We had some votes for “ Annabel Lee,” on account of its earworminess, but among the many appearances and references of Poe in pop culture, “The Raven” is certainly the most common. Or Citizen Kane? (See also: “ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”) I mean, have you seen Interstellar? (Or Dangerous Minds or Independence Day?) ”ĭylan Thomas, “ Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” Even the least literate of your friends would probably recognize the line “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. With On the Road, the most enduring piece of literature from the mythologized Beat Generation, and of the two, the better one. But please see also: “ The Emperor of Ice-Cream.” This one takes the cake for the sheer number of “thirteen ways of looking at x” knockoffs that I’ve seen. Wallace Stevens, “ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” The most anthologized poem of the last 25 years for a reason. See also: “ This is Just to Say,” which, among other things, has spawned a host of memes and parodies. William Carlos Williams, “ The Red Wheelbarrow” But for now, happy reading (and re-reading):
List maya angelou poems free#
Finally, despite the headline, I’m sure there are many, many iconic poems out there that I’ve missed-so feel free to extend this list in the comments. I also excluded book-length poems, because they’re really a different form. NB that I limited myself to one poem per poet-which means that the impetus for this list actually gets bumped for the widely quoted (and misunderstood) “The Road Not Taken,” but so it goes. (What makes a poem iconic? For our purposes here, it’s primarily a matter of cultural ubiquity, though unimpeachable excellence helps any case.) So for those of you who were not present for our epic office argument, I have listed some of them here. Turns out, despite frequent (false) claims that poetry is dead and/or irrelevant and/or boring, there are plenty of poems that have sunk deep into our collective consciousness as cultural icons. Today is the anniversary of the publication of Robert Frost’s iconic poem “ Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” a fact that spurred the Literary Hub office into a long conversation about their favorite poems, the most iconic poems written in English, and which poems we should all have already read (or at least be reading next).
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