The Classic Hundred Poems

by William Harmon (Editor)

Whether you’re intimidated by couplets or you recite Robert Frost in your sleep, this abridged anthology of the top 100 poems of all time — selected by over 1,000 experts — is a necessary guide to the classics! An ensemble cast takes you through these famous verses and provides historical context and textual analysis to better understand each work.

Here in one volume are the top one hundred poems, as determined by a survey of more than 1,000 anthologies—the poems in English most frequently anthologized, the poems with the broadest, most enduring appeal. From Shakespeare to Dickinson to Frost, from sonnets to odes to villanelles, William Harmon's Classic Hundred Poems offers a feast for poetry lovers.

This edition updates the first by presenting the new top one hundred poems, nineteen of which were not in the first edition. The revised edition is arranged chronologically, and features new commentary and notes on verse form, as well as an index of the poems in order of popularity, notes on words and proper names, and a bibliography for each poet and each poem. A glossary of terms, author index, and index of titles and first lines are also included.

From Keats' "To Autumn," now ranked as the number-one poem in this collection, to George Herbert's "Virtue," in the hundredth spot, every poem is illuminated by Harmon's informative notes. With insights into the historical period in which each poem was written, the verse form used, and connections among poems, this is the ideal introduction to poetry, as well as a treasury for the dedicated poetry lover.

An anthology every poetry lover should have: 100 carefully selected and beautifully read poems. Works included from the following authors:
▪ Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) ▪ Sir Walter Raleigh (1554?-1618) ▪ Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) ▪ Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) ▪ William Shakespeare (1564-1616) ▪ John Donne (1572-1631) ▪ Ben Jonson (1572-1637) ▪ Robert Herrick (1591-1674) ▪ George Herbert (1593-1633) ▪ Thomas Carew (1595-1639?) ▪ Edmund Waller (1606-1687) ▪ John Milton (1608-1674) ▪ Sir John Suckling (1609-1642) ▪ Richard Lovelace (1618-1658) ▪ Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) ▪ Henry Vaughan (1622-1695) ▪ Thomas Gray (1716-1771) ▪ William Blake (1757-1827) ▪ Robert Burns (1759-1796) ▪ William Wordsworth (1770-1850) ▪ Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) ▪ George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron (1788-1824) ▪ Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) ▪ John Keats (1795-1821) ▪ Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) ▪ Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) ▪ Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) ▪ Robert Browning (1812-1889) ▪ Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861) ▪ Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) ▪ Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) ▪ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) ▪ Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) ▪ Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) ▪ Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) ▪ W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) ▪ Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) ▪ Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) ▪ Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) ▪ Robert Frost (1874-1963) ▪ T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) ▪ Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) ▪ W.H. Auden (1907-1973) ▪ Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) ▪ Randall Jarrell (1914-1965) ▪ Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Audiobook, Fiction, School, Adult, Anthologies

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. It was picked up with the best intentions--American primary education slights poetry, except a note-worthy few authors (Emily Dickinson, Thomas Mallory, Poe)and we are never truly indoctrinated into the power of the well-metered verse. A few years back I recognized my deficiency and sought to remedy it through my own auspices. I loved Donne, gagged through Shelley, recalled a brief charming affair with Milton during my "literature of evil" period, dabbled with the humorous 19th century writers--to wit: Edward Leary, Charles Dodson. There was a brief and powerful interlude with G.M. Hopkins, whose verse never cease to amaze and astound. But for the most part, working my way through this book of the top 100 poems, I spent a lot of time wondering about the relevancy of poetry in today's world.

In 21st century America poetry like art appears to have no place unless there's a commercial application for it, like rap. Rap (when I can understand it and when it's not anger-generated and full of offensive stereo-types) has relevancy, and a nicely turned rhyme can be as deeply satisfying as a good cup of coffee.

But rap poetry speaks to the urgent now, whereas this (mostly) male and anglo-saxon authorship speaks to a tattered and disgraced past. Amongst such stodgy peers, even Emily Dickinson's scintillating sprung verse appears zestless. This is because the careful rhyming schemes and trite classical references have served their purpose and no longer stun and soothe.

Which is not to say there weren't poems I didn't find enjoyable--John Donne still makes my heart lift with questions like,

who cleft the devil's hoof?

and Walter de la Mare chillingly,

"Is anybody there?" said the Traveler,
Knocking on the moonlit door.

but I did feel that the poetry was still the poetry of the mind, rather than that of a terrified and overwhelmed consciousness.

As I worked my way through the pages I looked for people asking questions that I would ask, and Walt Whitman's questions of relevancy in "O Me! O Life!" were what I was questing after.

This makes me wonder: what do I most appreciate in poetry, that which I'm already acquainted with? or am I looking for something new? The most pleasure I've had reading poetry in the past few years have been 19/20th century male writers like Whitman, Frost, Lowell, Hopkins and Ginzburg, and 21st century women like Patricia Lockwood, Lisa Pasold, Jane Kenyon and Jane Hirshfield--people who share my rural and rambling New England youth and my urban and questing modern adulthood. Along the way I've discovered C. K. Williams, Stanley Plumly and John O'Donohue. These poets do ask questions that mean something to me. Clearly, Plumly's "The Crows at Three A.M." harks back to earlier poetry (Keats), so there is grounding. Where did my impatience come from? and why did I feel like vaulting over many of these poems in this book? Is it my American desire to have it all and have it right now, right in front of me?

This morning in my kitchen where I'm writing this it is icy cold. The day has opened gray and bleak. Right at this very moment a recently married friend is lying in a George Washington hospital bed waiting to hear if she has kidney cancer. Why do poets of the 17th century not write about the cold and the mundane? When they write about death of loved ones why does is sound like they are speaking through the wrong end of a telescope? Why do we still read their romantic twaddle about nymphs and dryads? and why in heaven's name did they invoke a dry and huskless "Jove" with such galling frequency?

That's my problem: poetry should reflect a recognizable life. Shouldn't it?

[Jason Pettus · Rating 4 out of 5]

2021 reads, #54. Big news -- for the first time in twenty years, I've started writing poetry again! And unlike last time, this time it ain't any of that poetry-slam nonsense either, but actual formal poetry based on actual classic poetry forms, things like sonnets and haikus and other thousand-year-old traditions. As part of my research into what the genre of poetry currently contains, this month I'm doing what I consider a really interesting reading of four anthologies in a row, all four of which have very different flavors:

--A collection of what's called "the American people's favorite poems," a project put together by Robert Pinsky back when he was the US Poet Laureate under the Clinton administration, in which over 18,000 random Americans made nominations for their favorite poem of all time, and Pinsky and others selected several hundred to include in the book;

--The Best American Poetry 2020 anthology, published by Scribner and with pieces hand-selected by a different famous guest editor each year, which ideally should give me an idea of what kind of work is appealing to people in the literary community at this exact moment in history;

--The 90th anniversary anthology of Poetry magazine, featuring several hundred pieces hand-selected by their editors as a good overview of the best the magazine has published over the last century (almost all of it modern free verse, which is what the magazine originally got famous for when first established in the Modernist 1920s);

--And today's anthology, the most traditional of the lot, which I thought would be a good one to start with, since it's an overview of what was generally considered the best poetry in existence up to the start of the Modernist era and the invention of free verse. Published by Columbia University, The Classic Hundred is actually an "anthology of anthologies," assembling over 400 other academic tomes and then aggregating all their tables of content in order to determine the hundred most frequently republished poems in these 400 anthologies. As such, then, it's largely a primer to history's most famous poetry, but by definition contains almost no modern work at all (only 17 pieces here are from the 20th century whatsoever, and I don't think there's a single poem from World War Two to the present day), and in uncharitable terms might also be defined as a primer to all the hoary old "thee" and "thou" crap you were forced to read in high school, and which turned you off poetry for good.

So does this make the book a valuable read or not? Good question! On the one hand, this book takes a lot of freaking patience to get through, and I had to limit myself to only five or ten per day so to not get burned out on all the flowery purple prose on display here, as good an example as any to why a disgusted literary community invented free verse modern poetry at the beginning of the 20th century to begin with. But on the other hand, this was my first chance to read what's widely considered many of the best poems ever written in human history, and gave me a gentle starting point for falling down the rabbit holes later this year of Early Romanticism, Shakespearean sonnets, the huge resurgence in popularity poetry went through during the Victorian Age, and a lot more. It was also this anthology that taught me that the famous phrase "season of mists" comes from John Keats, "miles to go before I sleep" from Robert Frost, "gather ye rose-buds while ye may" from Robert Herrick, "death be not proud" from John Donne, "slouching towards Bethlehem" and "no country for old men" from William Butler Yeats, "look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair" from Percy Shelley, and "shall I compare thee to a summer's day" from William Shakespeare, as well as that Robert Oppenheimer gave the atomic bomb tests the codename "Trinity" after Donne's poem "Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God;" and it could be argued that just this knowledge alone was worth the time to read this.

So all in all, a mixed bag; and unlike the novels I regularly review here at Goodreads, I suspect that whether or not you should read this anthology yourself depends a lot more on what you're looking to get out of poetry in the first place, and not so much on the objective quality of the manuscript itself. Since I must give it a score, I'm giving it 4 stars, to reflect the undeniable fact that many, many people consider these the best poems of all time; but be aware that that score quickly drops to zero stars if all you're interested in is modern verse, for example, or non-Western poetry forms like haiku (of which there isn't even a single one here). Keep it in mind when making your own decision about whether or not to pick it up; but as for me personally, I'm glad I did so, in that it gave me a strong sense of the formal fundamentals behind pre-Modernist poetry, which is what I'm most interested in writing myself.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed listening to these micro-biographies and this collection of the 100 most anthologized poems ever. It serves as further evidence that I should have been born in a different century.

My favorites:

William Shakespeare:
When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought
The Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame
The Time of Year Thou Mayst in me Behold
Robert Herrick: Delight in Disorder
George Herbert: The Pulley
William Blake: Auguries of Innocence
William Wordsworth: The World is to Much With Us
Edgar Allen Poe: Annabelle Lee
Lewis Carroll: Jaberwocky
Robert Frost: Mending Wall
Theodore Roethke: My Papa’s Waltz

[Keith Beasley-Topliffe · Rating 3 out of 5]

The editor explains that the poems in this anthology are the hundred most anthologized English language poems in other anthologies currently in use. So they are not so much favorite poems as they are instructional or illustrative of a school or historically important. They are poems to study or teach rather than poems to read out loud for the enjoyment of others. The intros to the individual poems keep to the theme by explaining their importance (with occasional digressions to highlight the editor’s wit). A reader could come to believe that Emily Dickinson was the only poet not a white male. Yes, the poems are very good and sometimes witty. But reading them all got to be a slog.

[Frederick Gault · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely perfect! Well edited, an excellent selection of the best of poetry, and brief helpful discussions of each.

[Pudge · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really good introduction to English and American poetry. The book gives enough introduction to each author and poem to make it interesting but does not overwhelm the reading with information.

[Brittany Lindvall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this overview of many poets. It includes a short bio of each author before the poem is read and with some poets they include more than one poem. The narrators voices (there are a few different ones) are enjoyable and the poems are well read.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this one. There were a number of poems I remember reading in high school and haven’t seen since.

[amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books in verse aren't always poetic. They tell a story, with a lot more eloquence and more obvious emotion than most books. I tend to try to avoid them.

But poetry? Smart poetry? Fabulous poetry? I'm. In. Love. My brain hurt from poetry, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, given that books in verse are incredibly discernible, not as deep as these. My favorite has got to be To A Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley (what a great name, by the way. Percy [Jackson] Bysshe [Mary] Shelley.) It's absolutely beautiful. The sentence before this can be taken in any way.

For example, "Yet if we could scorn/ Hate, and pride, and fear/ If we were things born/ Not to shed a tear/ I know not how thy joy we should ever come near." LOOK AT THIS. Shelley's got to be the first one who worded happiness in such an articulate way. The other stanzas were a puzzling delight to get through, and it was wonderful. There are quite a few different styles of poetry, short ones, compacted ones, ones that span pages, and simple ones. It's nice, and the commentary on each of them is gloriously unbiased and informative. Every poet gets their own special little section, with a bibliography. The way this was thought through makes me salute not only the long-dead poets, but also the editor, William Harmon. The guy saved my previously faltering opinion on poetry, and I'm glad.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

My husband and I are somewhat new to the appreciation of poetry and having heard this book quoted from several times on the podcast “The Daily Poem,” we got a copy to read through together. The poets/poems are arranged chronologically with a short biographical sketch about each poet and a short explanatory essay about each poem, along with a description of its form and rhyme scheme. It’s a good introduction for those seeking to explore poetry and to learn an appreciation for noted poets of the past. However, in my experience, part of what makes a poem enjoyable and effective is necessarily subjective: what did this poem communicate to me? And was it accessible to me? There were a lot of poems in this collection that had us scratching our heads as to how they got included in the top one hundred. That’s not a criticism of the book, just an observation. All in all, we were glad to have read this book together and plan to continue reading poetry together.

[Laura Gilfillan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't get all the way through this one. I really enjoyed some of the poems, and the analysis of them too, but I was listening to this one as a recorded book, and it's not my favorite way to enjoy poetry. The recording was nice and clear, though, unlike a lot of other ones I've tried, and I may want to return to this sometime to finish, but I haven't listened to it for weeks, so I guess I'm done for now.

[Laurel Hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have this book on audio. The selection of poems (all British or American) is outstanding. Just enough comment is given about poem and author, and the poems are narrated beautifully by about a dozen talented readers. I say I have finished reading this work, but I know I will go back to it many times.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview of famous poems. Read this because I haven’t read any poetry since... high school? Found a few I really liked (“Break, Break, Break” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by William Butler Yeats). I really appreciated the short biographies of each poet which led to searching for more information about their lives.

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audiobook- I did not love the narrators but the selection of poems was okay

[Rochelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's taken me almost a year to read this, by design. I read two poems at a time, everyday for a week. It was a marvelous endeavor, facilitated by this book's format. It is chronological. Each author has a bit of bio; each poem has a bit of context. Some poets have one poem; many have more than. I think Shakespeare had by far the most, with seven. The first poem is Anonymous, written around 1325. The final three poems are by Dylan Thomas.

Also helpful, is a Notes on the Poems section that offers definitions of some of the verbiage in individual poems. This is a quibble of mine, as many things defined seem pretty obvious. But there were a great many times I looked up to see if a particular phrase or term was listed, to find no mention. Sometimes this sent me to other sources to seek clarification, but this isn't inherently a bad thing.

Of course you can easily argue with the choices of poems present, as well as omitted. But my criteria for a 5-star rating is that it be life-changing for me, at least in a small way. It met that in a large way. Obviously something that I spent a year reading deeply changed my life. But another continuing delight is noticing how many lines or phrases of poems are sprinkled throughout my everyday reading. Much of the time these aren't cited and I've been oblivious to them. Reading this book, despite the shortcomings, has been a delightful experience, and I expect it will linger with me always.

[Catherine Puma · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of 100 classic poems of the modern English language is a great way to experience old favorites as well as discover new poets. My educational background is in English Literature and prose creative writing more so than poetry specifically, so I was only exposed to THE most popular poems in school. This collection has value not just in having 46 different poets represented, but also introducing each poet and poem with a little blurb. This framing device could help those who are not used to interpreting poetry pick up on key concepts and ideas.

I was familiar with some poets in this collection, including William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Edgar Allen Poe, Lord Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, Lewis Carroll, Robert Frost, and Dylan Thomas. This collection also introduced me to works whose poets I was less familiar with, including Christopher Marlowe, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Gray, William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Hardy, William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and W.H. Auden. I liked that the collection is arranged chronologically by the poets' lives; works between 1503 - 1953 are included.

Overall, I cannot really fault this book because it delivers on its promises. No Old English, so I'll have to engage with those works elsewhere. This also inspires me to engage with more poetry from other languages and cultures.

[BookOtheDay · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is important to keep in mind that this book is a compilation of poems that were chosen simply because they are the most published. This can result in a lack of flow and some odd additions. One finds themselves wondering how these poems were singled out to be published over and over. It is a kind of quirky volume (the pic of the author on the back flap should warn you about that).
Poems are sorted by poet and each begins with a brief introduction to them and has an explanation of the poem afterwards. This is nice, though I found myself wanting a bit more. How about 50 poems and a more thorough bit on each of them?
As for the poems themselves, you can't go wrong with the most published. This volume is full of poetry's strange, striking imagery and with a hundred entries you're bound to find something new. Be prepared for rapid shifts in subject matter, but I think the editor did their best to make the journey as little jarring as possible.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved having these CDs in the car years ago when it first came out. Each poem was its own track, so it was easy to replay those that caught my attention while others played in the background of the seemingly endless soccer, dance, and Cub Scout runs.

I appreciate Keith Beasley Topliffe's review which points out that the author intended this as more of an exercise in cultural literacy than in passion. Perhaps my 5 star rating speaks to my tendency to live in my head rather than my heart.

But still. Poetry. I'm trying.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of the introductions are longer than the poems themselves, but aside from occasional odd little flights (On Theodore Roethke: "Whenever he heard the word 'agriculture' he reached for his typewriter.") are informative enough. Also, it was disappointing to hear so much about how great a reader Dylan Thomas was, but then have his poems presented (and rather dispassionately too) by someone else. Still, selections are professionally read by a variety of voices.

[Adina Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful poems from the English language that the editor feels are important and foundational from 15th century onward. He gives us an overview and background of the poet and his poem, then afterwards a concise understanding of the poem, and finishes with the metrics and methods. Shakespeare and Marlowe, Lord Byron & Shelley, Barrett & Browning, Dickinson, and Poe. Favorites are here and all classic poems!

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not being one to read poetry, or listen to it either, I was pleasantly surprised when the audio sample overcame my negative attitude and convinced me to purchase the audiobook. The narration and the poetry readings were both beautifully executed and eye-opening. In addition, the thumbnail biographies of the poets were fascinating. My only regret is that the version I got was an abridged edition. Hopefully, there is an unabridged edition out there somewhere.

[Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to this using the library app, Libby. Always find listening to poetry much more enjoyable than reading it--professionals are pros for a reason. Good collection, lots were familiar from my English major days, but not all. The introductions to each of the poets and poems were . . . informative if occasionally annoying. I'm going to listen again in a year or so--poetry doesn't grow old.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent little collection. It resists the P.C. calling to needlessly insert minority writers for their own sake, and instead offers 100 poems of timeless worth. The introductory notes on the authors and poems are, by and large, helpful and unbiased (though occasionally pandering to the desire for sensationalism).

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely collection of classic poetry, with works spanning the 1300s to the 1900s. The Classic Hundred Poems includes the 100 most anthologized poems in English--from Shakespeare and Donne to Shelley and Tennyson to Frost and Eliot. The editor's brief biographical information on each poet and his notes on the poems are a welcome and helpful addition.

Overall, an excellent poetry anthology.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful collection with short snippets of background for each poem and author; It really makes each poem come alive. You can turn to any page in this book and be treated with gorgeous verse and interesting commentary. I would recommend this title to anyone who wants to dive into poetry without the high-brow tone a lot of other volumes entail.

[Courtney Mosier Warren · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really lovely collection. It offers biographies for each of the poets highlighted and gives notes about every poem as well. I would say this is a great place for those who feel like they need more context on poetry to be able to understand it. Overall, a really fun read and wonderfully curated.

[Thomas Carpenter · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has never really read poetry before, this is a really great place to start. You'll get so much variety of style and writers, that I'm sure anybody can find something to latch onto and further explore.

[Jonah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice selection.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of them would not be my first choice.

[Chels Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really amazing!

There is just enough information as an introduction. Lots of ones you think you know but not really.

I highly recommend.