2.13 The Ten Greatest Poems Ever Written

What is great poetry? What is the value of Greatest of All Time lists? Is an iconic American poem now redundant? And a call for submissions.

God damn you… God damn you all to hell!

What is the point of Greatest of All Time lists? I get the feeling that they narrow down people’s choice. Whether they are of music, books, films or any creative endeavour, the same things get chosen again and again, and get solidified in the position of greatness because few people want to swim against the collective tide and as a result fewer and fewer people have heard of the unlisted alternatives.

Bohemian Rhapsody, the Lark Ascending, Citizen Kane, The Great Gatsby, and the Mona Lisa all fine pieces of art, but is it really necessary to place them on or near the top of list after list, year after year? It is another symptom of the need that we feel to make creative pursuits more like sport, with lists and charts and competitions leading to television shows like the X-Factor, Strictly Come Dancing and Bake Off. Maybe I should lighten up. It’s all just a bit of harmless fun. Maybe Greatest of All Time lists and glitzy talent shows are a gateway to an appreciation of the arts. Maybe the arts need competition, charts and prizes to stay alive. We live in a competitive world and everything is judged by its relative worth. We all make judgements in the art we consume, but then our judgement may be skewed by the existence of those damned lists.

At last week’s Mexborough Read to Write session John Beal led an excellent discussion on The Ten Greatest Poems Ever Written, as selected, and posted online by The Society of Classical Poets in Mount Hope, New York.

They limited their choices to poems of 50 lines or less which were originally written in the English language. Elsewhere on the site they state that they aim to increase appreciation of centuries of metered and often rhyming poetry and to support poets who apply classical techniques in modern poetry.

All this seems to suggest that, in order to be classical, a poem need not be particularly old, as long as it follows some sort of metre, and possibly rhymes. So perhaps it is a little disappointing that the most modern poem included is The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, which comes in at number ten. As it was written in 1917, it just scraped in at under a century old when the list was compiled in 2016. All the rest were considerably older.

I would have thought that This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin might have merited a place. It ticks all the boxes having both metre and rhyme and being under 50 lines. It is also surprisingly prevalent in quite a lot of chocolate box poetry collections, (popular greatest hits compilations, often marketed as romantic gifts) despite the famous opening lines - They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

Number one in the list we looked at - and therefore the greatest poem ever written, was Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare - Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s Day? Also, predictably included were Wordsworth’s Daffodils Keats’s Grecian Urn a bit of Milton, and John Donne teasing the personification of death. All fine poems, but are they really the greatest ever written?

There’s no getting away from the fact that what constitutes the greatest poetry of all time is a personal choice. As far as I am concerned, the best way of looking at it is to consider what sort of poetry resonates with me. I have never felt the least inclination to compare anyone to a summers day, but I have considered how much my mum and dad might have fucked me up. I have never lain on my couch and been comforted by the thought of daffodils, but I have been comforted by the thought of a cheese and pickle sandwich. Actually, that particular sandwich based poem by Mandy Coe, doesn’t exactly resonate with me as a man, but it allows me to see the world from her point of view. And that is another hallmark of what I would consider to be a great poem, it could be one which enables me to see the world from someone else’s point of view. It has to resonate as well though, and bring me to an appreciation of that point of view. This is where, at least for me, Wordsworth would fail to make the cut. Daffodils are fine flowers, yes, but, a conversation on the topic of the between me and him would end in awkward silence, with me thinking “what a weirdo - does he really feel like that?” and deciding that I couldn’t imagine actually being a friend of his, even less so when I found out that in all probability he had nicked the poem off his sister.

There are other ways a poem might be great. It could tell me a really interesting story for example. Classic poems like The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes spring to mind. What a rhyme scheme it has! What a rhythm too! The children’s book The Highway Rat¹ rewrites the whole thing in fine style and is an excellent introduction to poetry for young children. I regularly use it in my role as an SEN teacher. The story need not be fictional either, a great poem might be more akin to a factual documentary, war poetry would fall into this category, such as Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, or Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est. I realise that I am falling into the same trap as the classical Poetry Society and choosing only poetry from long ago. This is in no small measure due to my ignorance, despite the fact that I enjoy poetry, I am no expert in the depth and range of it, and feel the need to be educated further.

Please feel free to educate me - send me your thoughts. I would be delighted to read about what you might consider to be great poetry. Ancient or modern, Perhaps it is something that you have written yourself. Whenever I finish writing a poem, I have to at least consider it to be amongst the greatest poems ever written. There would have been little point in writing it otherwise. The feeling that it might be great may not last long, but as they say, its the thought that counts.

What I do feel is that for me, great poetry always opens a window through which things might be seen from an interesting perspective. After reading a great poem, you should feel a little different to how you felt before. It should be something that adds to the collection of thoughts, feelings and experiences which constitute who you are, how you think, and how you relate to other people. I think that this is true of all great art, from classical poetry to light verse, from grand opera to situation comedy. Through engaging with it, we should feel improved in some way.

Enough, the cavernous aperture of my own arse threatens to swallow me up!

As I traditionally end on a poem - thereby justifying the name of this collection of essays - I give you what is, according to the Society of Classical Poets, the ninth greatest poem ever written. It is inscribed on a bronze plaque affixed to an interior wall of the plinth below the State Of Liberty. I can’t help but wonder how the current leadership of America feel about it. I hope that the society of classical poets are sticking to their guns and continuing speak of its virtues nine years after they compiled their list.

The New Colossus - by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbour that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I meant what I said about wanting your ideas on great poetry. Send me a few pointers to your favourites. And as to your own poetry, if you write it, feel free to send me some of that too.

In fact…

Call for Submissions

"Give me your spurned, your abandoned poetry,
Your huddled masses of metaphors and similes 
Yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming notebooks.
Send these, the unpublished, wastebasket-threatened to me.
I wait to read before my glowing screen"  

I would love to read them, and might even be tempted to feature some in a future edition of Sixty Odd Poets² - or maybe write an essay around one or two of them for this site.

1. Written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, The Highway Rat is a delight that it is well worth exploring whether or not you can find some children to share it with. Buy the book, or find it in a library, or failing that, if you have half an hour to spare, it’s currently available on BBC iPlayer - indulge yourself!

2. Having reached the magical number of sixty, I intend to take a more relaxed approach to the Sixty Odd Poets page, with more opportunities to add single poems from people to small collections outside of the numbered strand. Poets who have been featured on the site before are welcome to submit new pieces if they fancy it, and there is no longer any requirement to submit six poems at a time, unless you want to.