The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus – possibly the most famous sonnet and certainly one of the most prominent with its bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty, featured here in its public domain image
I live in a poetic world.
And I have my Top 10 Poetry, by poem and poet.
But wait – there’s more! Not surprisingly given how many poems and poets there are out there, there’s enough further entries for my usual twenty special mentions I prefer for each top ten.
And I still prefer the playful definition of poetry by TV Tropes as I did for my Top Ten Poetry – pretty words.
No, really. That’s what poetry is. Sometimes it rhymes, sometimes there are more line breaks than usual. All you really need to make a poem, though, is to put it together so it sounds good, or at least sounds the way you want it to sound.
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Title page of the First Folio – containing 36 of Shakespeare’s plays and one of the most influential books ever published – from 1623 with copper engraving of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout (public domain image)
(1) WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)
The Bard of Avon – or simply, the Bard.
“He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist…His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.”
What else is there to say than this introduction to the Wikipedia article on Shakespeare? Shakespeare is so definitive and so influential as a writer – indeed, as THE writer, “the only playwright most people can name” as per TV Tropes on Shakespeare – that his very name evokes all you need to say.
Well, except perhaps why I rank him as (only) special mention, albeit as my top special mention in god tier, in my Top 10 Poetry instead of Top 10 Literature?
The latter is perhaps easier to address. For me, Shakespeare primarily wrote poetry – obviously in his sonnets but also even in his plays. Yes – he did write some prose in his plays but mostly he wrote them in blank verse. I’m reminded of Don Marquis writing in jest as Shakespeare’s publishers remonstrating with him to stop doing so much of that poetry stuff and do more of the ghosts or gore the audience liked.
As for the query why only special mention, as influential as he is – including for me potentially as a subject worthy of several top ten lists – he just lacks the same influence for me as those entries in my Top 10 Poetry or Top 10 Literature lists. There’s also the sheer volume of writing, which makes it difficult to pick any single play, let alone sonnet, as the best or most influential above all others.
Although if push came to shove and I had to nominate one play for this special mention entry, it would be Macbeth – not coincidentally, the major Shakespeare play I studied at school and which remains a major influence on me, particularly when it comes to Shakespeare.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Runners-up would be those other plays I studied, Julius Caesar and Henry V, although I also have a soft spot for Romeo and Juliet from the Baz Luhrman film adaptation.
And speaking of adaptations, the depth of his influence on drama, literature and culture remains long, ongoing and profound – back to Wikipedia on his legacy, “Shakespeare’s work has made a significant and lasting impression on later theatre and literature…he expanded the dramatic potential of characterization, plot, language, and genre.” His plays have been almost endlessly adapted, imitated, parodied, deconstructed and reconstructed – not just in drama or theater, but in novels and literature in general as well as films and television.
His influence extends even to music – “scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare’s works” – and art, to the study of psychology and the English language itself. “His use of language helped to shape modern English…expressions such as ‘with bated breath’ (Merchant of Venice) and ‘a foregone conclusion’ (Othello) have found their way into everyday English speech.”
And far beyond England or English for that matter – “this master, this titan, this genius, so profoundly British and so effortlessly universal, each different culture – German, Italian, Russian – was obliged to respond to the Shakespearean example; for the most part, they embraced it, and him, with joyous abandon, as the possibilities of language and character in action that he celebrated liberated writers across the continent. Some of the most deeply affecting productions of Shakespeare have been non-English, and non-European. He is that unique writer: he has something for everyone.”
Although perhaps nothing will ever top his finest stage direction – “Exit, pursued by a bear” (from A Winter’s Tale).
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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Norton Anthology of Poetry – 6th edition 2018 cover
(2) NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY
This may seem as a bit of a cheat, particularly ranked as my top special mention and in god tier to boot, given that it is an anthology – that is, a collection of poetry from different poets in contrast to the individual poets of my Top 10 Poetry (and most of the balance of special mentions).
Indeed, it is the most comprehensive collection of poetry, both in poems and in poets, from the very earliest poems in English to the present day, that I know – my favorite single volume anthology or collection of poetry.
And that essentially gives away the method to my madness behind it as my top special mention. In short, the Norton Anthology of Poetry is the means by which I encountered most of my favorite poems or poets, including those in my top ten or these special mentions.
It is one of a series of Norton Anthologies which tend to be favorite volumes for schools, colleges or universities. Two other Norton Anthologies come close to it in my education – the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the Norton Anthology of American Literature – and one other comes close to it in my personal reading – the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry.
But no other anthology, Norton or otherwise, has ever matched the Norton Anthology of Poetry for my discovery and enjoyment of poems and poets – and I still discover or rediscover poems and poets within its pages to this day.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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Yes – I couldn’t resist this pun from Rocky & Bulwinkle for the Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam. And yes – the metafictional canned audience groaned too
(3) RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM
Not bad for a Persian poet getting pissed – which is what the Rubaiyat is when you boil it down.
Of course, there’s more to it than that, given the religious prohibition on alcohol in Islam – which lends itself as the springboard for existential ennui or philosophical musings on religion and life itself.
The Rubaiyat is “the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains (rubaiyat) attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed the Astronomer-Poet of Persia”.
Translation that is in the very loosest sense – indeed, FitzGerald himself apparently referred to it as a ‘transmogrification’.
“Many of the verses are paraphrased, and some of them cannot be confidently traced to his source material at all…To a large extent, the Rubaiyat can be considered original poetry by FitzGerald loosely based on Omar’s quatrains rather than a translation in the narrow sense.”
For that matter, “the authenticity of the poetry attributed to Omar Khayyam is highly uncertain” – he was famed as an astronomer and mathematician, with the earliest references to his poetry being substantially after his death and “the extant manuscripts containing collections attributed to Omar are dated much too late to enable a reconstruction of a body of authentic verses”. There is an implausibly large number of quatrains attributed to him – varying from 1,200 to more than 2,000 – and “sceptical scholars point out that the entire tradition may be pseudigraphic”.
Fortunately, FitzGerald didn’t ‘translate’ or write that many quatrains. His original 1859 edition was a much more modest 75 quatrains, expanded in subsequent editions to the final edition of 101 quatrains – or a mere 404 lines.
Although “commercially unsuccessful at first”, the Rubaiyat subsequently became both highly popular and influential, albeit peaking in the 1880s – “the book was extremely popular throughout the English-speaking world, to the extent that numerous Omar Khayyam clubs were formed and there was a fin de siècle cult of the Rubaiyat”.
Of course, it helps that the quatrains are so eminently quotable.
RATING:
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The Great Red Dragon and The Woman Clothed in the Sun painting by Blake (and featured in Thomas Harris’ novel Red Dragon). And yes – the Great Red Dragon does squats and doesn’t skip leg day
(4) WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)
“To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wildflower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour”
Romantic mystic poet – “everything possible to be believ’d is an image of truth”.
Inspired The Doors through Aldous Huxley – “if the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite”.
Also one of the first comics or multimedia creators, since he was also a painter and printmaker who designed his visual art around his poetry and vice versa.
Poetry or mythology, that is, as Blake was one of the pioneers for creating his own literary mythos or Verse (heh) in the parlance of modern popular culture (and TV Tropes). The Blake Poetry & Visual Art Universe, as it were, in the style of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, only trippier – “I must create a system or be enslav’d by another man’s”.
“Tyger tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night”
Blake excelled in poetic phrases and aphorisms but if I were to pick one of his whole poems for this entry it would be The Tyger, even if does have the same rhythm as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It was one of His Songs of Experience, in which each poem corresponded to one of his poems in his Songs of Innocence as a matched pair. The counterpart of The Tyger was The Lamb, but whereas latter invokes images of God knitting the lamb, the former is a fiery image of God literally forging the tiger.
RATING:
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Portrait of Lord Byron by English painter Thomas Phillips 1813 (public domain image)
(5) LORD BYRON (1788-1824)
Mad, bad and dangerous to know (according to Lady Caroline Lamb, who had an affair with him)
If Blake was a pioneer of the modern literary mythos, Byron was a pioneer of the modern literary hero or anti-hero – also the self-insert character, modelled on himself and thereafter named as the Byronic Hero, charismatic but deeply flawed.
“I awoke one morning and found myself famous”.
The original Byronic hero was the titular character of his epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage – the same epic poem that made that fame and paid for his vices. Although as his longer narrative poems go, I prefer his Don Juan, in which he recast the infamous womanizing Spanish folk legend of Don Juan as more a male ingenue tossed between impulse and circumstance.
Perhaps the best example of a poet who truly lived (and died) their art – the Romantic poet and revolutionary who died fighting for the Greeks in the Greek War of Independence. And by died fighting I mean sadly from the medicine of the day being bled to death from fever rather than, you know, in combat or the more dashing death he might have expected, albeit he still died young.
And yes – he was an actual Lord, “who gave two memorable speeches in the House of Lords”, one for Catholic emancipation.
“She walks in beauty like the night”.
While he made his fame from his longer poems, his short lyric poems appeal to me more to represent him here for this entry – and what else but She Walks in Beauty?
RATING:
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He even looked like Uncle Sam. Photograph of Walt Whitman by George C. Cox in 1887 in New York – public domain image
(6) WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)
“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world”
Who hasn’t wanted to sound a barbaric yawp at one time or another?
Also the poet everyone knows from Dead Poet’s Society, since he wrote the poem being quoted and indeed titled as “O Captain! My Captain!”
By the way, that poem was written for the death of President Lincoln in 1865. It was also not the only Whitman reference in the film or the book on which it was based – both were obviously influenced by Whitman fandom, but then so is much of American poetry and literary culture, which brings me to my next point.
With the possible exception of another special mention, Walt Whitman is the American poet. The Great American Poet as it were, in the same vein as those books touted as the Great American Novel. Although I don’t know why there’s debate on the contenders for the Great American Novel when it’s obviously Catch-22. Search your feelings – you know it to be true.
Yes – I hear your query. Wait a minute Stark After Dark – don’t you rank American poets over than Whitman in your top ten, including e.e. cummings in your top spot? Not to mention William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath, and Ishmael Reed in eighth, ninth, and tenth place respectively. For that matter, you can claim T.S. Eliot as American poet, since he was born and raised in the United States, only moving to England at the age of 25 (in 1914). And there’s a few more American poets in special mentions to come.
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes”
And yes – while I’m tempted to argue for e.e.cummings as the American poet or the Great American Poet, I have to admit that Whitman is more lyrical, and more fundamentally, embodies the United States in so much of his verse.
What better image of the United States than a nation sounding its barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world?
As per art historian Mary Berenson – “You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman”.
And Ezra Pound was even more blunt, calling Whitman “America’s poet… He is America.”
As for which Whitman poem to select for this entry, one is spoilt for choice. There’s the collection of poetry for which he is famed – Leaves of Grass. (To quote Homer Simpson when he finds out the grave that he thought was his mother’s was instead that of Walt Whitman – “leaves of grass, my ass!”.
There’s the most famous poem from that collection – Song of Myself, from which both that barbaric yawp and containing multitudes quotes come from – and so many others, including of course O Captain My Captain. However, I have to go with When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, another elegy written for the death of Lincoln.
RATING:
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Portrait of Swinburne in watercolor and chalk by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1861 (public domain image used as feature image in the Wikipedia article for Swinburne)
(7) ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (1837-1909)
“What ailed us, O gods, to desert you,
For creeds that refuse and restrain?
Come down and redeem us from virtue,
Our Lady of Pain”
A deliciously decadent and pagan poet, as well as one that was distinctly kinky – that Lady of Pain wasn’t just some turn of the phrase but a glimpse into the sadomasochistic dungeon in the basement of his mind.
He was best known for his debut poetry collection Poems and Ballads, which was something of his personal pagan manifesto and featured the poem Dolores that I quoted at the outset.
“The poem demonstrates most of the controversial themes for which Swinburne became notorious. It conflates the cruel yet libidinous pagan goddess figure of Dolores, the Lady of Pain with Mary, Mother of Jesus and associates the poem itself, through its parenthetical titular text (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs, i.e., “Our Lady of Seven Sorrows” with the Seven Dolours of the Virgin.”
Camille Paglia observed how much the poem resembles prayer, particularly in rhythm and recurring phrases – presumably amidst sacraments of flagellation and spanking. I’d go to that church!
That pretty much sums up Swinburne. As for which Swinburne poem to select for this entry, there’s so many from which to choose. I’ll go with Dolores – Our Lady of Pain – but it was a close call with the temptation of Faustine, which resembles Dolores in prayer-like quality.
“What coiled obscene
Small serpents with soft-stretching throats
Caressed Faustine?”
RATING:
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There are photographs of Frost when younger but they just seem right – Robert Frost in 1949, photograph by Walter Albertin, World Telegram staff photographer, Library of Congress, New York World – Telegram & Sun Collection (public domain image)
(8) ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
When I wrote of Walt Whitman, Robert Frost was that one possible exception I proposed for Whitman as the American poet – the Great American Poet, or at least the Great New England poet in Frost’s case.
Robert Frost “was one of the most iconic and influential American poets of the 20th century. He is best known for “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, both of which are commonly taught to US students beginning in elementary school.”
There were two Robert Frosts – the folksy Frost that most people think of from school, “the genial homespun New England rustic”, and the folk horror Frost, who pops up from his poetry like a jump scare, “depicting with chilling starkness the loneliness of an individual in an indifferent universe” (or outright hostile one).
The latter is the dark Frost, the apocalyptic Frost of fire and ice.
The Frost of the poem House Fear from the short series of poems collated as The Hill Wife.
“Always—I tell you this they learned—
Always at night when they returned
To the lonely house from far away
To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,
They learned to rattle the lock and key
To give whatever might chance to be
Warning and time to be off in flight”
Or the Frost of the poem Bereft:
“Where had I heard this wind before
Change like this to a deeper roar?…
Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly struck at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.”
Folk horror Frost may be my tongue in cheek description of the dark(er) Frost – but not by much. I always remember being taught that the central metaphor for Frost was the title of his final collection of poem, In the Clearing – in which “Frost portrays human security as a rather tiny and quite vulnerable opening in a thickly grown forest, a pinpoint of light against which the encroaching trees cast their very real threat of darkness”.
I also always remember being taught that the central characteristic of Frost – the same characteristic that underlays (and arguably resolves) the apparent duality of the folksy Frost and the folk horror Frost – is his ambiguity which undercuts what otherwise appears to be country proverbs with profound doubt.
As for example, my opening quote from his most famous poem where the road less traveled “has made all the difference”…which may be no difference at all.
Or my quote from Bereft. To the devout Puritans who settled his beloved New England, being all alone but for God would be a source of strength or the ultimate reassurance – the God who carries you like in that Christian “Footsteps” poem. But to someone in the twentieth century filled with doubt, being alone but for God may be very alone indeed.
As for which Frost poem I would choose for this special mention, there are so many from which to choose but I’d just have to come back to his Hill Wife poems, particularly the forlorn Impulse with its rural marriage falling apart:
“Sudden and swift and light as that
The ties gave,
And he learned of finalities
Besides the grave.”
RATING:
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Passport photograph of D. H. Lawrence on 22 February 2029, enclosed in a letter to Bernard Falk, Wikipedia “D.H. Lawrence” (public domain)
(9) D. H. LAWRENCE (1885-1930)
Memorably described by popular historian Paul Johnson as a “strange and intuitive Englishman”, D.H. Lawrence is perhaps best remembered for novels that were the subject of censorship trials – although he should be remembered for his best novel based on title alone, Kangaroo, because what else are you to call a novel set in Australia?
However, he was also a poet – and I prefer his poetry to his novels.
“His best-known poems are probably those dealing with nature such as those in the collection Birds, Beasts and Flowers, including the Tortoise poems, and “Snake”, one of his most frequently anthologised, displays some of his most frequent concerns: those of man’s modern distance from nature and subtle hints at religious themes.”
I was tempted to nominate his poem “The English are so Nice” – a poem that among quite a few others of his were “often wry attacks on the moral climate of England” – for this special mention entry, if for no other reason than my English ex-wife who embodied it.
“The English are so nice
So awfully nice
They are the nicest people in the world
And what’s more, they’re very nice about being nice
About your being nice as well!
If you’re not nice, they soon make you feel it”
However, I chose one of his posthumously published poems, aptly enough about death and one of his most famous – The Ship of Death.
“Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.”
RATING:
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Auden in 1939 photographed by Carl Van Vechten – Wikipedia “W.H. Auden” (public domain)
(10) W.H. AUDEN (1907-1973)
“A poem is never finished; it is only abandoned”
An adage that I have used ever since at work to illustrate that there comes a cut-off point – or where you have to get to the point – for attention to detail, although it was actually Auden paraphrasing the French poet Valery.
Like T.S. Eliot, a poet claimed by both Britain and the United States except in reverse – where T.S. Eliot was an American-British poet who moved from the United States to Britain, Wystan Hugh Auden was a British-American poet who moved from Britain to the United States. Although to be honest, I tend to think of both as British.
Also one of the holy trinity of modern poets along with Eliot and Yeats – although he ranges from being seen as a lesser figure (as I suppose I do since I rank the other two in my top ten and Auden in these special mentions) to ranking him above them. I would agree that Auden was the most consummate poetic stylist of the three – Auden could pretty much compose a poem to any style or technical form on tap.
“Auden’s poetry is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content.”
“Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.”
As for which Auden poem to choose for this special mention, there are so many from which to choose but I’ll go with the forlorn title poem of his collection of poetry, The Shield of Achilles.
“The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came”
RATING:
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Bust of A. D. Hope in “Poet’s Corner”, Garema Place, Canberra (one of a group of three, with two other poets) photographed by Doug Butler, Wikipedia “A.D. Hope” – licensed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
(11) A.D. HOPE (1907-2000)
“Floods her monotonous tribes from Cairns to Perth.
In them at last the ultimate men arrive
Whose boast is not: “we live” but “we survive”,
A type who will inhabit the dying earth.”
If you were to ask the average Australian to name one poem about Australia, I suspect you’d mostly get the answer “My Country” – as in “I love a sunburnt country” – by Dorothea Mackellar.
Well, that is, if you got any answer at all, or one that wasn’t “Waltzing Matilda”, the country’s unofficial national anthem (aptly enough about a criminal swagman who prefers death to arrest and whose ghost haunts a billabong thereafter) by Banjo Paterson – the latter also probably the answer you’d get if you asked the average Australian to name one Australian poet and not without reason as Australia’s bush balladeer bard and poet laureate.
Or perhaps the official national anthem, “Advance Australian Fair”, for which everyone forgets there’s more than one verse – and only remembers the first because of its use of the word girt, because who puts girt in a national anthem?
And then there’s that other unofficial Australian anthem and greatest lyrical genius of Australia or by any Australian ever – “Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi oi oi!”. There’s actually more lines of this but you get the point.
If I were to name one poem about Australia, however, I’d name the poem I quoted at the outset, aptly and simply titled “Australia”, by Alec Derwent Hope- who would also be the one Australian poet I would name.
Also aptly enough for a poem about Australia by an Australian, it’s taking the p!ss out of patriotic poetic platitudes, presenting Australia as a nation clinging timidly to its coasts while draining its desert continent like a “vast parasite robber-state”.
Mind you, it’s not that much more complimentary to the European civilization of which Australia is a second-hand offshoot – “the learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes which is called civilization over there”.
That pretty much sums up the “savagely satirical” style of A.D. Hope. I was delighted to learn that his highly er0tic verse and “frequent allusions to s€xuality” caused him to be dubbed “Phallic Alec” (in a letter to Norman Lindsay, an Australian also known for his er0ticism).
His style also harked back to eighteenth century poetry, leading an American journal to quip about him as “the greatest eighteenth century poet in the twentieth century”.
“When once asked what poets could do for Australia, Hope replied “oh not much, merely justify its existence”.
RATING:
A-TIER (FOR AUSTRALIA TIER! OR TOP TIER)
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Photograph of Bukowski on the cover of this 2018 anthology of his poetry published by Canondale PBS
(12) CHARLES BUKOWSKI (1920-1994)
Also known as Chuck Buk – a quip about his name that I read somewhere and have used ever since.
Charles Bukowski can be summed up by that meme of one of Bender’s best lines from Futurama (from the second episode at that) – I’ll write my own damn poetry, with blackjack and hookers!
Except as the line goes later in the episode – forget about the blackjack. And some might say the poetry.
Charles Bukowski shot poetry (and prose) straight from the hip, as well as the flophouse and the gutter – raw and wriggling to quote another meme (Gollum from The Lord of the Rings film trilogy).
And yet that rawness has a striking sharpness at times – with an undeniable knack for titles of anthologies too.
As for which Bukowski poem to pick for this entry, I’d go with the pack – about the dogs of hell that pursue the poet.
RATING:
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Hot damn, those are some fine muttonchops! Matthew Arnold by Elliott & Fry 1883, National Portrait Gallery, London
(13) MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888)
“But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.”
A passage I’m fond of quoting from Arnold’s finest and best known poem, Dover Beach, for desperate last stands or holding one defensive line after another – I did it for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire because of course I did. All roads lead to Rome.
Anyway, Matthew Arnold “was an English poet, essayist, and critic from the Victorian era” – “considered one of the great Victorian poets…and one of the Victorian sages”, the latter for his essays on literary criticism and other topics.
Famously melancholic and pessimistic, particularly with respect to the decline of religious faith – that recurring source of angst and despair for Victorian poets or writers. Indeed, that melancholy, long, withdrawing roar retreating in Dover Beach is the tide going out for “the sea of faith” – that “was once, too, at the full and round earth’s shore”.
Arguably the most melancholic Victorian poet – although Alfred Lord Tennyson would give him a run for his money with Tennyson’s In Memoriam. Shortly after his death, Robert Louis Stevenson quipped about his bleak melancholy – “Poor Matt. He’s gone to heaven, no doubt – but he won’t like God”.
“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
Gerard Manley Hopkins as photographed – public domain image
(14) GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS (1884-1889)
“The achieve of, the mastery of the thing!”
Hopkins would earn special mention for “the sonnets of desolation” alone – a title I think would make a good name for a music band, perhaps as Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Sonnets of Desolation.
You don’t really expect poetry, let alone sonnets of desolation, from a man who was primarily a Jesuit priest – and an English one at that – but there you have it. Mind you, he published very little of his poetry during his life – it was only through a posthumous volume of his poems published in 1918 by his friend and fellow poet Robert Bridges that he “became recognised as one of the leading Victorian poets”.
“That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.”
Not surprisingly for a priest, a focus of his poetry is his celebration of the natural world through the lens of his religious belief – “his praise of God through vivid use of imagery and nature”.
Not so much however his sonnets of desolation, which evoke religious doubt or as he described them to Bridges, “the thin gleanings of a long weary while” – hence why I prefer them (as I do the poems of T.S. Eliot that reflect his early doubt rather than his later faith).
According to John Bayley – “All his life Hopkins was haunted by the sense of personal bankruptcy and impotence, the straining of ‘time’s eunuch’ with no more to ‘spend’ …”
We’ve all been there.
As for which sonnet of desolation I’d choose over the others for this special mention, I’d nominate “Carrion Comfort” – the source of my quote of wrestling with (my God!) my God.
RATING:
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Portrait of Rudyard Kipling by Elliott & Fry in 1895, from the biography by John Palmer – Wikipedia “Rudyard Kipling” (public domain image)
(15) RUDYARD KIPLING (1865-1936)
“Do you like Kipling?”
“I don’t know, you naughty boy, I’ve never kippled!”
Apparently, the postcard with that caption by Donald McGill, English creator of notorious “saucy” cartoon postcards in Britain, holds the record for selling the most copies at over 6 million.
However, that question is more controversial these days, given that Kipling was the quintessential poet of the British Empire, the Victorian Virgil as it were – and when it comes to his poetry, it is difficult for modern readers to overlook his notorious poem “The White Man’s Burden” cheerleading imperialism, as it was even for some of his contemporaries such as Mark Twain.
Still, he did win the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature and was considered for British Poet Laureate, reflecting his undoubted literary skill as well as “a versatile and luminous narrative gift”. He is best known for his fiction, particularly his children’s fantasy in The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book, but also novels such as Kim and short stories such as The Man Who Would Be King.
Whatever the politics of his poetry – and I tend to think this is far more nuanced than the typical controversy or criticism about it as imperial propaganda – it shows an undeniable craft or skill in verse as well as the patterns of sound and speech, particularly of soldiers. I think of Kipling not simply as writing war poetry but military poetry – poetry that distinctively captured the cadence and speech of the British soldiers that were his recurring subject.
T.S. Eliot wrote of Kipling verse that “of a number of poets who have written great poetry, only… a very few whom I should call great verse writers. And unless I am mistaken, Kipling’s position in this class is not only high, but unique.” Similarly, poet Alison Brackenbury wrote “Kipling is poetry’s Dickens, an outsider and journalist with an unrivalled ear for sound and speech.”
And in 2025, I was once again prompted to an appreciation of the quality of Kipling’s verse as the film 28 Years Later made highly effective use of a recital of his poem Boots, evoking the repetitive thought pattern of a soldier marching in war to which it added a note of terrifying urgency, both in the film’s trailers and the film itself.
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too”
However, the Kipling poem that stays in my mind most, as it does for many other people, is his poem If – something of a sermon on Victorian masculine virtues. And while those virtues seem somewhat faded these days to the point of parody – as in that Simpsons episode where Homer retorts to Grandpa Simpson quoting the poem “You’ll be a bonehead!” – I’ll be damned if hearing or reading it doesn’t make one strive to be just a little bit better as a person.
“If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”
RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
*
My quoted haiku and picture by Basho – Wikipedia “Haiku” (public domain image)
(16) HAIKU
“Quietly, quietly,
Yellow mountain roses fall –
Sound of the rapids“
You all know haiku – “a type of short form poetry that originated in Japan” consisting of three phrases composed of 17 syllables in a 5, 7, 5 pattern “that include a kireji, or “cutting word”; and a kigo, or seasonal reference” (or more broadly natural reference).
The classical Japanese poet for haiku was Matsuo Basho, albeit he would sometimes deviate from the traditional pattern.
Upon looking up haiku, I was intrigued to learn that “similar poems that do not adhere to these rules are generally classified as senryu”, that “haiku originated as an opening part of a larger Japanese genre of poetry called renga” (as opening stanzas known as hokku before they came to be written as stand-alone poems), and that “haiku was given its current name by the Japanese writer Masaoka Shiki at the end of the 19th century”.
Haiku now are written worldwide, albeit “with different styles and traditions while still incorporating aspects of the traditional haiku form” and “non-Japanese language haiku vary widely on how closely they follow traditional elements”.
Interestingly, Japanese haiku “are traditionally printed as a single line, while haiku in English often appear as three lines”
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
Wilfred Owen in uniform by Allex Langie – Wikipedia “Wilfred Owen” licensed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
(17) WAR POETRY – WILFRED OWENS
“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori”.
War poetry has a long history in literature – indeed, arguably the longest, predating written literature itself, originating at least with Homer’s Iliad. I say at least because I suspect that among the earliest recitals of the origins of poetry itself – around the campfires of our Paleolithic tribal ancestors but faded and forgotten with those tribes by the Neolithic, let alone the Bronze Age – were war chants against tribal enemies.
Even if they weren’t, then I’d certainly propose that among the earliest poems of the Bronze Age were war poems celebrating the feats of kings or warriors, only those didn’t survive as the Iliad did to become the rosy-fingered dawn of Western literature. For that matter, I’d argue much of the Bible, particularly the Psalms, are war poetry – battle hymns of the kingdom, as it were.
We probably must go to the nineteenth century and the Crimean War for the next most famous war poem – Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade – although I’d also argue that there’s a rich vein of American war poetry to be mined all the way back to the Revolution.
However, there’s one war that everyone thinks of for war poetry and war poems – which is of course the First World War, primarily as written by British war poets on the Western Front, even if it more evokes the trope of war poetry than prompts recollection of any individual poets, let alone poems.
There is one World War One poet I recall over all other such poets and that is Wilfred Owen, who almost made it through the war but was killed in action at 25 years of age on 4 November 1918, just a week before armistice. He wrote quite a few, dare I call them, bangers – the titles of “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “Futility” give away the tone of his poetry – but the one stands out for me is the one I quoted, “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, the title of course coming from the Latin verse written by the Roman poet Horace, translating as “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
Odgen Nash at Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles in 1949, Los Angeles Daily News, Wikipedia “Ogden Nash”, licensed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en
(18) HUMOROUS POETRY – OGDEN NASH
Reflections on Ice Breaking
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker
Let there be light verse!
We all love light verse or humorous poetry – “Light poetry or light verse is…usually brief, can be on a frivolous or serious subject, and often feature word play incuding puns, adventurous rhyme, and heavy alliteration”.
“While light poetry is sometimes condemned as doggerel or thought of as poetry composed casually, humor often makes a serious point in a subtle or subversive way. Many of the most renowned “serious” poets, such as Horace, Swift, Pope, and Auden, also excelled at light verse.”
When it comes to light verse or humorous poetry, I usually think of Lewis Carroll and Edmund Lear, the latter popularizing the limerick (although he did not use that term) – but above all, I think of Ogden Nash.
“Nash was best known for surprising, pun-like rhymes, sometimes with words deliberately misspelled for comic effect” – or his “fondness for crafting his own words whenever rhyming words did not exist”.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
Originally published in 1990, this is the cover of the 2012 edition by Seagull Books (the edition I own)
(19) MARTIN ROWSON – THE WASTELAND
T.S. Eliot meets Raymond Chandler – the Wasteland as detective noir.
“In Martin Rowson’s The Waste Land, private detective Chris Marlowe is tasked with getting to the bottom of the most impenetrable of all modernist mysteries: namely T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland.”
And it’s a hoot.
Highlights include the section of the poem Death by Water as the cue for the archetypal criminal hit by cement shoes or the line “Who is the third who always walks besides you?” (which Eliot borrowed from the Gospels) as the classic ruse – met by the reaction “We’re not falling for that old trick”.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
Sappho by Spanish painter Enrique Simonet (1866-1927) – Wikipedia “Sappho” (public domain)
(20) LOVE POETRY
may i feel said he
(i’ll squeal said she
just once said he)
it’s fun said she
It is one of my rules in my top ten lists to throw in a kinky entry amidst my wilder special mentions, usually as my final (twentieth) special mention, at least where the subject matter permits.
And not surprisingly, here it does. Indeed, some might ask that isn’t all poetry er0tic – or, more broadly, love poetry? That is a popular conception of poetry – “How do I love thee, let me count the ways” and all that.
I tend to agree, at least in large part, and also speculate that the origin of poetry, again at least in large part, was by suitors to woo or court their targets – certainly that would seem to be the evo psych explanation. It therefore joins that other large part of the origin of poetry I speculated as war poetry in an earlier special mention – well, that and religious poetry.
While Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey certainly feature love and s€x as central subjects, they tend to be offscreen as it were. Ironically, love poetry in Western literature would not seem so much to originate from Homer, the usual origin of Western literature in general as well as so much in it, but from another poet whose name has become synonymous with the term sapphic – Sappho.
As per Camille Paglia – “Sappho shows that love poetry is how Western personality defines itself.”
From Sappho, it’s pretty much a scenic tour of poets through to the present day for the sheer prevalence, bordering on omnipresence, of er0tic or love poetry. Indeed, it would be an entertaining exercise to do so, perhaps as my nymphomancy of poetry, although to be honest it would be largely a repetition of Camilla Paglia’s “Love Poetry” essay I quoted, in which she does just that.
However, I will just stop in at two places on that scenic tour of love poetry here. The first is Shakespeare, whose poetry and particularly sonnets would have to rank highly on a scenic tour of love poetry.
The Shakespearean sonnets are notoriously love poetry, although of course they have other allusions or themes. I’m no Shakespearean scholar but I understand that there’s quite the volume of Shakespearean studies about whom Shakespeare was wooing or courting in his sonnets – mostly the “Fair Youth” but also the “Dark Lady” as something of a love triangle.
I also understand that Shakespeare used the word will as a multiple pun with double entendre meanings – not least for his own name but including, you know, for his little Will. On that point, Shakespeare and contemporary poets uses the word death as a double entendre for 0rgasm.
The second stopping point is the example of er0tic or love poetry I quoted at the outset – e.e. cummings, aptly enough as the top spot in my Top 10 Poetry and now as finishing point for my special mentions.
(cccome? said he
ummm said she)
you’re divine! said he
(you are Mine said she)
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
