Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882): Long America’s favorite rhyming poet; author of “The Day Is Done”, “My Lost Youth”, “The Wreck of the Hesperus”, “The Children’s Hour”, Evangeline, Hiawatha, Tales of a Wayside Inn
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849): “The Raven”, “Annabel Lee”–2 classics for sure
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886): America’s top female poet ever
My favorites: first line title and poem number
A narrow fellow in the grass–986
Because I could not stop for death–712
Before I got my eye put out–327
Dare you see a soul at the white heat?–365
“Hope” is the thing with feathers–254
I cannot live with you–640
I died for beauty, but was scarce–449
I dwell in possibility–657
I felt a funeral in my brain–280
I heard a fly buzz when I died–465
I like to see it lap up the miles–585
I taste a liquor never brewed–214
I’m ceded, I’ve stopped being theirs–508
Much madness is divinest sense–435
My life closed twice before its close–1732
My life had stood a loaded gun–754
Safe in their alabaster chambers–216
Tell all the truth but tell it slant–1129
The brain is wider than the sky–632
The props assist the house–1142
The soul selects her own society–303
There’s a certain slant of light–258
This world is not conclusion–501
Walt Whitman (1819-1892): arguably, the great 19th century American poet; this is the David McKay ‘Deathbed’ edition, 1900
Robert Frost (1874-1963): arguably, the great 20th century American poet; many of his best:
E.E. Cummings (1894-1962): an innovator of caps and punctuation
Allen Ginsberg (1926- 1997): the great Beat poet and author of two of the greatest American poems–“Howl” and “Kaddish”
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919- ): still America’s great living poet; this hip 1955 classic made him a popular poet with its sprung-lines sprawling over the pages; includes “Sometime during eternity”, “Constantly risking absurdity”, “I Am Waiting”, “Autobiography”, “Christ Climbed Down”, “The world is a beautiful place”