Here’s something: an incomplete list of my favorite poems of all time. Incomplete because I couldn’t remember scads of great poems I’ve read across the years. Still, I was able to compile a pretty good representation of my taste and group poems by theme. (And song lyrics count cause I say so.)

Here we go and good spring to you!

my top tier

Directive, Robert Frost

Meditation at Lagunitas, Robert Hass

The Apple Trees at Olema, Robert Hass

Carrion Comfort, Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Windhover (to Christ Our Lord), Gerard Manley Hopkins

[Everything I’ve listed by Anne Carson, below]

Coffee, Matthew Dickman

January 25, Maxine Kumin

This is just to say, William Carlos Williams

 

book-length poems & series

The Glass Essay, Anne Carson (~30pp long)

Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson (book-length)

The Beauty of the Husband, Anne Carson (book-length)

Book of Isaiah, Anne Carson (series of 4 poems)

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, Claudia Rankine (book-length)

Citizen, Claudia Rankine (book-length)

The Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke (there are 10)

The Dream Songs, John Berryman

Dime-Store Alchemy, Charles Simic (lyric essays)

 

persona poems

Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Crusoe in England, Elizabeth Bishop

Ellen West, Frank Bidart

The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

The War of Vaslav Nijinsky, Frank Bidart

 

poems about love

Then I Close My Eyes, Gary Short

Those Winter Sundays, Robert Hayden

Isaiah 43

 

poems about loss

Spring and Fall (to a young child), Gerard Manley Hopkins

One Art, Elizabeth Bishop

Feeling Fucked Up, Etheridge Knight

The Emperor of Ice Cream, Wallace Stevens

A Sunset of the City, Gwendolyn Brooks

This Happened, C.K. Williams

A History of Origami, Bob Hicok

 

some divine spark

Privilege of Being, Robert Hass

As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Gerard Manley Hopkins

Little Furnace, Brenda Hillman

What the Angels Left, Marie Howe

 

poems about New York

Letter to N.Y., Elizabeth Bishop

New York Poem, Terrance Hayes

 

memory poems

I Go Back to May 1937, Sharon Olds

Refrigerator, 1957, Thomas Lux

Ars Poetica with Bacon, Terrance Hayes

Argument About Poetics Imagined at Squaw Valley under the Mountain, Robert Hass

 

identity poems

won’t you celebrate with me, Lucille Clifton

I’m Nobody! Who are You?, Emily Dickinson

Now, Denis Johnson

 

poems that prominently feature animals

The Swan, Rilke (Stephen Mitchell translations recommended for all Rilke)

The Panther, Rilke

The Gazelle, Rilke

Song, Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Hymn to Life, Timothy Donnelly

 

song lyrics:

Case of You, Joni Mitchell

Tangled Up in Blue, Bob Dylan

Subterranean Homesick Blues, Bob Dylan

Cranes in the Sky, Solange Knowles

Andy’s Chest, Lou Reed

The Only Thing, Sufjan Stevens

 

What I notice most about this list is how my teachers and friends are encoded in nearly every choice. They were presented to me in classes throughout high school, college, and grad school; given to me by friends; and read aloud by the poets themselves at events. Put another way, I stumbled upon very few of these. They were given, not found.

I’m not exactly sure what my favorites—Robert Hass, Anne Carson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Rilke—share. Each brings something unique to the table. Hass locates desire and death in an armpit; Carson spins compelling narratives through gorgeous lyricism; Hopkins wrings the sweetest music from the English language; Rilke talks to angels.

My best guess, though, is a throughline of unfulfilled longing in these four poets. Best summed up by Hass: Longing, we say, because desire is full / of endless distances.

I also didn’t know my penchant for surrealism went this deep. From Berryman to Lou Reed to the explicit discussions of surrealism in Hass’ “Argument About Poetics” and Simic’s Dime Store Alchemy, there are dream songs all over the place.

In my current reading practice, I’m not being particularly intentional about the areas of my poetryscape that need developing. For one, I’d like to seek out a more diverse set of poets in terms of geography, time period, and gender. I have in my possession now the selected works of David Ignatow (another white American male, but still), who often worked in prose poetry, a genre I’ve often been drawn to but haven’t properly researched.

As for you, I encourage you to read some of these poems. Or, as the case may be, let them read you.

 

 

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