The Top 500 Poems edited by William Harmon
It took a while to read The Top 500 Poems, as you might imagine. By “top”, the editor means the most anthologized poems written in English. He starts with stuff so old you can’t make out what they’re saying and goes all the way up to Allen Ginsberg. I think I originally had to buy this for a college class but when I sold off my textbooks, I didn’t sell this one, figuring it would be generally useful. I’m glad I kept it as I finally enjoyed reading it. (I doubt I read more than the assigned pages back in school.)
For the most part, the newer poems are better than the older ones. This is because I can tell what the hell they’re saying. A combination of changes in the English language and changes in what we do on a daily basis make some of the old ones either unintelligible or irrelevant. I know the words and the general principles involved, but I can’t grasp a metaphor about plows or planting time. Metaphors require that you have a fundamental instinct about what the subject is being compared to. Otherwise, it’s like explaining how much a white flibbertygibbit resembles a watchmacallit in August.
Of course some of the later poems are unintelligible for other reasons, but that seems to be intentional on the part of the poet. I rediscovered some old favorites and found a couple of new poets whose works I enjoy.