Originally posted on April 25, 2011 at 12:28 PM
For the sake of other people being able to find them, this list includes only published poems. In my personal exposure to so many local poets, this list would change if I included poems by unpublished writers. I also probably left a few out, even though I’ve been constructing this list for weeks now. Don’t you hate that feeling? Nonetheless, this is what I have (in rough order of my favoritism, although it does change somewhat depending on my mood).
1. “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this is the best poem ever written.
2. “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley
3. “The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot
4. “The Lanyard” by Billy Collins
5. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost
6. “A Boy’s Satan” by Stan Rice
7. “The Day is Done” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
8. “Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein
9. “The Tunnel” by Hart Crane
10. “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae
11. “Paradise Lost” by John Milton
12. “Litany” by Billy Collins
13. “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas
14. “The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe
15. “Advice to Writers” by Billy Collins
16. “Like Communion” by J. Paul Holcomb
17. “Night is my Sister” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
18. “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost
19. “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe
20. “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll
21. “Funeral Blues” by W.H. Auden
22. “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
23. “The Spider and the Fly” by Mary Howitt
24. “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost
25. “A Dream within a Dream” by Edgar Allan Poe
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