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Best Poetry Books
Poetry is the art of the concentrated word — language shaped with maximum precision and minimum waste into forms that carry more meaning than prose can. The tradition is the oldest in literature: the Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer, the Psalms, the Tang poets, Dante, Shakespeare's sonnets, Keats, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, Eliot, Neruda, Bishop. Poetry reads differently from prose: more slowly, with more attention to sound and rhythm and line, more tolerance for ambiguity and implication. The rewards are proportionate: a great poem can do in twenty lines what a novel does in four hundred pages, and it stays in the memory in a way that prose rarely can.
50 titles ranked · Scored across 40+ editorial sources
#1
poetry
Omeros
Derek Walcott· 1990
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score66/100
#2
poetry
Gitanjali
Rabindranath Tagore· 1910
★Nobel Prize in Literature
Editorial Score60/100
#3
poetry
Poems
William Wordsworth· 1807
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#4
poetry
Poems
Alfred Lord Tennyson· 1827
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#5
poetry
The Georgics of Virgil translated by Thomas Neville, ..
Publius Vergilius Maro· 1523
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#6
poetry
The seasons
James Thomson· 1726
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#7
poetry
Vita nuova
Dante Alighieri· 1829
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#8
poetry
Virgils Eclogues translated into English: by W.L. Gent
Publius Vergilius Maro· 1556
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#9
poetry
The Song of Hiawatha and Other Poems
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow· 1800
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#10
poetry
Opera
Publius Vergilius Maro· 1502
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#11
poetry
Moments of vision
Thomas Hardy· 1889
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#12
poetry
Epigrammata
Marcus Valerius Martialis· 1501
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#13
poetry
Elegiae
Sextus Propertius· 1780
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#14
poetry
Phantasmagoria and Other Poems
Lewis Carroll· 1869
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#15
poetry
Poems
William Blake· 1783
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#16
poetry
Faerie queene
Edmund Spenser· 1590
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#17
poetry
Gedichte
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe· 1700
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#18
poetry
Poems
William Butler Yeats· 1895
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#19
poetry
Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada
Pablo Neruda· 1924
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#20
poetry
The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott· 1800
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#21
poetry
Aminta, favola boschereccia
Torquato Tasso· 1590
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#22
poetry
The Barrack-Room Ballads of Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling· 1892
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#23
poetry
Odes
Horace· 1635
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#24
poetry
The Rape of the Lock
Alexander Pope· 1714
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#25
poetry
Fasti
Ovid· 1482
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#26
poetry
A Child's Garden of Verses
Robert Louis Stevenson· 1885
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#27
poetry
Poems
William Cowper· 1782
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#28
poetry
Martín Fierro
José Hernández· 1894
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#29
poetry
P. Vergilii Maronis opera
Publius Vergilius Maro· 1532
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#30
poetry
Lucile
Robert Bulwer Lytton· 1800
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#31
poetry
Libro de buen amor
Juan Ruiz· 1900
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#32
poetry
'Twas the Night before Christmas
Clement Clarke Moore· 1912
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#33
poetry
Apollonius Rhodius
Apollonius Rhodius· 1550
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#34
poetry
Poems
Elizabeth Barrett Browning· 1844
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#35
poetry
Meditations and contemplations
James Hervey· 1748
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#36
poetry
The True-Born Englishman
Daniel Defoe· 1700
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#37
poetry
The Life and Death of Jason
William Morris· 1867
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#38
poetry
Essays
Matthew Arnold· 1865
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#39
poetry
Poems
Geoffrey Chaucer· 1800
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#40
poetry
Dunciad
Alexander Pope· 1727
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#41
poetry
Essay on criticism
Alexander Pope· 1711
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#42
poetry
Vepʻxistqaosani
Shota Rustaveli· 1888
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#43
poetry
The earthly paradise
William Morris· 1868
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#44
poetry
A Shropshire lad
A. E. Housman· 1896
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#45
poetry
The five nations
Rudyard Kipling· 1903
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#46
poetry
Poems
John Greenleaf Whittier· 1800
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#47
poetry
Night thoughts
Edward Young· 1742
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#48
poetry
Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads
John Avery Lomax· 1910
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#49
poetry
The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog
Sarah Catherine Martin· 1790
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
#50
poetry
Poems
Federico García Lorca· 1900
Notable Work
Editorial Score46/100
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