I think it is fair to say that American poets have really dominated the poetry scene in the 20th century. Some of the most remarkable and groundbreaking poetry has come from US poets living in or away from home. Below is a sampling of the work of 10 of the greatest American poems from the 20th century.
1. the Wasteland – T S Eliot
Eliot was born an American, moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at the age of 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
2. Howl – Allen Ginsberg
Ginsberg is best known for Howl (1956), a long poem about the self-destruction of his friends of the Beat Generation and what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in United States at the time.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
skull…
3. Daddy – Sylvia Plath
Along with Anne Sexton, Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry that Robert Lowell and W.D. Snodgrass initiated.
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time–
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
4. The Snow Man – Wallace Stevens
Stevens’s first book of poetry, Harmonium, was published in 1923. He produced two more major books of poetry during the 1920s and 1930s and three more in the 1940s. He received the National Book Award in 1951, and 1955.
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
5. This is just to say – Carolos Williams
Dr. William Carlos Williams (sometimes known as WCW) (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963), was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. Williams has a theatre named after him in his hometown Rutherford, called “The Williams Center”
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.
6. Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond – E E Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), popularly known as E. E. Cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, and playwright. His body of work encompasses more than 900 poems, several plays and essays, numerous drawings, sketches, and paintings, as well as two novels.
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
7. The People, Yes – Carl Sandburg
Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, historian, novelist, balladeer, and folklorist. He was born in Galesburg, Illinois of Swedish parents and died at his home, named Connemara, in Flat Rock, North Carolina.
The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can’t laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.
8. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – Robert Frost
Frost’s work frequently used themes from rural life in New England, using the setting to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
9. Shine, Perishing Republic – Robinson Jeffers
John Robinson Jeffers (January 10, 1887–January 20, 1962) was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Most of Jeffers’ poetry was written in classic narrative and epic form, but today he is also known for his short verse, and considered an icon of the environmental movement.
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
to empire
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence;
and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly
long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening
center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there
are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught – they say –
God, when he walked on earth.
10. For the Union Dead – Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell (March 1, 1917–September 12, 1977), born Robert Traill Spence Lowell, IV, was an American poet whose works, confessional in nature, engaged with the questions of history and probed the dark recesses of the self. He is generally considered to be among the greatest American poets of the twentieth century.
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.
I must give a tip of the hat to Ezra Pound who is brilliant, but the lawyers of his estate work very hard to ensure that his poetry is not available on the internet.
Technorati Tags: literature, poetry
Pound, ugh — but if you feel you must recognize the crazy old anti-Semite, the University of Pennsylvania has an assortment of his spoken-word recordings, with texts.
stupid
AG: Thanks for that – I guess it is better than nothing at all for those who are interested in his poetry.
i’s actualy written as ee cummings in all lower-case, but great list, i happen to agree with the choices and im a big frost fan so i was glad to see his name
I LOVE #8, and I have actually been there! Only, I was riding my little horse, not driving him.
My favorite poem of all time has to be The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by Eliot, although I agree with your choice of including the Wasteland instead of it.
Some of these I had not read, thanks for posting them!
Tjgrs: I was going to mention the spelling of Cummings name but I didn’t think anyone would raise the issue – I was wrong
As it happens, when Cummings name was printed in lower case in a french edition of one of his poetry books, he wrote to them and said that he would prefer it if his name were spelt with Capital E and C. His unusual use of grammar and his own occasional spelling of his name in lower case incorrectly lead people to believe that he would spell his name as e e cummings. You can read a bit about that here at Wikipedia.
kelsi: wow – how lucky you are! I would love to do a tour of famous places relating to poetry – starting with Flanders Fields.
Are these all personal choices or just poems you think should be on a top ten list?
Travis: personal choice – but I definitely think they epitomize American Poetry.
I actually pulled this article up expecting to prepare a tirade to protest what I expected to be the picks, however, you included six of my top ten (almost in order), and I can’t really disagree about your other four choices. The only major exception I would make would be to include Jack Kerouac, eliminating Robinson Jeffers.
Donovan: I am very pleased that we agree on the list. I have not actually read any poetry by Kerouac – I will have to look at some.
Good choices, but “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop (not on the list) very nearly tops them all.
tmart: Really? I am not so keen to be honest. I think Plath was by far the greater poet.
Just thought I’d let you know that the correct way to spell his name is e e cummings. No capitals or punctuation. And my personal opinion is that “next to of course god” is a much better poem by this poet.
mechomadness: Read comment 5.
No Langston Hughes? I know its only 10, so probably many had to be sacrificed.
aplspud: This was a difficult list to write because there is so much great stuff out there. Thanks for mentioning Langston Hughes. I really like “I, Too, Sing America”, and “Life is Fine”.
Yeats’ The Second Coming should be on there, its echos the current events today, especially the lines: The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. / Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. Such a chilling poem
not an american poet.
don marquis wrote the first poem that ever touched me, in grade 6
“i was talking to a moth the other evening,
he was trying to immolate himself on an electric light bulb,
why do you fellows pull this stunt i asked him,
is it the conventional thing for moths to do?
Full poem available here
http://www.cs.rice.edu/
~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/36.html
enjoy
Good list. I’d likely dump Robinson Jeffers for Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool”, but it’s difficult to argue with your other selections.
Michelle, Yeats is Ireland’s greatest poet.
I’m probably the only one who thinks this, or dares to say it, but I think the Plath poem is mediocre at *best.* “We Real Cool” should have been on this list, & where was Langston Hughes?
three are of these are my favourite poems.
Endgar Allan Poe??
Not 20th century.
nice list, thanks for the reads.
The last quarter of the 20c seems decidedly under explored here, tho. Any contemporary favorites, jfrater? Or are you old enough to have stopped reading poetry in the 70′s? Zing!
Just playing – thanks for putting this list on the web!
metoo – I was too young to read in the 70s!!! I will admit that I need to read more contemporary stuff
We Real Cool should definitely be on this list, and personally I would say in place of Frost (my least favorite poet of all time) but I understand that everyone has a hard-on for him. Less controversially I would probably take off Jeffers. Gwendolyn Brooks has had such a major impact on American poetry, especially in the African-American and female communities that its a shame not to see her on the list, especially when her masterpiece, We Real Cool, is so perfect.
Natures first green is gold
her hardest hue to hold
Her early leafs a flower
but only so an hour
then leaf subsides to leaf
so eden sank to greif
so dawn goes down to day
nothing gold can stay
my favorit poem… comes from my favorit movie.
gotta love it. also i love the poet.
Love love love “Howl” and “Daddy”.
Wasn’t T.S. Eliot kind of a pretentious prick?
And where is “Leaves of Grass”, my absolute favorite?
And Maya Angelou?
Walt Whitman not 20th century.
What a goofy list. As a scholar of 20th Century poetry and a published author, I have to say that this list is quite silly. To much hippie, beatnick (and I use the nick because it relates to sputnick) stuff. Eliot at number one and Ginsberg at number two. Which edition of Norton did you use??? Where is Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound (“I have tried to write paradise…”, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan (“There is no life that does not rise / melodic from the scales of the marvelous / to which our grief refers”), or Denise Levertov, you know, poets who understood how to write rhythm instead of subjectivist baloney. Plath and Lowell barely qualify – those two crybabies never said much except how their lives were so difficult, and rich.
thanks max, good thing you mentioned you were a published scholar of 20th century of poetry otherwise i wouldve taken you for a stuck up prick. I had no idea the majority of the poets wrote subjectivist baloney, thanks again for being so helpful and informative, im sure your published work is just as fascinating as this…. dick
With all these silly wetbsies, such a great page keeps my internet hope alive.
Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson not 20th century.
Bob Dylan – “Visions of Johanna”
Simple.
I love almost all of these poets…minus Plath and Frost. Also, the poems of Li Young Lee (yes, he’s an American poet) and Billy Collins are great, too.
shelby u stay on
bye mug
<33333333333333333
I Agree where is Kerouac? or even more important where is Bukowski? He broadened the view of poetry, writing ironically and quasi-bitterly about *****, drinking and gambling (among other things). “many would claim, most influential and imitated poet”
Charles Bukowski??? The list is decent, would argue a few, but then again who wouldnt.
20th century was a poor period for poetry, this list confims it. Only two household names, Eliot a Brit, and Plath largely due to her tragic death
The dominance and influence of Brits/Irish poetry with the likes of Keats, Lord Byron, James Joyce, Milton, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Percy Shelley, DH Lawrence, WB Yeats, Chaucer, William Blake, Oscar Wilde… their works are immortal, same cannot be said for most in that list
My personal favorite poem is the epic by Rudyard Kipling “If…” (1896), with finish ‘You’ll be a man, my Son!’. Also inspired by Tennyson ‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all’
The standard, originality and innovation of Poetry has fallen dramatically, and whether thats due to post poetic zenith it was inevitable, i’m not sure.
Eliot was an American ex-pat. As for the others you listed, great poets but neither 1) American, or 2) 20th Century. Fault the list for including so-so poems (like the Frost poem) but not for actually including what it said it was going to include.
Thank you, to max and Ed. You’ll probably never read this but it’s nice to see my thoughts echoed somewhat after so much absolute garbage.
It’s as though the idea that poetry need have neither rhyme nor meter has given way to a pretension that it MUST not.
First, under U.S. copyright law, you are free to copy anything by Ezra Pound written before 1923. This includes the original Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, in my opinion his best shorter work.
Second, in response to Ed, certainly the poets you listed are masters of the craft. Even Joyce, whose verse I find rather dainty and quaint, deserves the title for the imagery in the last page or two of The Dead.
You do not give enough credit to the poets listed above. If your tastes are for dense, formal work, read Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens. If you want something intense, read Poppies in July by Sylvia Plath — whom you dismiss quite unfairly. Many mistake Robert Frost’s discipline for simplicity, but his depth shows in poems like For Once, Then, Something.
I suspect, like me, you prefer formally crafted to more experimental verse. You should read Cottage Street, 1953 by Richard Wilbur, Hades Welcomes His Bride by A.E. Stallings, and The End of the World by Archibald Macleish,
Kerouac as a top ten poet? which drugs where you smoking?
At best a third rate poet.Not even a great writer …
A fun list. I’m an English professor and I jokingly call myself a snob in front of my students sometimes, so of course I can’t agree with Sandburg or Cummings. “For the Union Dead” is one of the most overrated poems in the language, in my opinion: really contrived, really forced. But I know lots of people like it, so my opinion could be wrong.
For what it’s worth, here’s my top 10 American poems of the 20th century. I’ve chosen not to pick more than one poem by any one poet. If I could, probably half my list would consist of Wallace Stevens poems.
1. AN ORDINARY EVENING IN NEW HAVEN by Wallace Stevens
My favorite long poem (at least today) by the best poet in English in the 20th century. On some other day I might pick THE COMEDIAN AS THE LETTER C or NOTES TOWARD A SUPREME FICTION.
2. THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK by T. S. Eliot
The Waste Land impresses me less than it used to; Prufrock is the one Eliot poem that I reread and reread and still love.
3. MATINEES by James Merrill
I think Merrill was the best American poet of the second half of the century. This poem is about the discovery of art and of its emotional usefulness in one’s everyday emotional life.
4. A BAROQUE WALL-FOUNTAIN IN THE VILLA SCIARRA by Richard Wilbur
Trust me: a gorgeous poem about two fountains and two ways of living (and thinking about living) life.
5. THE MOOSE by Elizabeth Bishop
Bishop was born in Canada and this poem is set in Nova Scotia, but Bishop also grew up in Massachusetts as well as Nova Scotia and is always labeled as an American poet. How an experience where not all that much happens (a bus stops for a moose) united people and makes them joy.
6. THE BRIDGE by Hart Crane
One of two book-length poems on my list. In 1932, Crane jumped off a ship to his death at age 33, a great loss. Two years earlier, he published this uneven but at times brilliant poem about America, about the struggle to bridge past and present, about the desire to bridge self and other, about so much more.
7. FLOW CHART by John Ashbery
The other book-length poem on my list. I don’t claim to understand the whole thing, but Ashbery’s looniness lets him put certain subtle experiences into language that wouldn’t get put there otherwise, I think.
8. LADY LAZARUS by Sylvia Plath
I like the dark humor of this one, and of “Daddy” too. I also like Plath’s early poems written in form. “Black Rook in Rainy Weather,” for example.
9. EROS TURANNOS by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Some of EAR’s best poems were written in the 19th century, but this one is early 20th. The best poem I know about a woman caught in an unhappy marriage.
10. STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING by Robert Frost
I started with an evening poem and am ending with one. I chose this Frost poem because it still stands up even though it’s so familiar. For comparatively unfamiliar ones (both of them great animal poems), see “The Bear” and “The Most of It.”
Thanks for letting me share my two (or ten) cents.
A very good list! My personal favorites include William Carlos Williams and Pablo Neruda. The list’s “best ten” nature, however, by design cannot include the masses of lesser-known poets whose work, taken together, form a collective body that speaks to the human condition, the human outlook, in response to our times. My point is this: Let us not look only to Best Tens if we are to understand our times, our lives, our culture. If you dig poetry, look to the current small presses.
not the top ten in my opinion except for Eliot’s and Plath’s.
I agree with Frost. I would have liked to have seen Robert Service and Ogden Nash up there also. I’m not sure Service was born American but he wrote about the Alaskan frontier.
Didn’t read all the comments, but…no Robert Service? He’s the poet laurate of geologists. You wound us, Jamie.
I love the WCW, and would have chosen "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" from Eliot. No matter, great list!
Robert Service was an Englishman who spent many years in the Yukon (not Alaska), and his experiences there were the basis for many of his most famous and beloved. Service was in the Canadian Red Cross during the Great War.
Good Job Max The Scholar:
Right on top of things!
No wonder school –learning is lacking”
Emily Dickenson is a 19th century Poet ( 1830 – May 15, 1886) as is Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892)
As for the list:
Carl Sandberg, Robinson Jeffers, Sylvia Plath — you’ve got to be kidding! Remove those three and replace them with Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop and Richard Wilber and you almost have a credible list.
Billy
I know a few people do have their problems with him, but i think Bukowski is missing.
wow lame
Since Eliot renounced his US citizenship, he should probably not be on a list of writers of American poems. I'd certainly replace him with Langston Hughes ("Theme for English B"), Countee Cullen ("Yet Do I Marvel"), or Emily Dickinson (take your pick).
As mentioned above, Emily died before the 20th century.
Eliot was British and identified himself as such. He even became an Anglican. Is American literature so weak that we try to claim both Eliot and Nabokov as our own?
I will gladly wash my hands of Eliot if that means I get to claim Nabokov.
Holy *****, that list is terrible! You are reading at about a sophomore (in high school's) level. If you are one, that's cool, but you should try stretching your horizons just a bit. Some of these (like Sandburg) would not even make the top 50. There are better poems outside the cannon; you're teachers are doing you a disservice. Also, things have happened since 1930. Check it out!
you're a hack
Daddy you will not do you will not do…daddy I’ve had to kill you…
Is it me, or does Sylvia Plath sound like a mob boss in these lines?
She was crazy as batsh*t, and that’s how I like my women, pretty great poet as well, and I think Daddy should’ve been number 1
It was something of great contentment getting to your site the other day. I came up here this day hoping to find out something new. And I was not let down. Your ideas on new strategies on this topic were enlightening and a good help to myself. Thank you for leaving out time to write down these things as well as for sharing your thoughts.
E.E. Cummings wrote his name all lower case ONCE and people ran with it. If you actually study his work, you’ll notice that he never meant for his name to be written like that.
These poems are awesome.I felt very nice on reading these poems.Here is a prayer to read:Thank u god 4 da world so sweet,Thank u god 4 the birds that sing,Thank u god 4 da food we eat,Thank u 4 everything,Thank u god 4 a nice day keep me safe on my way. THANK U GOD:)
“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost should be on this list (but I am wondering if he wrote it in the 20th century as he was born in 1874). And I hope that I am not going over board here, but how about the poetry of Jim Morrison ??
They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine is a personal favorite and a great American poem.
I maite blog hau eta gauza guztietan buruz. Izan dut awhile for irakurtzen baina oraindik ez kaixo esateko. ondo … Hello!
cool