Top Ten lists are always a crowd pleaser (and something easy to write about). I was thinking about making this a WordPress page rather than a post so it would be easy for others to find and me to update, but there are too many other similar lists to make, so I will just make a whole category of posts for top ten lists.
Note: This doesn’t include book length poems, so no Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost, or Iliad type poems.
1. The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The best poems combine great poetry with great evidences of Christianity, and Hopkins consistently does so. “The Windhover” uses the falcon as a picture of Christ’s effortless mastery and views with astonishment the self-sacrifice of Christ in light of his mastery over all things. I think the last line is beautiful and perhaps my favorite line in all poetry.
2. Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
Another example of a great Christian poem. I put this ahead of The Waste Land because it represents Eliot’s post-conversion poetry. This group of four poems contains all of Eliot’s trademark complexity and difficultness, but I enjoy the challenge of reading poems like this. It’s like putting a puzzle together, finding all the allusions and meanings. I think if I could describe the Four Quartets in one word, it would be “elegant” (but I mean that in a much more positive way than Emma Woodhouse would).
3. Maud by Lord Tennyson
This is easily the longest poem I put on this list (Eliot’s are also quite lengthy). In case you’re wondering why I like this poem, here are some quotes from Encyclopedia Britannica
['Maud' is] a strange and turbulent “monodrama,” [which] provoked a storm of protest; many of the poet’s admirers were shocked by the morbidity, hysteria, and bellicosity of the hero. Yet Maud was Tennyson’s favourite among his poems. *
Maud (1855) assembles 27 lyric poems into a single dramatic monologue that disturbingly explores the psychology of violence.”**
It also explores the psychology of love. I’m not a big fan of the poem’s very end, but the overall story and the lyrical beauty of much of the verse (along with the subject matter), make it one of my favorite poems.
4. Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas
The perspective in this poem is that of an older person interjecting childhood memories with the mortality of which he is now much more aware. I love the rolling rythm of the poem and how it builds toward the last stanza. After all the green and youthful imagery, the last three lines hit with the force of a freight train. Those lines are some more of my most favorite lines in poetry.
5. The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
This is another large difficult work by Eliot. It has a bit of an edge the Four Quartets doesn’t have because of its more negative nature. This is pre-conversion Eliot, and the poem is full of searching and trying to keep things from falling apart. It’s very fragmented, but with a purpose and in a way that makes the reader think. It also gets bonus points for having lines in German ^_^.
6. Among School Children by W.B. Yeats.
Yeats would be one of my favorite poets were it not for his peculiar religious inclinations which sometimes work their way into his poems. While his early poems like “Lake Isle of Innisfree” are nice, it’s his later more mature poetry like “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Second Coming,” and this poem that secures his place as one of the greatest 20th century poets. This is another poem about an older person having visions of youth, but I think the poem focuses on the platonic themes of image and nature which appear toward the end of the poem.
7. Home Burial by Robert Frost
This is my favorite Frost poem. It is a chilling discourse on the difficulties of communication. At first glance, the man in the poem appears to be a horrible callous person, but read the poem again and notice how much of the wife’s animosity is based solely on her interpretation of his actions–motives that she projects. What else could explain his actions? The husband has suffered emotionally as much as his wife over the death of their son, but the real tragedy is the different ways they deal with their loss and their lack of ability to clearly communicate what they feel in order to share the suffering that they have in common.
8. Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins
I find this poem interesting both because of Hopkins’ style and the juxtaposition of the poem’s subject (a young girl) and subject matter (mortality and aging). It’s well-crafted poem that paints a bittersweet picture and strikes a universal cord.
9. This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams
Williams is a master of implications and chilling situations (read The Young Housewife for another example). I like how his poems leave a sense that there is much more behind them. What is the relationship between the speaker in the poem and his (assumed) spouse. Is it strained? Apathetic? Negligent? Or so strong that this simple note is enough to repair the malefaction? This poem just scratches the surface, but does so in an ambiguous manner that implies the depths and complexities of human nature which lie far below, like a shadow passing below you through the water somewhere between the surface and the impossibly distant ocean floor.
10. The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens
As a person who has “a mind of winter” and has “been cold a long time,” I like this poem. Its evocative qualities fit my personality. However, beyond the wintry images, Stevens hides deeper meaning. Unfortunately, Stevens is one of the most difficult poets I’ve ever read, so I’m not exceptionally confident about finding and sharing a deeper theme from this poem. I think though that this poem is about associations and how long and strongly something (like winter with its beautiful “spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun” etc) must be experienced in person before one can overcome associations which may not be valid (in this case the negative associations of misery). Only when associations have been vanquished can the viewer “behold nothing that is not there” i.e. only then can he see the “thing itself,” to borrow a phrase from William Carlos Williams.
* “Alfred. Lord Tennyson.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 27 May. 2009
**“English Literature.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 27 May. 2009
