revere's Ride
  • Barbara Frietchie
  • El Desdichado [The Disinherited]
  • The Raven
  • Ulysses
  • Old Ironsides
  • The Owl and the Pussycat
  • Memorabilia
  • Often Rebuked, Yet Always Back Returning
  • From Song of Myself
  • Battle Hymn of the Republic
  • Invitation to the Voyage
  • Dover Beach
  • Because I Could Not Stop for Death
  • The Jabberwocky
  • Convergence of the Twain
  • Spring and Fall [Margaret, Are You Grieving?]
  • Tears Fall in My Heart
  • The New Colossus
  • Requiem
  • The Drunken Boat
  • The Ballad of Reading Gaol
  • When I Was One-and-Twenty
  • The Gardener
  • Waiting for the Barbarians
  • Casey at the Bat
  • Gunga Din
  • Lake Isle of Innisfree
  • Richard Cory
  • We Wear the Mask
  • The Cremation of Sam McGee
  • Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eveing
  • The Panther
  • Sea Fever
  • Fog
  • General William Booth Enters into Heaven
  • Peter Quince at the Clavier
  • The Highwayman
  • The Red Wheelbarrow
  • Ancient Music
  • The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
  • First Fig
  • Dulce Et Decorum Est
  • Buffalo Bill's
  • From Lament for lgnacio Sanchez Mejias [Absence of the Soul 4]
  • Harlem [Dream Deferred]
  • Incident
  • Poetry
  • Funeral Blues
  • Visits to St. Elizabeth's
  • This Land Is Your Land
  • Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night
  • A Supermarket in California
  • Wanting to Die
  • Daddy
  • Still I Rise
  • Index to Titles and Authors
  • Index to First Lines
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The cover of The Best 100 Poems of All Time promises "[v]erses to move you, lines you'll love, from old favorites to modern classics...," and while they may not live up to the title's hyperbole, they do satisfy the teaser's terms. Though the collection, including poems by Homer, Sappho, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Villon, Shakespeare, Schiller, Issa, Whitman, Baudelaire, Millay, Cullen, Neruda, Plath and Angelou, was edited by Leslie Pockell, the unsigned introduction was written by an editorial "we," who proclaim that "this present collection has as much credibility as many other lists of the best and the greatest that have circulated during the recent turn of the century." One hopes that the actual poems contained herein have more credibility than any list. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Pockell compiled this collection “to provide a small, easily portable volume that would contain the essential works that most readers would expect to find in a book of the best poems.” While this elliptical pronouncement seems to suggest that a readers’ poll determined the selections, the editor makes no secret of his criteria. While one may disagree with some of the choices, this has considerable breadth for such a slim volume. A good deal of space is reserved for the classics (beginning with Homer and Sappho and including the 23rd Psalm and Shakespeare’s 18th Sonnet), but, of necessity, few works of any length are presented in their entirety. A large proportion of the poems tend to be lyrical, owing to the editor’s predilection for poetry that, according to Auden’s definition of verse, qualifies as “memorable speech.” Perhaps he has gone a little too far in this direction by offering Friedrich von Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”—a work that was ennobled by Beethoven’s choral setting but sounds somewhat clunky when read straight. Nevertheless, the editor strives to earn the volume wide appeal, presenting poetry of interest to younger readers as well, such as Clement Clarke Moore’s famous Christmas poem and Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussycat.” Stephen Spender said that great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do. Occasionally, an editor attempts to do the same, and succeeds.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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