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The Top 500 Poems by William Harmon
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The Top 500 Poems (original 1992; edition 1992)

by William Harmon (Editor)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
840825,705 (4.07)6
Authoritative, but I'm just not a poetry person. ( )
  AldusManutius | Jul 5, 2020 |
Showing 8 of 8
Authoritative, but I'm just not a poetry person. ( )
  AldusManutius | Jul 5, 2020 |
You won't agree with all the choices, but it's hard to beat this for a poetry anthology that isn't too heavy to lift. ( )
  datrappert | Oct 18, 2016 |
So I can't really finish this - I keep rereading my favorites like 'the red wheel barrow' My Papa's Waltz' and 'Love Calls Us to the Things of This World' ( )
  cynsimo5 | Nov 8, 2013 |
excellent source for our poetry projects
1 vote zoranaercegovac | Mar 4, 2009 |
If you can get beyond the whole concept of the top 500 poems then this is a delightful book in many ways. Certainly it is appealing to have great poetry collected for easy access. And it's probably not possible to read this without at least a bit of playing along and second-guessing. You have to wonder how some of the poems made it into the collection; contrariwise, you also are beset with curiosity about the absence of others. In the end, just enjoy the poems and let it be. Perhaps, edit and compile your own listing, defending them against all comers. ( )
3 vote AlexTheHunn | Aug 27, 2007 |
According to the editor, these are the 500 poems that have been anthologized most often. Three-quarters of the poems are British, and more are penned by Shakespeare than any other author (Anonymous coming in second, followed by Donne, Blake, Dickinson, Yeats, Wordsworth, Hopkins, Tennyson, Hardy, Frost, and Keats). The majority of poems are from the nineteenth century. Aside from statistics, the poems herein tend to be poems people "get." (These are not necessary the "best" poems according to David Kirby, writing in "Why, Poetry?" (American Interest Online, July-August 2007), who notes that "if it works, a poem is more likely to be half understood rather than fully comprehended. After all...a poem tends to have one foot in the unconscious and one in the sunshine. ...failing to understand is a crucial part of the experience of reading poetry...") Instead, we read "The Tiger" (number one in popularity), "How Do I Love Thee: Let Me Count the Ways," "Old Ironsides," "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "Kubla Khan," "Dover Beach," "Jabberwocky," "Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening," and a myriad of other old favorites: 492 more, to be exact). It is like pulling out an old yearbook; a book that is fun to revisit from time to time, causing you to smile from the memory of making your acquaintance with those old friends.
(JAF)
4 vote nbmars | Jul 3, 2007 |
This book's top ten (most-anthologized) poems in English (as of 1992) are by Blake, Keats, Shakespeare, Hopkins, Frost, Herrick, Marvell, Marlowe, Donne, and Lovelace.

LibraryThing's top-ten (most-owned) poetry books (as of January, 2006) are by Whitman, Silverstein, Dickinson, Eliot, Ginsberg, Chaucer, Stevens, Plath, Milton, and Stevenson. More-or-less.

Frankly, the second list sounds like more fun.

Spurious statistics aside, this is an excellent anthology of English verse, and contains pretty much all the poetry that one ought to be meant to know - and it's all, by every standard, great stuff, right up to the purple cow; I've spent many a rainy evening poring over it and singing it to myself. All the same, it often starts to read like my high school English book. ( )
3 vote melannen | Jan 9, 2006 |
A chronological compilation that tells "the story of poetry in English." Harmon enhances each entry with pertinent information about the work and the poet; his insight adds much to the enjoyment of the collection. The selections are taken from the ninth edition of The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry , chosen because 400 contemporary editors, critics, and poets included them most often in their own anthologies. "The Poems in Order of Popularity" concludes the book. - Arlene Hoebel, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA

From Book News, Inc.
The pop title is right out of Billboard (the publisher must think poetry needs all the crossover it can get), but the collection is quite terrific--not necessarily the greatest poems (best to avoid that can of worms), but the 500 English-language poems that have appealed most often to 400 contemporary editors, critics, and poets for inclusion in their own widely disparate anthologies, which were indexed in the Ninth Edition of The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry.

Here, for the first time, is our generations' definitive view of the greatest poetry in the English language. This is the story of poetry in English, a collection of the best 500 poems, based not on one critic's choice, not on one poet's choice, but on the collective choice of 550 critics, editors, and poets. Here are the 500 poems that speak to us across the centuries, beginning with Chaucer's words, moving to Shakespeare's masterpieces, through Donne's wonderful witticisms and Pope's elegant satires, through the perennial favorites of Blake, Wordsworth, and Keats, on through Dickinson's jewels of profundity to the ironies of Eliot and to the passion of Plath and Ginsberg in out own time. These are the 500 poems we know or want to know, arranged as an unfolding story of great literature, with comments on each by William Harmon and with a general introduction on the entire collection.
1 vote antimuzak | Nov 6, 2005 |
Showing 8 of 8

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