The 100 Best Poems of All Time

Rating:
Summary: Uchh
Review: Leslie Pockell must be the worst, most careless editor ever. Never mind the audacious and ridiculous title. She puts lines in the wrong stanzas of poems. She gets titles and words wrong. She fails to specify when she's only presenting part of a poem as opposed to the entire thing. Some simple double-checking could have prevented these problems. Ms. Pockell must be a very lazy woman.

Rating:
Summary: blah blah blah
Review: What this little book might have been called in manuscript was something like "100 Representative Poems of 100 of the Most Popular Poets of All Time." Not a bad title, and it is consistent with editor Leslie Pockell's popular choices and her[?] intent to include no more than one poem by any poet. But the unmitigated gall of the title actually chosen--The 100 Best Poems of All Time--makes for a little fun, and probably will increase the sales of the book. As Pockell writes in the short Introduction, "Well, at least we attracted your attention."

You did. And for fun I am responding with some reaction to the selections. But first I should mention Pockell's criteria for the selections. The book needed to be short, a mix of "high art" and "popular culture" was desired, and the selections ought to be "inclined toward poetry that is best appreciated when recited or read aloud." Fair enough. And for the most part I think Pockell did an admirable job.

The excellent choices include, the King James version of the Twenty-Third Psalm, Poe's "The Raven," Shakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" (although it seems weird to select just one of his sonnets; I prefer "That time of year thou mayst in me behold" or "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"), Donne's "Go and Catch a Falling Star," Shelley's "Ozymandias," Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (although again, how to choose just one!) Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," Housman's "When I Was One-and-Twenty," Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," (ditto the last two asides), Eliot's "...Prufrock," etc.

Poor selections include, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" (a stirring song, but a "best" poem?), Basho's "An Old Pond" (there are better English renditions than the one given, for example, "In the old stone pool/a frogjump:/splishhhh." Pockell gives, "Old pond-/A frog leaps in-/Water's sound."; and Basho wrote many better haiku), "Casey at the Bat" (uh...never mind), and several others that I fear to name. Also to choose out of all of Alexander Pope's work, his epigram about the dog at Kew, seems almost anti-poetic.

A howler is "Ancient Music" by Ezra Pound. If Pockell wanted to show the less than charming side of Pound, perhaps Pound's "The Garden" which includes the line, "...the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor" might have been presented. (Then again, perhaps not.)

A creative choice is e e cummings's "Buffalo Bill's," which reflects not only cummings's love of typographical form, but his playful wit along with his famous word play and his often missed irony. (The typographical form of the poem represents a tomahawk: "[H]ow...[DO] you like your blueeyed boy[,] Mister Death"?)

Langston Hughes's "Harlem" ("What happens to a dream deferred?") is obviously a politically correct choice, and also a very good little poem, but I would have preferred his "Mother to Son" ("Well, son, I'll tell you:/Life for me ain't been no crystal stair...") or the breath-taking simplicity of "Friend." Sylvia Plath's dark and brutal "Daddy" is also PC, but with its inclusion there is no need for Margaret Atwood, a fact for which we can be thankful. The choice from Sappho, with its nice turn from "a god" that sits "beside you" to the poet herself, is of course de rigueur, but a good choice nonetheless.

Pleasant surprises include W. H. Auden's "Funeral Blues," and Pablo Neruda's "Poetry." Some old favorites are Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much with Us," and the powerful "Incident" from Countee Cullen.

It is good that Pockell includes some poetry translated from other languages; however that just makes the presumption of her title all the more absurd. Just how would one presume to pick the best from such an incredible array? However, the choices made really are very good although they reflect the artistry of the translator nearly as much as the original poet. Middle Eastern people might object to the choice of a quatrain from "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" ("The Moving Finger writes...") translated by Edward FitzGerald, which is almost as much English as it is Persian, preferring a more ethnic rendition.

I can't quibble with the poets left out, although missing are John Crow Ransom, Archibald MacLeish, Theodore Roethke, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Lowell, Rita Dove, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and of course of necessity many others. One of my favorite poems and poet not to appear is "Patterns" by Amy Lowell.

Pockell gives a terse, but felicitous introduction to each poem usually including a word about the poet. But I have one question, who is Leslie Pockell? There is not a biographical word anywhere in the book to give a hint. And should I have used a masculine or a feminine pronoun?

Rating:
Summary: Handy little collection
Review: What this little book might have been called in manuscript was something like "100 Representative Poems of 100 of the Most Popular Poets of All Time." Not a bad title, and it is consistent with editor Leslie Pockell's popular choices and her[?] intent to include no more than one poem by any poet. But the unmitigated gall of the title actually chosen--The 100 Best Poems of All Time--makes for a little fun, and probably will increase the sales of the book. As Pockell writes in the short Introduction, "Well, at least we attracted your attention."

You did. And for fun I am responding with some reaction to the selections. But first I should mention Pockell's criteria for the selections. The book needed to be short, a mix of "high art" and "popular culture" was desired, and the selections ought to be "inclined toward poetry that is best appreciated when recited or read aloud." Fair enough. And for the most part I think Pockell did an admirable job.

The excellent choices include, the King James version of the Twenty-Third Psalm, Poe's "The Raven," Shakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" (although it seems weird to select just one of his sonnets; I prefer "That time of year thou mayst in me behold" or "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"), Donne's "Go and Catch a Falling Star," Shelley's "Ozymandias," Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (although again, how to choose just one!) Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," Housman's "When I Was One-and-Twenty," Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," (ditto the last two asides), Eliot's "...Prufrock," etc.

Poor selections include, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" (a stirring song, but a "best" poem?), Basho's "An Old Pond" (there are better English renditions than the one given, for example, "In the old stone pool/a frogjump:/splishhhh." Pockell gives, "Old pond-/A frog leaps in-/Water's sound."; and Basho wrote many better haiku), "Casey at the Bat" (uh...never mind), and several others that I fear to name. Also to choose out of all of Alexander Pope's work, his epigram about the dog at Kew, seems almost anti-poetic.

A howler is "Ancient Music" by Ezra Pound. If Pockell wanted to show the less than charming side of Pound, perhaps Pound's "The Garden" which includes the line, "...the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor" might have been presented. (Then again, perhaps not.)

A creative choice is e e cummings's "Buffalo Bill's," which reflects not only cummings's love of typographical form, but his playful wit along with his famous word play and his often missed irony. (The typographical form of the poem represents a tomahawk: "[H]ow...[DO] you like your blueeyed boy[,] Mister Death"?)

Langston Hughes's "Harlem" ("What happens to a dream deferred?") is obviously a politically correct choice, and also a very good little poem, but I would have preferred his "Mother to Son" ("Well, son, I'll tell you:/Life for me ain't been no crystal stair...") or the breath-taking simplicity of "Friend." Sylvia Plath's dark and brutal "Daddy" is also PC, but with its inclusion there is no need for Margaret Atwood, a fact for which we can be thankful. The choice from Sappho, with its nice turn from "a god" that sits "beside you" to the poet herself, is of course de rigueur, but a good choice nonetheless.

Pleasant surprises include W. H. Auden's "Funeral Blues," and Pablo Neruda's "Poetry." Some old favorites are Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much with Us," and the powerful "Incident" from Countee Cullen.

It is good that Pockell includes some poetry translated from other languages; however that just makes the presumption of her title all the more absurd. Just how would one presume to pick the best from such an incredible array? However, the choices made really are very good although they reflect the artistry of the translator nearly as much as the original poet. Middle Eastern people might object to the choice of a quatrain from "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" ("The Moving Finger writes...") translated by Edward FitzGerald, which is almost as much English as it is Persian, preferring a more ethnic rendition.

I can't quibble with the poets left out, although missing are John Crow Ransom, Archibald MacLeish, Theodore Roethke, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Lowell, Rita Dove, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and of course of necessity many others. One of my favorite poems and poet not to appear is "Patterns" by Amy Lowell.

Pockell gives a terse, but felicitous introduction to each poem usually including a word about the poet. But I have one question, who is Leslie Pockell? There is not a biographical word anywhere in the book to give a hint. And should I have used a masculine or a feminine pronoun?

Rating:
Summary: blah blah blah
Review: What type of multicultural goo is this?
It's that and nothing more,
Although many are authors of words worth rich,
most are just a bore!