Best Poems by the Best Poets - Some Lists of Winners

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* Sestina. * Skaldic verse. * Sonnet. * Terza rima. * Triolet. * Tritina. * Villanelle.
Poets: * Adam Zagajewski. * Billy Collins. * Billy Collins exercise.
* Snorri's Edda. * Carl Dennis. * Corey Marks. * Franz Wright. * Gary Young. * The Gawain Poet.
* Jack Gilbert. * Jane Hirshfield. * Jean Vengua. * J. Zimmerman. * J. Zimmerman (haiku). * J. Zimmerman (tanka).
* Jorie Graham. * Karen Braucher. * Kay Ryan.
Laureate Poets: * Britain; * USA.
* Len Anderson. * Li-Young Lee. * Linda Pastan. * Nordic Skalds. * Philip Larkin.
* Pulitzer Poetry Prize (U.S.A). * Richard Hugo. * Robert Bly. * Sara Teasdale.
* Snorri's Edda. * Stephen Dunn. * Ted Kooser. * W.S. Merwin.
Editor David Lehman. The Best American Poetry: 2006; Guest Editor Billy Collins.
The Best American Poetry: 2005; Guest Editor Paul Muldoon.

Best Poems by the Best Poets - Some Lists of Winners
by Ariadne Unst

* The World's Best English-Language Poems, from Harmon's Top 500 Poems.
* The U.S.A.'s Best Poems, from 1999 list by Weekend Edition.
* Best Poems from the U.S.A. in the Twentieth Century
* Pulitzer Prize Winners for books by some great U.S.A. poets.
* Links. * Books.

Buy 'Top 500 Poems' Top 500 Poems, William Harmon (Editor).
The 500 most anthologized poems in English, from work in 1250 by "anonymous", through Blake, William Shakespeare, and Keats, to Wilbur, Philip Larkin, Ginsberg, and Plath.
Review of The Best American Poetry: 2006.
Editor Billy Collins. 		The Best American Poetry: 2003, Editor Yusef Komunyakaa. Great new anthology of recent poetry by 75 established poets and by newcomers. - including George Higgens, whose first published poem (Villanelle) is published here, giving hope to new poets!

Worldwide Best English-Language 13 from Top 500 Poems by William Harmon.
Harmon shows the 500 English-language poems (in English) written in the last 750 years. His wonderful idea was to present the poems that most appealed to hundreds of contemporary editors, critics, and poets: they had included these poems in the varied anthologies indexed in the Ninth Edition of The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. Thus they are the "democratic" choice of many, not the choice of one anthologizer.

The brief and conversational commentary on each poem is informative without overwhelming the reader or distracting from the poem. A great place to begin reading and appreciating poetry, and perhaps to discover how to get one of your poems into a subsequent list.

  1. The Tiger, William Blake.
  2. Sir Patrick Spens, Anonymous (traditional).
  3. To Autumn, John Keats.
  4. That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold, William Shakespeare.
  5. Pied Beauty, Gerard Manley Hopkins.
  6. Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost.
  7. Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
  8. Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold.
  9. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, John Keats.
  10. To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, Robert Herrick.
  11. To His Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell.
  12. The Passionate Shepherd to his Love, Christopher Marlow.
  13. Death, Be Not Proud, John Donne.
Buy 'Top 500 Poems' Top 500 Poems.

USA Best 13 from 1999 list by Weekend Edition (presented by commentator Douglas Brinkley).
The Weekend Edition list was on the web in 1999 at http://www.npr.org/programs/wesun/991226.poems.html (where it is sadly no longer available).
Panelists that created this list included poets Naomi Shihab Nye, Carolyn Kizer, Ishmael Reed, and Yusef Komunyakka.
  1. The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot.
  2. The Bridge, Hart Crane.
  3. Howl, Allen Ginsburg.
  4. The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Langston Hughes.
  5. Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, Robert Frost.
  6. The People, Yes, Carl Sandburg.
  7. Pisan Cantos, Ezra Pound.
  8. The Snow Man, Wallace Stevens.
  9. Patterson, William Carlos Williams.
  10. In the Waiting Room, Elizabeth Bishop.
  11. For the Union Dead, Robert Lowell.
  12. Somewhere I Have Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond, Edward Eastlin Cummings
  13. Lifting Belly, Gertrude Stein.

Best Poems from the U.S.A. in the Twentieth Century, from The Best American Poetry 2000, David Lehman (Series Editor).
Always individualist, the poets who edited The Best American Poetry volumes from 1988 to 2000 responded in dramatically different ways to the request by the series editor (David Lehman) for a list of the "top fifteen" poems of the twentieth century. No composite list of poems was possible.

For example, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land appeared in the lists of only three poets. (However, the lists contained nine different citations of a poem by T.S. Eliot.)

Perhaps the most popular poet was Robert Frost: altogether there were thirteen different citations of a poem by Robert Frost.

David Lehman's composite list shows poets whose work was nominated by at least two of the guest editors. Alphabetically, the chosen poets are:

Links

Related Books
Buy 'Top 500 Poems' Top 500 Poems, William Harmon (Editor).
The 500 most anthologized poems in English, from work in 1250 by "anonymous", through Blake, William Shakespeare, and Keats, to Wilbur, Philip Larkin, Ginsberg, and Plath. Includes work by:
* John Dryden
* Robert Southey
* William Wordsworth
* Alfred, Lord Tennyson
* Robert Bridges
* John Masefield
Buy 'Americans' Favorite Poems' Americans' Favorite Poems, Editor Robert Pinsky.
A "national portrait" of the poems beloved by Americans, who shared their treasured poems with Laureate (at that time) Robert Pinsky.

Related pages:
* Books of Poetry Form. * Alphabetic list of poetry forms and related topics. * Poetry Home. * How to Write Poetry.
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