The Top 500 Poems

by William Harmon (Editor), William Shakespeare (Contributor), Robert Frost (Contributor)

The Top 500 Poems offers a vivid portrait of poetry in English, assembling a host of popular and enduring poems as chosen by critics, editors, poets, and general readers. These works speak across centuries, beginning with Chaucer's resourceful inventions and moving through Shakespeare's masterpieces, John Donne's complex originality, and Alexander Pope's mordant satires. The anthology also features perennial favorites such as William Blake, William Wordsworth, and John Keats; Emily Dickinson's prisms of profundity; the ironies of Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot; and the passion of Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg. These 500 poems are verses that readers either know already or will want to know, encapsulating the visceral power of truly great literature. William Harmon provides illuminating commentary to each work and a rich introduction that ties the entire collection together.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Anthologies, Fiction, Reference, Literature, 20th Century

1132 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Elizabeth Pyjov]

Poems written in English before the 15th century tend to be very depressing! All about death.

And then we get to Shakespeare and that theme becomes far more interesting:

Sonnet 73
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

I think it's saying - we are young -- we know someday we'll be old, but for now we are both young and let's love each other - It is the potential that well grow older in the future that you probably see in me that makes this moment special, makes us more attracted to each other right now. A poem about youth and how it stands out in light of its opposite.

[Sara Kearns · Rating 2 out of 5]

it's a good reference book, but as poetry goes, it's very uneven because 1)it's an anthology and anthologies usually are pretty inconsistent, and 2)it's an anthology of the most-anthologized poems, originally written in english, of all time, so it's more-or-less the book of the all-time favorite in-english poems of the non-poet masses, and that includes mostly a lot of people who don't read a lot of poetry. so, you know, it's the usual suspects. so it's that whole 'when it's good, it's superb, and when it's bad, it's just nauseatingly awful' kind of thing.

in summary, good as a reference book, but it'd make most poets or serious readers of literary poetry sick, and i definitely would NOT recommend it as an introduction to poetry. this is the kind of book that turns people off from poetry, gives people a distorted concept of poetry and what many different kinds of poetry are actually out there.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best all-around collection in English, bar none

I like to buy this book as a present for people I like because I know I can hardly go wrong. (Forget the Godiva chocolates or the Heitz Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon: this will last!) Whether one is a wannabe rap master from Watts or a distinguished professor of English lit at the Sorbonne, there will be something here to please, I promise.

It should be emphasized that this is a collection of strictly English poetry, which means, for example, that none of verses from Edward Fitzgerald's very English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam appears even though some of those verses are among the most popular and the most anthologized. It should also be noted that this is not a contemporary collection (copyright date, 1992) so there's no Gary Soto or Rita Dove or Louise Glück or even Margaret Atwood. It should also be pointed out that if you're looking into Keats's, e.g., "Ode to a Nightingale," for the first time, perhaps this is not the best place to find it since none of the poems are explicated. Editor William Harmon does give a brief note as an introduction to each poet, and concludes each poem with a brief comment.

The collection is popular of course and spans English poetry from Chaucer to Sylvia Plath but there's nary a ditty to be found. Although T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is here (hurrah!), there's nothing from his Book of Practical Cats (alas) and no Kipling's "If"! This is really high class stuff, quite simply the best. All the giants are here, Shakespeare, Donne, Pope, Burns, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Ezra Pound, Andrew Marvell, Frost, Yeats, Dickinson, etc., etc. Some moderns are represented, Allen Ginsberg, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Lowell, Richard Wilbur, Philip Larkin, etc., although notably absent is Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Harmon's method of selection was to peruse anthologies and include those poems most often making an appearance. Of course it's obvious that some editorial decisions were made. I have little doubt that Kipling's "If" really is among the 500 most anthologized poems, although it doesn't appear here, and ditto for Robert Service and his very popular, "The Cremation of Sam McGee." But perhaps this is just as well since those poems really are easily found elsewhere. The admirable point that Harmon is making with this collection is that one can include in a popular book the great poems of the language even though some of them are "difficult." In this category there's Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts," T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" and others. Harmon also does not shy away poems often left out of anthologies because of length. Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is here in toto and so is Eliot's "The Waste Land" and Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol."

Of course not everything is here, and one can indeed find fault. There can be differences of opinion, and it is very true that a collection based on other collections will indeed leave out some great poems and poets. Amy Lowell does not appear, meaning that her "Patterns," one of the great poems in the language, is not here. John Crowe Ransom's "Blue Girls," one of my personal favorites is apparently not much anthologized; at least it doesn't appear here. And I was surprised at only two selections from e. e. cummings (and neither one was "plato told him"!).

But this is to nitpick. This is a great collection and more than that it is beautifully edited. The poems are presented chronologically, beginning with the anonymous "Cuckoo Song." There is an index of titles and first lines, which is the way it should be. (Some editors fail to include titles in such an index, but we think of both when trying to recall...) There is an index of poets, and finally the 500 poems listed in order of popularity. William Blake's "The Tiger" is number one. (For some reason Harmon modernized Blake's spelling of "Tyger.") Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is the most anthologized poem by an American. Even Harmon's short introduction, which he titles "This is it!" is well worth reading. Therein one discovers that Shakespeare is the poet with the most poems included (29), followed by Donne (19), Blake (18) and Dickinson and Yeats (14).

Here (as a public service) I was going to explicate Donne's charming but tricky (and a wee bit sexist) "Go and Catch a Falling Star" (an apt choice because Harmon has "I" instead of the poet's intended "If," a typo at the beginning of line nine) but I'm running out of space, and besides poets hate to be explicated.

--Dennis Littrell, author of the mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”

[Jason Farley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This guy took me three years, trying to do a poem a day. Wonderful selection of over 1000 pages of poetry composed in English. What a language we get to have!

[Parker Samelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

About 25% of the poems were deeply moving, 50% were okay, and 25% were confusing or bad.

[Courtney Mosier Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a massive anthology of poems collected by one man. Due to that, they are very much to his tastes. Overall the book is a good starting point, but not every poem is a winner. A lot are pretentious. Some are boring. But there are some real treasures. Worth reading to get a good overview of poetry.

[Barnabas Piper · Rating 3 out of 5]

This compilation felt more like something put together for the technical prowess of the poetry than the enjoyability. And yes, that is utterly subjective. I just didn’t love the selection as a whole.

[Lindsey Doolan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetic push-ups, and good for you.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've owned this book since at least the mid-1990s, but could never finish it - until now! The book has 500 poems - chosen by William Harmon (not exactly sure who that is or why he gets to choose 500 poems) - listed in chronological order. In the past, I would start at the beginning, anonymous poems like "Sir Patrick Spens" and "Edward, Edward" and Chaucer's "General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales." I would work my way through Edmund Spenser and Shakespeare, and make it all the way through John Donne. And then, I would always get stuck. The Georgian poets in particular - I'm not a fan of Alexander Pope. This time, I decided to start at the end, with (relatively) modern poets and work my way back. I also read 1-2 (although sometimes more, if I was in the mood) poems every morning. I decided I wouldn't be in a hurry, but just go on a long, poetic journey. AND it worked! I made it from Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" (I said they were relatively modern) to the 13th century anonymous "Cuckoo Song". Now, I will admit, I didn't read every, single poem. T.S. Eliot is one of my least favorite poets, and although I tried, I ended up skimming. And I still dislike Alexander Pope (it's like 18th century Dr. Seuss). But I read every other poem in the book! This is definitely a walk down poetry lane, and although clearly many, many modern poets were left out (that could be The Top 500 Poems After the Top 500 Poems)), this was still a magical journey. Many poems were familiar. Many were brand new ("The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop was the first one that really made me take notice). I rediscovered some favorites ("The Lady of Shalott" by Tennyson; "Richard Cory" by Edward Arlington Robinson. I became acquainted anew with poets I loved in the past (John Donne, anyone?). I fell in love with a few new poems ( too many to note, but "Snow-bound" by John Greenleaf Whittier was one; "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" was another). Reading this anthology made me miss that time when you are reading poetry or literature with a class, and have a learned professor on hand to declaim her favorite or bring out hidden meanings in another. I am positive a newer version of this book would include more poets of color, more female poets, gay and lesbian poets. But I am still thoroughly in love with this book.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took four months but I finished the 1132 page “The Top 500 Poems”, edited by William Harmon. It is the 500 poems, written in English, that are the most anthologized (published in collections) over time. So it is primarily poems that are considered classics, mostly by white male authors you’ve heard of, i.e. Shakespeare. It reminded me of poetry classes I took as an English major. Much of it was familiar and I enjoyed reading some of my favourite poems by my favourite authors again especially the Romantics and those who write about nature (i.e. Wordsworth, Shelley, Frost). However, I also enjoyed reading those I did not pay attention to in school and now appreciate more than I did then (Poe, Byron, Wilde, the Brownings, Dickinson) and others I knew the poems of but not the authors, and the discovery of new (to me) poets, including the anonymous ancient ones, and writers who focused on war or urban settings. It was a sampling of poetry up to about 1970 and I now have both some new persons and topics to delve into more extensively, as well as just inspiration to read more poetry, more regularly. I gave it a solid 4/5 stars.

[Davis Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This anthology has major nostalgic value for me because I first discovered my passion for poetry through it, and it still sets on my bedside—torn, tattered, marked, and glorious. It's hard to imagine a finer introduction to the English literary tradition for the newcomer, especially considering Harmon's wonderful little write-ups/commentaries at the end of each poem that do not "explain" or "interpret," but are nonetheless very helpful. It's a very full anthology too, unlike many similar ones: you get the whole Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Waste Land, Deserted Village, St. Agnes' Eve, Essay on Criticism; and fully representative selections from all the major voices rather than just the tiny lyrics. The lack of contemporary poetry is fodder for criticism for many, but one of its strong suits for me :)

[Viktoria Mirigliano · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t finish as many books in April as I normally do- and it’s all because of this massive book.

1,086 pages of poetry

Like most anthologies or poetry collections by various authors - some were great, and some were painful to even finish.
This is the longest book I’ve ever read to this date- so it was a feat.

There were poems in here that made your heart feel all of the things, and there were poems in here that were so clearly written in the 1800’s that your brain hurt after reading them.

It was dense at times
Slow at times
But overall a decent read if you enjoy classical poetry.

[Roger Burk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally finished this after six years of reading a poem or two a day at most. It's a great collection, mixing new-to-me and familiar, old and new, light and serious. I suppose I am now cultured. Some I enjoyed enough to print out and save in a commonplace book. But it's amazing how many do absolutely nothing for me, especially those from the 20th century--all gloom and despair, and little connected sense.

[William Schram · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Top 500 Poems focuses solely on the English language. I don't know if this fact will bother anyone, but it probably will. It did not bother me, even though there were no haiku.

William Harmon assembles the poems that are published most often. Along the way, he writes mini-biographies on each poet and includes further information on each poem.

[James S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book itself is nice - rich paper, good font. But unfortunately the selection is uninspired. In fact, it's not even really a critical selection, as the author reveals in the intro, since by "top 500" the editor means "top 500 most often reprinted." So every poem in here has been reprinted ad nauseum elsewhere. Not recommended.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection! Harmon knows poetry and poets better than many anthologists I've come across. I especially enjoyed the poet biographies and his commentary after each poem. He is a professional, but he is not without his biases! :)

[Kaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a poem a day, unless they were very long. As with any collection, there were those I loved like
Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and those I didn't like like Thomas Stearns Eliot's "The Waste Land".

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking for an interesting anthology but forgot this was compiled in 1992. Almost all the poets are English, white men and weren't very compelling to me outside their sphere. Probably this would be fun for someone into this kind of poetry, but it didn't do it for me.

[Suzie Renzi-Falge · Rating 5 out of 5]

All the best--and most well known poems! Check it out.

[Terry Christodoulou · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poetry is criminally overrated

[Rex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good general anthology of poetry in English.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is based on statistics and thus has both an inherent bias and an inherent flaw. But then I supposed all anthologies have both of those things since all editors have biases and none are perfect. The bias is particularly strong in this chronological anthology. The top 500 is based on the poems most anthologized according to The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry, which was first published in 1904. I have no idea what its sources include but they apparently go back much later than 1904 because this book has a strong historical bias. Obviously, the older the poem, the more chances it has had to be anthologized. Thus, even though this anthology was published in 1992, there are very few poems from the 20th Century. Yeats enters about 200 pages from the end and Plath's "Daddy" is the most recent poem. Of course, that makes the achievement of some 20th Century poems/poets all the more outstanding when they make it into the top popularity rankings. Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" is the 6th most anthologized poem. "The Second Coming" by Yeats is the next 20th Century poem to appear on the list at 19.

Now, it would have been quite cool if they had put the poems in the book according to their ranking on the list because then the reader would get a mixture of styles/periods as she read. But no. The editor chose to take a list that provided the opportunity for some interesting juxtapositions and put it in the back of the book as a reference. Then he did the same old thing that most anthologies do: start with the oldest and move forward to the most recent, grouped by poet. Blah!

Some people have said this is a great book to have if it is the only book of poetry one owns. I completely disagree with that because it contains so little contemporary poetry. In fact, I would say this sort of anthology is the sort of thing that turns the average person off of poetry entirely because there is so much antiquated language and means of (long-winded) expression in it, especially at the outset. At page 291, the average reader is hit with Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism," which goes on for 20 pages (and sits at number 463 of 500 in the rankings of most anthologized). Hopefully the average reader will just skip around.

So there are my gripes. I always feel the need to rant first. But there are things I like about this anthology and I'm definitely keeping it on my shelf. One positive attribute is precisely that it doesn't exclude the longer poems that occur on the list, like Pope's mentioned above. It also doesn't exclude light verse. Lewis Carroll, Eugene Field ("Wynken, Blynken, and Nod"), and Edward Lear are included. It's reassuring to me that Carroll's "Jabberwocky" is number 18 on the list of popularity (enclosed by Keats' "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" and Yeats' "The Second Coming"--would have been fun to read them in that sequence).

There is a brief note about each poet, some more biographical and some more anecdotal. In addition, there is also a brief note at the end of each poem. Notes on the poems often suggest connections to other poems, some connections more strained than others. A few notes fall entirely flat (one wonders if the editor was ill and on deadline the day he wrote it) but most are interesting. So there's an ongoing sense of having a conversation with someone who also enjoys poetry and who has a broad knowledge of it.

Also, it's printed on good paper. It's not like those anthologies often required for college courses that are printed on paper so thin the type from the back side of the page shows through. There's a sense that the book is meant to stand the test of time. The book is also not afraid of white space, so the poems aren't crowded at all. And the type is of an easily readable size. The 500 poems make for 1070 book pages.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Those of you that know me well know that I love poetry. I've enjoyed immersing myself in this collection for the past while. I soaked up each poem and came to a final conclusion about my favorites. You certainly don’t have to read this whole list(unless you love poetry or know me well)

This book lists the poets chronologically. It only goes to Sylvia Plath and there are more modern poets that I love, but will not list them here. I am placing stars by a poet if I love just about everything he/she ever wrote and if I just particularly love a piece someone wrote then I will just mention the piece beside their name. This is mostly for my own record:

“The Nymphs Reply to the Shepherd” Sir Walter Raleigh
“Loving in Truth and Fain in Verse My Love to Show” Sir Philip Sidney
“The Burning Babe” Robert Southwell
“Tichborn’s Elegy” Chidiock Tichborne
***John Donne
***Ben Johnson
“On His Blindness” John Milton
“Peace” Henry Vaughn
***William Blake
“A Red Red Rose” Robert Burns
“She was a Phantom of Delight” William Wordsworth
“When We Two Parted” Lord Byron
“I Am” John Clare
***Edgar Allen Poe
***Tennyson
***Walt Whitman
***Emily Dickenson
“When I Am Dead/Remember” Christina Rosetti
***Lewis Carroll (the older I get the more I like him)
***Thomas Hardy
***Robert Louis Stevenson
“With Rue My Heart is Laden” Alfred Edward Housman
***Yeats
***Edwin Arlington Robinson
“Leisure” William Henry Davies
“The Listeners” Walter de la Mare (apparently during Thomas Hardy’s last days before he died, he asked his wife to read him this poem)
***Robert Frost
“Peter Quince at the Clavier” Wallace Stevens
***DH Lawrence (I recommend “Piano” for all my musical friends)
“Poetry” Marianne Moore
“Still Falls the Rain” Dame Edith Sitwell
“Ars Poetica” Archibald MacLeish
***Cummings
“Not Waving but Drowning” Stevie Smith
***Theodore Roethke
“The Fish” Elizabeth Bishop
***Sylvia Plath

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 5 out of 5]

In March, I needed to find a copy of Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ in order to make sure I was correctly quoting the last verse.

There are a number of books I could have turned to, but this particular book was my first choice. I bought this anthology, about 15 years ago, because I was intrigued to know which poems would be included and on what basis. In a delightful editorial note, William Harmon writes that these are the most anthologized poems in English.
The time span (based on the birth of the poets) is from 1250-1350 (approx) for the anonymous author of the ‘Cuckoo Song’ to 1932 for Sylvia Plath, author of ‘’Daddy’.
A favourite poem? That will depend entirely on mood and audience. While the Emily Bronte poem included ‘Remembrance’ is not my favourite of hers (my heart has long since been given to ‘No Coward Soul is Mine’) it is another of her passionate, stirring poems.

But the poem I was searching for in the beginning ends this way:
‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.’
I recommend this anthology highly to those who would like one collection of significant English poems. May you find, as I did, both old acquaintances and new friends within its pages.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to finish this enormous anthology this year, and so I have done it. I was put off at first by the selection process-- how does one choose the "top" 500 poems? In this case, by how often a poem is anthologized. This left out a good many of my favorites, unfortunately, so this isn't by any means a complete collection.

It's a start, though, for someone not very familiar with poetry as a literary form; it takes the reader from around the 15th century up through Sylvia Plath, with a brief biography of each writer and a comment following each poem, with words defined or the meaning clarified. I was able to read many new-to-me poets and revisit some old favorites, and I now have a substantial list of poets I want to read much more of-- so this book was a success for me in terms of expanding my horizons.

Alas, just as in high school when I first encountered some of these, being the most popular doesn't necessarily mean being the very best, so this volume is only a jumping-off point. I discovered William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis" and T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding," in these pages, and I hope you find some new favorites as well.

[J. Alfred · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took roughly forever, but this collection makes for wonderful breakfast-reading. It is the list of the five hundred poems which are most frequently anthologized, listed in chronological order. It also includes a list of poems by popularity (insofar as regards frequency-of-anthologizing): the winner is... drumroll please... Blake's "The Tyger." Strange, right? The collection also includes a biographical snippet for each author and a breif, ususally helpful, bit of commentary on each poem. Thus the best thing it did for me, other than help me order poets more concretely on my mental timeline and introduce a bunch of excellent poems (I said it was good, didn't I?) was to explain Hopkins' "The Windhover": I'd never understood, regardless of the subtitle ("To Christ our Lord") that the second and third stanzas are written TO Christ our Lord. Hence I always thought it was a quirky, confusing poem that didn't deserve its reputation. Sometimes it is a pleasure learning about one's ignorance.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not very experienced in poetry, but for me this anthology was a good start. There's a plethora of content to work with, a lot of prose and structure to comprehend, and going through the entire volume was generally a satisfying experience for an unaffiliated person such as myself. However, this being an anthology, more specifically being limited to 500 poems, there will probably the inevitable lists of poems that were been left out, and the entire volume may be left uneven because of some of the lesser-known poems that were not included. However, the fact hasn't pained me so much to the point where the compilation wasn't worth the investment to complete. In the end, I tended to view this anthology as more of a starting point to assist in even more discovery of fine poetry.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a replacement for a book I owned but lost in Hurricane Katrina. I've been slowly trying to replace ALL of the books that I lost, as money allows, relying on my memory and a handful of digital photographs that include my old bookshelves.

While I'm not exactly a poetry kind of guy, there are a handful of poems that I love and consider an important part of my life. Which is why I bought this book - the poems I care about aren't obscure by any means, and so I'm pretty much guaranteed that, given my fairly pedestrian taste in poetry, this is the only book of poetry I'll ever need to own.

[Bekka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for what it is, an anthology of English/ North American poets in range of their most popular ie. most anthologized poems. While it certainly excludes much from the canon it does a decent job in serving as an introduction to English poetry. I would suggest this for someone who enjoys a broad spectrum of poems from the above description, or someone new to poetry. For the more educated poetry reader, I may suggest looking around more before settling on this choice. Overall, I did enjoy that it is arranged chronologically and I found many old favorites and some new (old) finds in here = pretty good poetry anthology.

[Mariah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really, really good.

Unlike some of the poetry anthologies I have, these poems are remarkable for literary excellence rather than mere sentimentality and it shows. These poems are good. They're also ordered by date rather than topic, which I love. And it has a lovely amount of earlier English poems too, not just the nasty romantics. I'm finally reading Donne! I'm even actually enjoying Alexander¨Pope!

If you want a good overview of good English poems from the Middle Ages to today, you want this anthology.