Nominate your favorite poems of the Top 500

[Saffron]

Nominate your favorite poems of the Top 500

Have a look over the list I posted of the Top 500 and pick out your favorites to post (titles only) on this thread. I will then make a poll so we can vote on the top 10.

[Saffron]

My most favorite poem of the Top 500 is Birches by Robert Frost. It will take me a little more thinking to narrow down my list of 20 or so to a manageable 5 or 6. I will post again.

[DWill]

This will be a tough assignment. I might create different categories, like the Academy Awards, to make the job easier (e.g., "Best poem about a revelation").

[Saffron]

This will be a tough assignment. I might create different categories, like the Academy Awards, to make the job easier (e.g., "Best poem about a revelation").

Great idea, but a bit of a cheat if you ask me.

Also, copied from the Hot 100 thread:

Have we had 'The Eve of Saint Agnes' yet? Sometimes I like that one best.

Yes, it was #253

[DWill]

Well, cheating perhaps, but maybe not when I consider the shifting nature of "favorites." I'm likely to make a different choice of favorite from day to day, in a given category. Maybe I'm just uncommonly fickle. But it depends on qualities or types you choose to emphasize at a given time within a category, and assuming that it's a range of qualities you're going to be after, favorites will change with those desired qualities. There, have I overthought this enough yet? No? Well, consider that I'm not sure of how to measure how much I like something, or even whether my liking it should be the worthiest consideration.

[Saffron]

Well, cheating perhaps, but maybe not when I consider the shifting nature of "favorites." I'm likely to make a different choice of favorite from day to day, in a given category. Maybe I'm just uncommonly fickle. But it depends on qualities or types you choose to emphasize at a given time within a category, and assuming that it's a range of qualities you're going to be after, favorites will change with those desired qualities. There, have I overthought this enough yet? No? Well, consider that I'm not sure of how to measure how much I like something, or even whether my liking it should be the worthiest consideration.

Very loudly laughing out loud!!! You are too much fun. Makes me want to quote Elizabeth Barrett Browning. So, now post a few catagories and favorites already. And just so you don't feel too bad, I will say that I think we (everyone posting) would agree with you on how hard it is to pick favorites. I said Birches as my most favorite, because I aways love that poem no matter how I feel.

[Saffron]

Even though I razzed DWill about having categories, I think he is on to something. I was having a hard time figuring out how to organize voting for favorites and categories will help. How about Favorite Emily Dickinson poem, Best Rosebud Poem, Favorite poem written before 1700, Best Pastoral, suggestions?

Here are my top few poems (not in any particular order):
The Waking by Roethke
Song of the Wandering Aengus by Yeats
After Apple Picking by Frost
Briches by Frost
Anecdote of the Jar by Stevens
All of ED's poems -- can't pick this morning
Pied Beauty by Hopkins

Oh no, I must stop the list and I didn't even mention Burns & Cummings....this is hard!

[Robert Tulip]

7. Kubla Khan. Coleridge
9. La Belle Dame sans Merci. Keats
19. The Second Coming. Yeats
22. Sailing to Byzantium. Yeats
27. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Eliot
49. Ode on a Grecian Urn. Keats
51. And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time. Blake
84. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Coleridge
86. The Lake Isle of Innisfree. Yeats
102. Dulce et Decorum Est. Owen
152. Journey of the Magi. Eliot
206. The Owl and the Pussy-Cat. Lear
231. Father William. Carroll
235. The Wild Swans at Coole. Yeats
414. Frost at Midnight. Coleridge
498. The Song of Wandering Aengus. Yeats

[DWill]

I can see it's easiest to go third, because some from saffron's and Robert's list I would pick, too. I haven't followed through on my category thing.

3. To Autumn. Keats
4. That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold. Shakespeare
7. Kubla Khan. Coleridge
8. Dover Beach. Arnold
9. La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Keats
12. To His Coy Mistress. Marvell
22. Sailing to Byzantium. Yeats
26. Ode to a Nightingale. Keats
30. The Windhover. Hopkins
40. The Good Morrow. Donne
92. Lycidas. Milton
139. Tintern Abbey. Wordsworth
144. There's a certain slant of light. Dickinson
163. The Lucy poems. Wordsworth
203. To a Mouse. Burns
262. After Apple Picking. Frost
287. The Circus Animals' Desertion. Yeats
372. Neutral Tones. Hardy
414. Frost at Midnight. Coleridge
444. Whoso List to Hunt. Wyatt

[Saffron]

Reading over the lists of favorites I see a few repeats. At the end of April I will tally up and see what poems get mentioned more than once. I am hoping to create a Top 10 List.