The Top 500 Poems

Edited by William Harmon

Here, for the first time, is our generations' definitive view of the greatest poetry in the English language. This is the story of poetry in English, a collection of the best 500 poems, based not on one critic's choice, not on one poet's choice, but on the collective choice of 550 critics, editors, and poets.

Here are the 500 poems that speak to us across the centuries, beginning with Chaucer's words, moving to Shakespeare's masterpieces, through Donne's wonderful witticisms and Pope's elegant satires, through the perennial favorites of Blake, Wordsworth, and Keats, on through Dickinson's jewels of profundity to the ironies of Eliot and to the passion of Plath and Ginsberg in out own time. These are the 500 poems we know or want to know, arranged as an unfolding story of great literature, with comments on each by William Harmon and with a general introduction on the entire collection.

Related Subjects

• Poetry
• Reference

About the Author

WILLIAM HARMON is the James Gordon Hanes Professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the editor of The Top 500 Poems (Columbia), The Oxford Book of American Light Verse, and recent editions of A Handbook to Literature, and the author of several volumes of poetry, including winners of the Lamont Award and the William Carlos Williams Award.

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