The Best Loved Poems of the American People

by Hazel Felleman (Editor)

More than 1,500,000 copies in print! Over 575  traditional favorites to be read and reread.  Categorized by theme, and indexed by author and first  line, this is a collection that will be treasured.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, Anthologies, Reference, Literature, American

670 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1936

Reviews

[Xolindsayxx18 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am 15 years old and found this poetry book at a used book store for a dollar, and decided to buy it since I loved reading and wanted to make myself more 'rounded', though I did not expect to enjoy it. Now if you find my copy you see sticky notes and books marks marking all my favorites. I read this often when I can't sleep despite the fact that is has an old cigar smell, and dog eared pages, courtesy of its previous owner. Wonderful collection!

[Kelly Moran · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not positive this is the exact one, my cover looks different, but this is the best poetry book I've ever owned. It has Browning, Poe, Wheelcox, EVERYONE! Great read. This inspired me to publish my second book and write more poetry.

[Emily Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this at an antiques store.
I liked it, I'll read it again

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I purchased this book for more nostalgia value then anything else. My mother read from this book every Christmas Eve as we sat around the fireplace. I imagine the fact that she had to find poems that would appeal to my dad, my brother and I is the reason why I now associate The Charge of the Light Brigade and Casey at the Bat with Christmas.

And though I am aware of its maudlin qualities, I think Annie and Willie's Prayer will remain a Christmas staple for me.

[Ilana · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mother in 1964 gave this book to my grandfather. When he died my aunt somehow got it, she recently returned it to my mother. I immediately procured it for my collection. Its spine is broken from ware, I can tell my grandfather loved it. I do too, it is wonderful collection of poetry, It has some of my favorite poems and some new ones. 'Strictly Germ-Proof' is a wonderful humorous that my mother and aunt read when they were young and is now a favorite of mine.

[Terri Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh how I adore this book! I have had this lovely and very old book of poems for a long, long time and not a day goes by without me dipping in and pulling out a treasure to read and reread and savor. Poems can be like gentle rain or a mysterious fog swirling about us. There is magic to poetry and this book is a wonderful balm. If you find a copy, do grab hold of it. This is not something you will read once then put away to get dusty.

[Laura Belle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is how I first learned to read. My dad and I would sit and read random poems from the old copy he had from his childhood. It's a great collection of classic poetry.

[Lindsay Blackburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not usually a big fan of poems but I really enjoyed reading this book. I found quite a few amazing poems but one of my favorites was There Is No Death by J. L. Mccreery. It stood out to me because it talks about how nothing ever truly dies. The first stanza talks about the stars. How they go down but will rise on some other shore. I guess I really like that idea that everything will return in some form or another.
I gave this a four-star rating because I liked the majority of the poems but there were a few that I did not like. I was surprised that I decided to read this book considering how much I don't like poems. I was going to choose a super short book but then I found this one and I ended up loving it. This book has hundreds of authors in it including Edger Allen Poe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Alfred Tennyson. My Aunt Debra recommended it to me when she found out I had to read a poetry book and let me borrow her copy. I would recommend it to anyone who doesn't like poetry because this book will change your mind, plus it lets you experience a variety of authors.

[LaKaysha Elizabeth Stenersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite poetry book out of any others that I've read! Beautiful, humorous, heartbreaking, eye-opening, inspirational poems of old that my generation would do well to learn from. There are categories for this collection poetry, and the faith and dying sections are my particular favorites. Highly recommend if you love poetry as much as I do!

[Rugby8 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing collection. My Mom and Grandmother would read poems from this book when we were kids (in the 1960s), and as we got older, we got to read them out loud too
Wonderful memory of childhood and of family no longer with us.
❤❤❤

[Adam Sarlan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some nice poems, but would have liked to read more of the classics, even though new works are always good to read. When I think about America’s loved poems, some works that weren’t in the collection should be.

[Kasey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will always own multiple copies of this book. It is my favorite collection of poetry, and introduced me to my favorite poems.
I recite lines from these poems every day. I used to read aloud from it when my college roommates were homesick.
If you want to know how I say “I love you,” it isn’t “did you eat?” It is “sleep sweet.”

[Elisabeth Dudziak · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a year and a half of slowly going through this collection, I am proud to say that I finally finished it!!! This collection has been through a lot with me, and it is all the more special seeing as my Memaw gave me this collection from my Papaws office last year while I was staying with her during a big covid time. It was initially very special to me for this reason, but has only gotten more so as I’ve been since inspired by many of the poems in here. I’ve written songs, responses, letters, and more to many of these poems. One of the reasons that reading this collection took over a year was that I would read one or two and then get inspired to create something of my own. It was fantastic for that.

As I was not very well read in poetry of any kind, this was a great jumping off point so that I could find people that I like so I can delve more into their work later. Of course, this entire collection was full of some of the best known American poetry, so most of it was technically superb, but I realized that many of my favorites came from, for example, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The range of poetry in this collection is very alluring, and I’m glad to have been able to read this. I do have one MAJOR issue with this collection, which I will discuss further down. First, I wanted to insert the running list of my favorite poems from this collection:

Poems I like from
The Best Loved Poems of the American People:
Said the rose (George h miles)
Believe me, if all those endearing young charms (Thomas Moore)
Ad Finem
I Love You (Both by Ella Wheeler Wilcox)
An old sweetheart of mine (James whitcomb riley)
Walk slowly (Adelaide love)
In a rose garden (John Bennett)
If you but knew (unknown)
Will you love me when I’m old (unknown)
You and I (Henry Alford)
He and she (sir Edwin Arnold)
You kissed me (Josephine slocum hunt)
I want you (Arthur L. Gillom) (this one and the last one paired together is especially lovely)
Song (Gerald griffin)
The Unknown (E. O. Laughlin)
Quiet Waters (Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff)
The want of you (Ivan Leonard Wright)
New friends and old friends (Joseph Parry)
Tell him so (unknown)
Be the best of whatever you know (Douglas Malloch)
The house by the side of the road (Sam Walter Foss)
Crowded ways of life (Walter S. Gresham)
[Gresham poem is response to Foss. they go together]
Do it now (Berton Braley)
Then laugh (Bertha Adams Backus)
Don’t quit (Unknown)
The Day Is Done (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
All to myself (Wilbur Dick Nesbit)
Watch yourself go by (Strickland Gillilan)
A song from Sylvan (Louise Imogen Guiney)
Breautiful things (Ellen P. Allerton)
Fate (Susan Marr Spalding)
The Last Hymn (Marianne Farningham)
Christmas day in the workhouse (George R. Sims)
Annie and Willie’s Prayer (Sophia P. Snow)
Over the hill to the poor-house (Will M. Carleton)
Down and Out (Clarence Leonard Hay)
Music in Camp (John R. Thompson)
The Raven (Edgar Allen Poe)
The legend of the organ-builder (Julia C.R. Dorr
The hell-bound train (unknown)
The owl and the fox (unknown)
Give me three grains of corn, mother (Amelia Blandford Edwards)
La belle dame sans merci (John Keats)
Out there somewhere (Henry Herbert Knibbs)
The Weaver (William H. Burleigh)
The Old Oaken Bucket (Samuel woodworth)
Tragedy (Jill Spargur)
From my arm-chair (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Lullaby town (John Irving diller)
A visit from St. Nicholas (clement Clarke moore) *santa is a miniature elf and that is how he goes down the chimney 😱
Woodman, spare that tree (George Perkins Morris)
In school days (John greenleaf Whittier)
The star spangled banner (francis scott key)
America the Beautiful (katherine lee bates)
I have a rendezvous with death (Alan Seeger)
The unknown soldier (Billy rose)
Vagabond House (Don Blanding) -I’m angry about this one because it has a few very shockingly racist descriptions that were very much uncalled for and unnecessary, but the stanzas that did not include this were beautiful and I’m very angry about this one-
Sorrows of Werther (William Makepeace Thackeray)
An overworked Elocutionist (Carolyn Wells)
The House with Nobody in it (Joyce Kilmer)
Along the Road (Ellen Terry)
The old familiar faces (Charles Lamb)
Annabel Lee (Edgar Allen Poe)
Fare thee well (Lord Byron)
Lady Byron’s Response to Lord Byron’s Fare thee well (Lady Byron)
Far from the maddening crowd (Nixon Waterman)
Daffodils (William Wordsworth)
In Memoriam-Leo: A Yellow Cat (Margaret Sherwood)
Dover Beach (Matthew Arnold)
What is Charm? (Louisa Carroll Thomas)
Life’s a game (unknown)
The Festal board (unknown)

Ok, now for the bad, and by bad, I mean one very glaring issue that confuses me, because I want to give this collection 5 stars for all that it did for me, but the below is worth zero stars. Let me explain:

This book was created in 1936, and before the “humor and whimsey” section, I really hadn’t noticed too much out of the ordinary apart from a few outdated terms. However, the pace completely shifted once we got to the infamous “humor and whimsey” section.

It was absolutely unacceptable, and downright difficult for me to read most of the time. The majority of jokes were derived from people’s: general appearance, social standing, race, sex, and other things that one cannot change about themselves.

I just kept thinking that reading this section was akin to someone stumbling on an old tumblr post from 2011 that is way more offensive and cringey than you remembered it to be in 2011. In this case, however, it was far worse than that.

Instead, this section of jokes is from the year 1930 where there is still segregation, everyone loves Jim Crowe, women are mindless baby makers, and two white guys joking about asian people is the peak of comedy.

This was absolutely abhorrent and disappointing to have to read in an otherwise fantastic collection of poetry.
If this collection were put together today, there are some offensive poems from this section that might make up an interesting section for historical documentation depicting the wrongness and vulgarity of humor in the 1930s. There are many depraved works that are still around today that hold merit from a historical standpoint, and I actually think that those are interesting to read. This section, however, was unexpected for me, and a huge mark on the collection as a whole. It seemed inoffensive with its title “humor and whimsey” and within it is the darkest material from this entire collection. Be forewarned going into this that this entire section, apart from only a few outliers, is deeply disturbing. Interestingly enough, the ones that were not offensive were mostly outdated and boring, so this section as a whole was a huge failure.

Because of this, even with this collection being older and outdated, I still believe that this section took my enjoyment way down and I will be removing a star in my review from this collection as a whole. This doesn’t change the influence this collection has had on me from its other sections. This is still one of the most impactful pieces of lit. that I have taken time to go through, though it had the potential to almost reach perfection, and then it squandered it with the ugliness of humanity.

[Dan Chance · Rating 5 out of 5]

The section titles of this book invite you to sample the feast within: Childhood and youth, Humor and whimsey and on and on. This is a book I'll never tire of holding. Memories take me back to sheltered times. I may have been a benighted fool but these poems never ceased to please and instruct: from the tale of the organist to the story of two glasses one for water and one for wine.

Some of the best from Wordsworth and other stalwarts as well as unknown authors who nonetheless left coverlets of soft, warm words that comforted and encouraged us.

I love it...still!! Finished date is "no later than".

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember learning to read from this book. One line still sticks in my mind "...boots, slog, slogging over Africa..." Not the best poem, but one a six-year-old could read.

My dad had this book and read from it all the time. Christmas just wouldn't have been the same without hearing "Annie & Willie's Prayer." When the spine broke and the book fell apart, I bought my own copy. Now it is also broken and falling apart. This is a wonderful collection.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first discovered this gem on my mother's book case when I was in junior high. I opened it to find her maiden name written on the inside cover. I underlined so much and dog-egged it so much throughout the years that it has become my own. I took it to college with me, and when I graduated I read from it that morning to collect my thoughts. Needless to say, I love this book

[Joanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Mother read to me from this book when I was a young girl. She read poems that tell a story, and short inspirational poems. I carry many of these thoughts and words with me and they are a source of joy and peace. I would recommend that all children be feed a healthy dose of this book to nourish their minds and hearts.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book and you’ll see the rich history of America, back when it had morals and principles. We’ve never been a perfect country (no such nation exists) but we’re one of the best. Sad to see how far we’ve fallen but I do believe God will bring healing to our land soon through another great awakening.

[Yuki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chock-full-o-classics. Originally I bought this book to hunt down a reading for a wedding, but it's very soothing and/or nostalgic to browse. Children especially love the poems that tell a story. They are arranged by helpful themes: love and friendship, inspirational, home and mother, humor, etc.

[Kendall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will forever hold great childhood memories for me, mostly of time well spent with my Dad. I can still read the poems over and over. I love the classics, the humorous, the poems that tell a story...all of them! The pages are literally falling out of my copy!

[Larsenross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Received this book for a wedding gift.

Includes poems that I have read again and again. The poems cover all aspects of life. A couple of the poems has given me pause.

I did not think much of the gift on our wedding day but after over 30 years of marriage, I highly value this book of poems.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poems to lift the spirit and inspire the mind. Very nice collection of almost exclusively American poems that I purchased in October of 2001 after finding a need to add more poetry to my life.

[Serena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiring and moving!

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grew up with my father reading me poems out of this book, and I was thrilled to find my own edition so I can re-read the best loved poems of my American childhood.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great selection of the best poetry ever written. I have found some of my favorite poets through reading this compilation.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Received this book for my graduation from high school 50 in 1968. It has many poems that are often quoted. Just a good book for anyone's shelf.

[Fangirl · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of poems from many different poets.

[Mellanee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is so wonderful!

[Jessica Pavilanis-thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all-time favorite books ever!

[Stephanie "Jedigal"]

Gift from Alma to Dad, Christmas 1968.