Over Lent Sherry at Semicolon asked readers for their top ten “classic” poems — classic being defined here as older than copyright protection. Beginning the day after Easter, she has been counting down the top 100 in chronological order for Poetry Month. It will be interesting to see what favorites pop up that I’ve forgotten. She’s also including a bit of information about each one and sometimes a video of someone quoting it, plus such luscious quotes about poetry in general.

The ones I sent in were:

1. Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

I think this would be the most familiar poem to most Americans: I think most could quote the first two and last two lines.

2. How Do I Love Thee by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The quintessential love poem.

3. To A Waterfowl by William Cullen Bryant

This might not be as familiar to most people. As I wrote in the post I linked to, I had originally read it in college, but it especially spoke to me when Elisabeth Elliot quoted some of it in her book The Savage My Kinsmen after her husband’s death.

4. To a Mouse by Robert Burns

Burns is one of my favorite poets. In this one he empathizes with a mouse whose nest he accidentally overturned while ploughing, and it contains the lines, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley,” or, as we often quote it in modern English, “The best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry.”

(Side note: you know what I would love: for Henry Ian Cusik, the Scottish actor who plays Desmond on “Lost,” To make a recording of his reading Burns’ poems.)

5. The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

Another one I think many would be familiar with. I am not much for spooky stories generally, but Poe does such a good job conveying the atmosphere here.

6. A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns

Sung beautifully by the King’s Singers here (only a snippet, I’m afraid.)

7. To My Dear and Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet.

Another one that might not be as familiar to some, but the first two lines might be:

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee.

That was all I could think of at the time. At this point I’d add Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 (the one about “the marriage of true minds” and “Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds.” And the more I think about it, the more several other poets come to mind. I might have to make a revised list when Sherry is done. 🙂

And I didn’t even think about Biblical poetry, but Sherry mentioned that first thing. All of the Psalms as well as other passages are poetry, though different, of course, that modern English poetry. She listed Psalm 23 as probably the most familiar and well-known Psalm, and I would agree.

And while I have snippets of other poems and names of poets running through my brain now, I’ll leave you with some favorite quotes about poems. It’s hard to define just what we like and what speaks to us about poetry, but here are some attempts:

“You cannot translate a poem into an explanation, any more than you can translate a poem into a painting or a painting into a piece of music or a piece of music into a walking stick. A work of art says what it says in the only way it can be said. Beauty, for example, cannot be interpreted. It is not an empirically verifiable fact; it is not a quantity.”~Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition (Seen at Semicolon’s).

Poetry should… should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. ~John Keats

God is the perfect poet. ~Robert Browning

Poetry is life distilled. ~Gwendolyn Brooks

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. ~Thomas Gray

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. ~Robert Frost

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. ~Paul Engle, New York Times, 17 February 1957

You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick…. You’re back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps… so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in. ~Dylan Thomas, Poetic Manifesto, 1961

Happy Poetry Month!