Top 25 Poems

One side of me most don’t know, and I’m not really forthcoming about is that I write poetry.

As I stumble to find a creative release these days, I am revisiting something I enjoyed heavily in high school. I enjoy playing with words. How they sound. How they work.

Let me level with you though. It wasn’t my English teachers that taught me vocabulary. Going to public school you’re meshed in with kids who don’t care for poetry. The teachers might have used examples of poems, and some might of coaxed me into exploring my creativity.

But frankly they didn’t tell me to write a Shakespearean sonnet for the girls I crushed on back then. Though I absolutely abhor William Shakespeare, I did teach myself plenty in language, diction and the proper use of a thesaurus when one particular teacher admonished me.  Of course, writing poetry as a teen for teen girls was a doomed experiment. And even more so in university … well maybe I was focusing on the wrong women then.

Frankly, I don’t give a damn.

Anyhow, my minor in university was English. I focused on Victorian and Romantic period poetry and prose, so most of the selections here are from that period. What do I like about the Romance poets? They’re bloody epic tales that spiral out of control. Blake, Coleridge are guilty parties.

I also had a good friend read one of my favourite poems at my wedding. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” was something that struck a chord with me.

Anyhow, I am rambling. Without further ado, my Top 25 Poems.

25.		Poem: All In Green Author: E.E. Cummings First Line: “All in green went my love riding …”
24.		Poem: The Rape of the Lock Author: Alexander Pope First Line: “What dire offense from amorous causes spring …”
23.		Poem: 49 Author: Emily Dickinson First Line: “I never lost as much but twice …”
22.		Poem: The Death of the Starling Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge First Line: “Lugete, O Veneres, Cupidinesque — Catallus …” (Mourn oh Venuses and Cupids).
21.		Poem: Sonnet: To The River Otter Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge First Line: “Dear native Brook! wild Streamlet of the West!
20.		Poem: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Author: William Blake First Line: “Rintrah roars, and shakes his fires in the burden’d air;”
19.		Poem: Leda and the Swan Author: William Butler Yeats First Line: “A sudden blow: the great wings beating still”
18.		Poem: Ode to a Nightingale Author: John Keats First Line: “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains”
17.		Poem: Ulalume Author: Edgar Allan Poe First Line: “The skies they were ashen and sober;”
16.		Poem: The Clod and Pebble Author: William Blake First Line: “‘Love seeketh not Itself to please,”
15.		Poem: Hyperion (A Fragment) Author: John Keats First Line: “Deep in shady sadness of a vale”
14.		Poem: My Last Duchess Author: Robert Browning First Line: “That’s my last duchess painted on the wall,”
13.		Poem: The Red Wheelbarrow Author: William Carlos Williams First Line: “So much depends”
12.		Poem: Ozymandias Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley First Line: “I met a traveler from an antique land”
11.		Poem: The Kraken Author: Alfred Tennyson First Line: “Below the thunders of the upper deep;”
10.		Poem: The Raven Author: Edgar Allan Poe First Line: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,”
9.		Poem: Sailing to Byzantium Author: William Butler Yeats First Line: “That is no country for old men. The young”
8.		Poem: Jabberwocky (from Through the Looking Glass) Author: Lewis Carroll First Line: “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves”
7.		Poem: 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Author: Wallace Stevens First Line: “Among twenty snow mountains,”
6.		Poem: The Road Not Taken Author: Robert Frost First Line: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood;”
5.		Poem: Kubla Khan Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge First Line: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure dome decree:”
4.		Poem: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Author: Dylan Thomas First Line: “Do not go gentle into that good night.”
3.		Poem: The Tyger Author: William Blake First Line: “‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright”
2.		Poem: The Waste Land Author: T.S. Eliot First Line: (Skipping the Satyricon of Petronious) “April is the cruellest month, breeding”
1.		Poem: Rime of the Ancient Mariner Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge First Line: “It is an ancient mariner / And he stoppeth one of three”