Monday, September 2, 2024

My Fifty Favourite Poems of All Time

I spent a sleepless hour or two after midnight, this weekend, coming up with this list. 

Why fifty? Well, it seems a manageable sort of number.

Despite the title of the post, I can't really claim this is my definitive fifty favourite poems. In another mood, at another time, it might have looked somewhat different. But these are all poems which have a huge personal significance to me, lines from which regularly come unbidden into my memory, and (most importantly) which move me immensely. Most of them are poems that I've loved for decades now. I can't even imagine my life without some of them.

I tried to put them in vague order of preference, but for the most part, this is very fuzzy. It's really the top ten or so where the order matters the most. I can pretty confidently assert that "Ulysses" by Tennyson is my single favourite poem of all time, and that "To Helen" by Edgar Allen Poe comes second. I'm not particularly confident of the placing after that-- is "The Burning of the Leaves" really more important to me than "Locksley Hall?"-- but I'm fairly sure that there's nothing in the top twenty that doesn't deserve to be there.


Beyond that, the placing of a poem is less important than its presence on the list.

Arthur Quiller-Couch, the first editor of The Oxford Book of English Verse, famously wrote that "the best is the best, though a hundred judges have declared it so". Well, this list makes no claim about what's best (these are my personal favourites, nothing more) but I share his general sentiment. Pretty much all of the poems here are standards of poetry anthologies, although many of the Irish choices would only be encountered in Irish poetry anthologies. Popular taste, over time, is a sure sign of greatness in poetry-- although my guess is that this requires a poetry-reading public, which today (for the first time ever?) doesn't exist. Hopefully this is just a hiatus.

Having said that, I've omitted a few of the most popular poems of all time. (You can compare my selection with the BBC's "favourite poems" poll of 1995.) There's no "Daffodils", no "Road Not Taken", no "Elegy in a Country Churchyard". It's not because I don't love those poems. I do, especially the first. I just couldn't put them above other poems on my list. Similarly, there's no John Betjeman on my list, even though I'm a huge admirer of Betjeman. There's just no stand-out poems among his works that appeal to me so much they would get in the top fifty.

On looking at this list, somebody said to me: "You like Yeats, don't you?". Yes, I like Yeats. In fact, I could easily have filled half of the places on this list with Yeats poems.

I think "Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album" by Philip Larkin might be the template for half the poems I've written. But don't hold that against it!

"Fanfare for the Makers" by Louis MacNeice is a poem (or excerpt from a poem) that had a massive influence on my as a teen, and indeed ever afterwards. But I don't like the last line. Life can't be confirmed by suicide. Suicide only confirms despair.

Anyway, I hope the list affords you some diversion, and perhaps introduces you to some new favourites of your own.

Ulysses by Tennyson

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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 11, 2024 at 4:55 AM

    Trying to read through some of them. I sent a poem (not on your list, Alexander Pope) to someone recently who appreciated it, wasn't entirely sure if they're a poetry person at all.

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    1. MaolsheachlannSeptember 11, 2024 at 5:31 AM

      I'm glad to hear that! Pope is not one of my favourite poets, although of course I acknowledge his greatness. Those rhyming couplets get tiring very quickly.

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