Twenty-Five Iconic Poems of the English Language

by Robert Frost, William Ernest Henley, Dylan Thomas

34 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1807

About the author

Flinty, moody, plainspoken and deep, Robert Frost was one of America's most popular 20th-century poets. Frost was farming in Derry, New Hampshire when, at the age of 38, he sold the farm, uprooted his family and moved to England, where he devoted himself to his poetry. His first two books of verse, A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), were immediate successes. In 1915 he returned to the United States and continued to write while living in New Hampshire and then Vermont. His pastoral images of apple trees and stone fences -- along with his solitary, man-of-few-words poetic voice -- helped define the modern image of rural New England. Frost's poems include "Mending Wall" ("Good fences make good neighbors"), "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" ("Whose woods these are I think I know"), and perhaps his most famous work, "The Road Not Taken" ("Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- / I took the one less traveled by"). Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times: in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943. He also served as "Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress" from 1958-59; that position was renamed as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (or simply Poet Laureate) in 1986.

Frost recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy... Frost attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard, but did not graduate from either school... Frost preferred traditional rhyme and meter in poetry; his famous dismissal of free verse was, "I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down."

Reviews

[leynes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a personal selection of 25 of my favorite poems in the English language that I didn't own in any other edition. And being the book-obsessed collector that I am I decided to create a PDF of these poems and had them bound in a cute little pamphlet. I am obsessed. From Frost and Henley to Plath, Whitman and Hughes, with a sprinkle of Clifton and Brooks—this selection does not disappoint.

Here's an overview of the 25 poems that I chose, in chronological order from 1807 to 2015:

1. William Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
2. Lord Byron, “She Walks in Beauty”
3. Walt Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain!”
4. William Ernest Henley, “Invictus”
5. Emily Dickinson, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”
6. Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask“
7. Lord Alfred Douglas, “The Dead Poet”
8. Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
9. Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
10. Sara Teasdale, “There Will Come Soft Rains”
11. Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice”
12. Robert Frost, “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
13. Abel Meeropol, “Strange Fruit”
14. Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
15. Langston Hughes, “Harlem”
16. Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool”
17. Jean Rhys, “Obeah Night”
18. Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”
19. Louise Glück, “Mock Orange”
20. June Jordan, “Democracy Poem #1”
21. Philip Larkin, “This Be The Verse”
22. Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise”
23. Lucille Clifton, “Homage to My Hips”
24. Terrance Hayes, “We Should Make a Documentary About Spades”
25. Ross Gay, “A Small Needful Fact”

Most of these poems mean a shit-ton to me, and I would like to learn them all by heart. (Can you tell I'm doing my very best to become as insufferable as can be.) You can find all of these poems online for free so open up Google if you're unfamiliar with any of them. They are all worth your time. Most of them are rather short (less than a page!) and thus only work when quoting them in their entirety, like “Democracy Poem #1” or “We Real Cool” (ugh, such good poems)—but I didn't wanna leave you without any quotes, so I wrote some down that kinda work on their own:

“It matters not how strait the gate, / How charged with punishments the scroll, / I am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul.” (from #4)

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” (from #8)

“Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” (from #18)

“Leaving behind nights of terror and fear / I rise / Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear” (from #22)

“I know you are not my enemy. You say there are no enemies / In Spades. Spades is a game our enemies do not play.” (from #24)