God, yes to Pope. Tennyson is top tier without a doubt. Browning and Byron too - with a smidge more doubt. Gawain/Pearl poet? Yes. Top tier. Wordsworth? Bleurgh. Plath? Come on. No.
Well, I do think it's quite a bit sneaky to include her as an American, I must say! So that is one aspect of it. (I gave Eliot a bit of side-eye in the lists for the same reason.) But in all honesty I'm being a little facetious and treating the whole thing as a fun conversation rather than anything definitive. I really like Plath's work! I don't think it's quite on a par with the other poets listed. (I wouldn't have Coleridge in there either, mind, and I'd rather read Plath than Wordsworth any day of the week.) Had she lived, who knows? For my taste, I don't think Plath is any greater than Anne Sexton, to look at a direct contemporary – and once you open the door to American poetry there are an awful lot of poets who should be in contention. So: really no animus against Plath at all. I just don't think she belongs on a list of top twenty English poets!
As an American, I must put in a word for Walt Whitman and Edna St Vincent Millay, both of whom I think deserve consideration for the top twenty -- for totally different reasons. Whitman most of all for "Song of the Open Road" and Millay for the love sonnets, which I dare say at their best -- "I being born a woman and distressed", "When we are old and these rejoicing veins", "And you as well must die, beloved dust" etc-- reach a Shakespearean level.
First of all, I think Yeats is far too low on your list. Secondly, there is a criminal lack of female poets missing! Don’t get me wrong, I love the boys listed, but Christina Rossetti is not on there?! What about Emily Brontë?
Just had a shock. I don't approve of silencing good poems just because they were written by people with awful politics, but I just discovered that while in Ireland taking part in the Tudor conquest campaign (along with Walter Raleigh), Spenser wrote the 'View of the Present State of Ireland.' In which one of his characters advocates scorched earth, eradication & expulsion, and the banning of the Irish language. Not actually printed until thirty years after his death, but apparently very influential even at the time. Helped to form the English views of the Irish, which were unspeakable even before the rebellion of 1641.
It's stomach-turning.
So not a good idea to discuss Spenser the poet in Ireland.
"Care had been taken with the texts. But I have sometimes thought it consistent with the aim of the book to prefer the more beautiful to the better attested reading. I have often excised weak or superfluous stanzas when sure that excision would improve..." This is from the forward to The Oxford Book of English Verse edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch. I agree with the first point about the beautiful prioritized (sometimes) over the 'better attested' but should the next point make us cringe a little, or is that normal practice for an anthology? Also, when you were reading Keats in your youth did you want to be a poet?
yeh I think there is a little cringe at that---worth reading the Rick's introduction which give a very different modern view of how to anthologise. Accuracy must be maintained!
JM—without having read this post (just glancing at the title), I jotted down my own “top 20” while on a subway ride home from work—and find my list is identical to yours: with four exceptions. Swap out Eliot and Plath (let’s call them both American, to the former’s certain chagrin) for Owen and Graves, and remove Yeats from Russell Square to Sligo (where he is in fact buried), so we can add Christina Rossetti. And I might take solid Ben Jonson over the magnificent Spenser or even, alas, Blake. Think about it.
Dudes, this was excellent. I'm going to listen twice! So, what is the final list of 20? Seems like you and JM should have to beg and barter and pin it down. I would be curious to hear more about Marvell. The only poem of his I really know is the Mower to the Glowworms. I loved it since the first time I read it. I memorized it immediately. Henry, your idea about the spine of English poetry is lovely. It does make me want to pay more attention to Eliot. I'm curious about that tension you talked about...he isn't your favorite, but nevertheless is in the core 5. Also, JM had the take about how Auden was mimicked more frequently than Eliot...do you agree? Shouldn't that be a coin in the Auden jar, so to speak?
Oh Marvell is a superb poet: wit and lyric moving into political satire. Try the Horatian Ode or Appleton House. TSE I do like, especially Four Quartets, but while I can see and appreciate his innovations, I do not always love them. In some moods I don't like the Waste Land at all. I suspect Eliot's imitators are simply less well known to us now than are the Larkin-type Auden imitators. In a less direct sense, so many poets after Eliot are his imitators. The Waste Land has been so dominant, like Ulysses. So glad you enjoyed it :)
Re: Auden, I like him a lot but I think I slightly mistrust him bc I always go to his poems for comfort, reassurance -- you pull out trusty old "September 1, 1939" whenever a big world event happens and "Funeral Blues" for a loss. That's a function of poetry and a valid one but at the same time being a security blanket or a sage to look to a. makes you think "is this guy trying to pull a fast one, or what?" and b. feels like it somehow precludes a poet from having that sense of the abyssal deep that marks the truly great. I go back time and again to Eliot, Shakespeare, Dickinson for many things, but not for comfort. Fun conversation, do Americans next!
If it isn’t an imposition,could you suggest a comparable anthology, one available on Kindle.This is strictly a matter of economics:lowering purchase and shipping costs.Thanks.
Sorry I didn’t respond to your helpful message earlier,it’s just that Substack doesn’t notify about new comments,unless someone “likes” them,or so it seems to me.
In any case I decided to use my budget for the original recommendation from Amazon UK,the US store didn’t have any new copies!
Should arrive in a few days. Thanks for your help.
I got the Norton Anthology 5th edition, partly because it's what John Lennard refers to in his brilliant Oxford *Poetry Handbook* (2005). Try second hand eg WoB. 2,000 pages, medieval to present, excellent selection. WoB has the OBEV as well.
In my experience, you really need a physical book for poetry. Tho I did go right through the Derek Walcott collected poems on Kindle looking for thematic comparisons. Shipping is an issue, I agree, when living outside the UK.
Don't know where you are, but if in EU, there's Amazon.de. And I hate using Amazon as well.
This was wonderful way to spend part of my Sunday evening. blBravo! but ... Isn't Yeats Irish? And isn't the Tom o' bedlam reference in Lear to Edgar and not the fool? And since you quoted Samuel Johnson a few times who referenced John Lydgate in answering a Scot asking to what he thought of Scotland: comparisons are odious. We have fallen into ranking everything, which seems quite unpoetic
Of course, it doesn't change anything. You set the standard for inclusion in the contest of English poets and stuck to it leading to a delightful read; I prefer transcripts to videos. I, like my Irish family, was just indulging in one of the top ten Irish sports: teasing. Others in that list are camogie, begrudgery, hurling (both kinds), drinking (see hurling), rugby (stolen from the English), emigrating, and potatoes.
Elegance and balance from Pope - Both of you make very good points in this part of the discussion. I’m persuaded that Pope belongs in “the spine.” I also agree with James about Milton and Paradise Lost. There is nothing else like it. I also second the person who brought up Christina Rossetti. Nobody else on the list captures, as she does, the correspondences between poetic beauty, sensual desire, and danger for women. Goblin Market is a classic. I’m not too worried about tiers. I wish I could keep listening for the Browning bits. Hope to come back.
Poetry is what reminds us of how big of a wonder we are part of.
Let's consider Emily Dickinson in the great poets discussion.
American but yes
God, yes to Pope. Tennyson is top tier without a doubt. Browning and Byron too - with a smidge more doubt. Gawain/Pearl poet? Yes. Top tier. Wordsworth? Bleurgh. Plath? Come on. No.
Aside from the fact she’s American, why are you so against Plath? I’m curious as a die-hard Plathian.
Well, I do think it's quite a bit sneaky to include her as an American, I must say! So that is one aspect of it. (I gave Eliot a bit of side-eye in the lists for the same reason.) But in all honesty I'm being a little facetious and treating the whole thing as a fun conversation rather than anything definitive. I really like Plath's work! I don't think it's quite on a par with the other poets listed. (I wouldn't have Coleridge in there either, mind, and I'd rather read Plath than Wordsworth any day of the week.) Had she lived, who knows? For my taste, I don't think Plath is any greater than Anne Sexton, to look at a direct contemporary – and once you open the door to American poetry there are an awful lot of poets who should be in contention. So: really no animus against Plath at all. I just don't think she belongs on a list of top twenty English poets!
Ooh, I would put her at the top! She was a revolutionary!
This is why these kind of lists are fun!
As an American, I must put in a word for Walt Whitman and Edna St Vincent Millay, both of whom I think deserve consideration for the top twenty -- for totally different reasons. Whitman most of all for "Song of the Open Road" and Millay for the love sonnets, which I dare say at their best -- "I being born a woman and distressed", "When we are old and these rejoicing veins", "And you as well must die, beloved dust" etc-- reach a Shakespearean level.
Yes indeed but this is brits
Fair! Was confused, like many others, by the Eliot and Plath inclusions.
I love getting advice from very opinionated boys! I am raising two of them, or more like: we are raising each other.
haha indeed
First of all, I think Yeats is far too low on your list. Secondly, there is a criminal lack of female poets missing! Don’t get me wrong, I love the boys listed, but Christina Rossetti is not on there?! What about Emily Brontë?
I did read out two E Bronte poems, but I don't think she's top twenty, much though I love her.
I am clutching my pearls!
who would you take off the list?
Marvell, I think.
I love her more than him, for sure, but I think he's a very great poet
I don’t doubt it. This just isn’t my list! I would certainly add Christina Rossetti, Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and maybe John Clare…
I have to ask: Why is Eliot featured when he was American? And as much I adore Plath (through and through), she was too?
Eliot is basically English. Plath I think should have been excluded!
Yes, to be fair, he is. It came up as a question on The Chase the other day, and Bradley Walsh mentioned he didn’t know he wasn’t English.
Just had a shock. I don't approve of silencing good poems just because they were written by people with awful politics, but I just discovered that while in Ireland taking part in the Tudor conquest campaign (along with Walter Raleigh), Spenser wrote the 'View of the Present State of Ireland.' In which one of his characters advocates scorched earth, eradication & expulsion, and the banning of the Irish language. Not actually printed until thirty years after his death, but apparently very influential even at the time. Helped to form the English views of the Irish, which were unspeakable even before the rebellion of 1641.
It's stomach-turning.
So not a good idea to discuss Spenser the poet in Ireland.
yeah he was pretty bad
Vile.
"Care had been taken with the texts. But I have sometimes thought it consistent with the aim of the book to prefer the more beautiful to the better attested reading. I have often excised weak or superfluous stanzas when sure that excision would improve..." This is from the forward to The Oxford Book of English Verse edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch. I agree with the first point about the beautiful prioritized (sometimes) over the 'better attested' but should the next point make us cringe a little, or is that normal practice for an anthology? Also, when you were reading Keats in your youth did you want to be a poet?
yeh I think there is a little cringe at that---worth reading the Rick's introduction which give a very different modern view of how to anthologise. Accuracy must be maintained!
JM—without having read this post (just glancing at the title), I jotted down my own “top 20” while on a subway ride home from work—and find my list is identical to yours: with four exceptions. Swap out Eliot and Plath (let’s call them both American, to the former’s certain chagrin) for Owen and Graves, and remove Yeats from Russell Square to Sligo (where he is in fact buried), so we can add Christina Rossetti. And I might take solid Ben Jonson over the magnificent Spenser or even, alas, Blake. Think about it.
Dudes, this was excellent. I'm going to listen twice! So, what is the final list of 20? Seems like you and JM should have to beg and barter and pin it down. I would be curious to hear more about Marvell. The only poem of his I really know is the Mower to the Glowworms. I loved it since the first time I read it. I memorized it immediately. Henry, your idea about the spine of English poetry is lovely. It does make me want to pay more attention to Eliot. I'm curious about that tension you talked about...he isn't your favorite, but nevertheless is in the core 5. Also, JM had the take about how Auden was mimicked more frequently than Eliot...do you agree? Shouldn't that be a coin in the Auden jar, so to speak?
Oh Marvell is a superb poet: wit and lyric moving into political satire. Try the Horatian Ode or Appleton House. TSE I do like, especially Four Quartets, but while I can see and appreciate his innovations, I do not always love them. In some moods I don't like the Waste Land at all. I suspect Eliot's imitators are simply less well known to us now than are the Larkin-type Auden imitators. In a less direct sense, so many poets after Eliot are his imitators. The Waste Land has been so dominant, like Ulysses. So glad you enjoyed it :)
Re: Auden, I like him a lot but I think I slightly mistrust him bc I always go to his poems for comfort, reassurance -- you pull out trusty old "September 1, 1939" whenever a big world event happens and "Funeral Blues" for a loss. That's a function of poetry and a valid one but at the same time being a security blanket or a sage to look to a. makes you think "is this guy trying to pull a fast one, or what?" and b. feels like it somehow precludes a poet from having that sense of the abyssal deep that marks the truly great. I go back time and again to Eliot, Shakespeare, Dickinson for many things, but not for comfort. Fun conversation, do Americans next!
Who are the 20 best female poets?
we named some, Rossetti, Bronte, etc, many others from C17th
If it isn’t an imposition,could you suggest a comparable anthology, one available on Kindle.This is strictly a matter of economics:lowering purchase and shipping costs.Thanks.
Sorry I didn’t respond to your helpful message earlier,it’s just that Substack doesn’t notify about new comments,unless someone “likes” them,or so it seems to me.
In any case I decided to use my budget for the original recommendation from Amazon UK,the US store didn’t have any new copies!
Should arrive in a few days. Thanks for your help.
Thank you
There really isn't a comparable one that I know of... Golden Treasury? Sad to hear Ricks not on Kindle, that is madness.
I got the Norton Anthology 5th edition, partly because it's what John Lennard refers to in his brilliant Oxford *Poetry Handbook* (2005). Try second hand eg WoB. 2,000 pages, medieval to present, excellent selection. WoB has the OBEV as well.
In my experience, you really need a physical book for poetry. Tho I did go right through the Derek Walcott collected poems on Kindle looking for thematic comparisons. Shipping is an issue, I agree, when living outside the UK.
Don't know where you are, but if in EU, there's Amazon.de. And I hate using Amazon as well.
This was wonderful way to spend part of my Sunday evening. blBravo! but ... Isn't Yeats Irish? And isn't the Tom o' bedlam reference in Lear to Edgar and not the fool? And since you quoted Samuel Johnson a few times who referenced John Lydgate in answering a Scot asking to what he thought of Scotland: comparisons are odious. We have fallen into ranking everything, which seems quite unpoetic
Yes but he wrote during the union
Excellent point. Of course, my family there never recognized the union. indeed, they were plotting to tear it apart. 😉
I too am related to Irish nationalists and it doesn't change anything.
Of course, it doesn't change anything. You set the standard for inclusion in the contest of English poets and stuck to it leading to a delightful read; I prefer transcripts to videos. I, like my Irish family, was just indulging in one of the top ten Irish sports: teasing. Others in that list are camogie, begrudgery, hurling (both kinds), drinking (see hurling), rugby (stolen from the English), emigrating, and potatoes.
What a joy to listen to on a dreary Sunday - what a gift!
😀😀
Elegance and balance from Pope - Both of you make very good points in this part of the discussion. I’m persuaded that Pope belongs in “the spine.” I also agree with James about Milton and Paradise Lost. There is nothing else like it. I also second the person who brought up Christina Rossetti. Nobody else on the list captures, as she does, the correspondences between poetic beauty, sensual desire, and danger for women. Goblin Market is a classic. I’m not too worried about tiers. I wish I could keep listening for the Browning bits. Hope to come back.