The 100 Best Poems of All Time [Paperback]

Leslie Pockell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2001

This poetry companion puts favourite poetry and poets from around the world at your fingertips, enabling you to revisit the classics, encounter unfamiliar masterworks and rediscover old favourites.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The cover of The Best 100 Poems of All Time promises "[v]erses to move you, lines you'll love, from old favorites to modern classics...," and while they may not live up to the title's hyperbole, they do satisfy the teaser's terms. Though the collection, including poems by Homer, Sappho, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Villon, Shakespeare, Schiller, Issa, Whitman, Baudelaire, Millay, Cullen, Neruda, Plath and Angelou, was edited by Leslie Pockell, the unsigned introduction was written by an editorial "we," who proclaim that "this present collection has as much credibility as many other lists of the best and the greatest that have circulated during the recent turn of the century." One hopes that the actual poems contained herein have more credibility than any list.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446676810
• ISBN-13: 978-0446676816
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #377,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Handy little collection, December 31, 2001

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The 100 Best Poems of All Time (Paperback)

What this little book might have been called in manuscript was something like "100 Representative Poems of 100 of the Most Popular Poets of All Time." Not a bad title, and it is consistent with editor Leslie Pockell's popular choices and her[?] intent to include no more than one poem by any poet. But the unmitigated gall of the title actually chosen--The 100 Best Poems of All Time--makes for a little fun, and probably will increase the sales of the book. As Pockell writes in the short Introduction, "Well, at least we attracted your attention."

You did. And for fun I am responding with some reaction to the selections. But first I should mention Pockell's criteria for the selections. The book needed to be short, a mix of "high art" and "popular culture" was desired, and the selections ought to be "inclined toward poetry that is best appreciated when recited or read aloud." Fair enough. And for the most part I think Pockell did an admirable job.

The excellent choices include, the King James version of the Twenty-Third Psalm, Poe's "The Raven," Shakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" (although it seems weird to select just one of his sonnets; I prefer "That time of year thou mayst in me behold" or "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"), Donne's "Go and Catch a Falling Star," Shelley's "Ozymandias," Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (although again, how to choose just one!) Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," Housman's "When I Was One-and-Twenty," Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," (ditto the last two asides), Eliot's "...Prufrock," etc.

Poor selections include, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" (a stirring song, but a "best" poem?), Basho's "An Old Pond" (there are better English renditions than the one given, for example, "In the old stone pool/a frogjump:/splishhhh." Pockell gives, "Old pond-/A frog leaps in-/Water's sound."; and Basho wrote many better haiku), "Casey at the Bat" (uh...never mind), and several others that I fear to name. Also to choose out of all of Alexander Pope's work, his epigram about the dog at Kew, seems almost anti-poetic.

A howler is "Ancient Music" by Ezra Pound. If Pockell wanted to show the less than charming side of Pound, perhaps Pound's "The Garden" which includes the line, "...the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor" might have been presented. (Then again, perhaps not.)

A creative choice is e e cummings's "Buffalo Bill's," which reflects not only cummings's love of typographical form, but his playful wit along with his famous word play and his often missed irony. (The typographical form of the poem represents a tomahawk: "[H]ow...[DO] you like your blueeyed boy[,] Mister Death"?)

Langston Hughes's "Harlem" ("What happens to a dream deferred?") is obviously a politically correct choice, and also a very good little poem, but I would have preferred his "Mother to Son" ("Well, son, I'll tell you:/Life for me ain't been no crystal stair...") or the breath-taking simplicity of "Friend." Sylvia Plath's dark and brutal "Daddy" is also PC, but with its inclusion there is no need for Margaret Atwood, a fact for which we can be thankful. The choice from Sappho, with its nice turn from "a god" that sits "beside you" to the poet herself, is of course de rigueur, but a good choice nonetheless.

Pleasant surprises include W. H. Auden's "Funeral Blues," and Pablo Neruda's "Poetry." Some old favorites are Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much with Us," and the powerful "Incident" from Countee Cullen.

It is good that Pockell includes some poetry translated from other languages; however that just makes the presumption of her title all the more absurd. Just how would one presume to pick the best from such an incredible array? However, the choices made really are very good although they reflect the artistry of the translator nearly as much as the original poet. Middle Eastern people might object to the choice of a quatrain from "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" ("The Moving Finger writes...") translated by Edward FitzGerald, which is almost as much English as it is Persian, preferring a more ethnic rendition.

I can't quibble with the poets left out, although missing are John Crow Ransom, Archibald MacLeish, Theodore Roethke, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Lowell, Rita Dove, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and of course of necessity many others. One of my favorite poems and poet not to appear is "Patterns" by Amy Lowell.

Pockell gives a terse, but felicitous introduction to each poem usually including a word about the poet. But I have one question, who is Leslie Pockell? There is not a biographical word anywhere in the book to give a hint. And should I have used a masculine or a feminine pronoun?

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Uchh, November 21, 2004

By 

Pamela Weintraub (Brooklyn NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The 100 Best Poems of All Time (Paperback)

Leslie Pockell must be the worst, most careless editor ever. Never mind the audacious and ridiculous title. She puts lines in the wrong stanzas of poems. She gets titles and words wrong. She fails to specify when she's only presenting part of a poem as opposed to the entire thing. Some simple double-checking could have prevented these problems. Ms. Pockell must be a very lazy woman.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 100 Best?, May 9, 2006

By 

Paul Fitzhamon - See all my reviews

This review is from: The 100 Best Poems of All Time (Paperback)

I disagree with the assumption that they are 100 of the best poems ever written but they are certainly worthy of review. I found the selection interesting.