The 7 Poems that Haunt Me the Most

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Hello Poetry Lovers! :) Just wanted to let you know that the Hardcore Literature Book Club is starting soon. After Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, we're reading Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, short stories by Chekhov and Turgenev, and many more. We'll also do a lot of poetry tutorials - Emily Dickinson, Robert Browning, Shelley, and Blake to start. If you sign up here, I'll notify you when it goes live this weekend: cutt.ly/nkTRPMY

[@davecostello3095]

I would like to join, but am I better off joining at the begging on next year?

[@davidcapel9598]

Please tell me what you think of The Hound of Heaven. I regard it as the greatest poem in the English language.

[@JulieMartin-r7x]

Avid reader,have covered many of what you are working together and don't have anyone to share thoughts about them with..Would appreciate chance to be part of something so magical.

[@maestra624]

I am an ardent fan of withering heights . At 74 I have read it countless times. My tech skills are low. How can I access your deep read withering heights?

[@creedysgirl]

And all I lov'd, I lov'd alone. Poe. That simple line describes the very essence of my own life and I love him for writing it.

[@stephenperera7382]

Let’s not forget the poets in music…..Bob Dylan wrote this and it resonates with me “Suddenly I turned around and she was standin' there With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns Come in, she said I'll give ya shelter from the storm”

[@barrymoore4470]

Dylan is one of the few popular songwriters who can legitimately be called a poet. Leonard Cohen and Bruce Springsteen are a couple of other examples, as can also be said of Maggie Roche.

[@norafrench8486]

Yes, this is romantic, but for me to meet Dylan at his deepest it is reading or hearing, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" without thinking of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and knowing '"Lord Randell."

[@sharon2764]

“The little waves with their soft white hands, efface the footprints in the sands, and the tide rises and the tide falls.” Longfellow. This poem of his haunts me and lulls me at the same time. I love your channel. Thank you.

[@titicoqui]

pure magic

[@annarmartin2713]

I wish to affirm the incident you described when reading an Emily Dickinson poem and it coinciding with Harold Bloom’s death. I also have heard this idea that sometimes when someone dies another is born to carry on. I believe you have great reason to believe this and you are definitely filling this niche. You are blessed!

[@priyalkhaniya5143]

way Emily's poems has the power to kill me softly yet soothes my wounds which haunts my life

[@fredsharp7419]

I totally agree. I must admit that I had never read anything by her until my first visit to the USA. So many of them rally do get under one's skin - and her wisdom and insights bowl me over.

[@thomasthompson6378]

Emily's poems lose some of that power once you realize that practically all of them can be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

[@fredsharp7419]

Wonderful stuff! Thank you! I have taught poetry to adolescents for over half a century, and understand well the seeming reluctance of 'modern' youth to learn and appreciate poetry. When I was ten or eleven years old my teacher asked the class who liked poetry. No student put up his or her hand. The elderly Miss Abbott (elderly to us! she might have been all of forty!) began to cry and hurried into the backroom of the classroom. After a few minutes she came back drying her eyes and one kid piped up with. 'I like poetry, Miss. Please teach us some.' Well, she started with 'The Lady of Shallot' and 'Hiawatha'. .. - We all loved it and I swear that to this day I can recite the whole of the Tennyson and many, many lines of Hiawatha. We loved it because Miss Abbott did. Over the years I have learned to adapt the poetry I cover to the students I have before me. Even the most scrofulous youths react to Browning's 'Summum Bonum'. The last line usually wins them over! As for Emily Dickinson, I often start with ''A great hope fell.....'. Ask any young person if he or she has ever had a big disappointment - they ALL have! Ask them to put it into words, then read the Dickinson poem. It is one of hr less cryptic works, but hits home - and hard, even to this day. For a Shakespeare sonnet I often opt for 'When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes.....' Every adolescent has feelings of alienation in one shape or another, so they 'get it'; and the sense of proportion provided by the final couplet. Finally, former students still contact me with their latest insights into Yeats's 'A Second Coming'. Poetry does indeed haunt - in the nicest possible way, hopefully.

[@dianebirmingham9831]

Wow, thank you.

[@traciebecker6669]

All great poems you chose, and thank you. I think The Lake Isle of Innisfree will always be a favorite. I just finished reading Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility where another favorite poem by Shakespeare was mentioned in Sense and Sensibility, which is his Sonnet 116. Better late than never at age 65 to read Jane Eyre, and I enjoyed both of the novels. Your videos are timeless and may for many years influence readers to read beloved Classic works.

[@sharon2764]

Emily Dickinson is my most loved poet. The first Poem that remained with me always is “I Heard a Fly Buzz when I Died”. In my life’s work I was in attendance for many deaths. It is said hearing is the last thing to go.

[@barrymoore4470]

Dickinson might be the most death-haunted of writers. She died, through her various personae, so many times in her now immortal verses.

[@marycurtin2746]

Always watch and listen to your programme on You Tube Ben and its always interesting. Just so you know, Yeats is pronounced YATES and Inishfree is pronounced as spelt. INIS is an Irish word meaning Island.

[@winstonmiller9649]

Thanks for your literature series. Literature can be a somewhat isolated pursuit, possibly because people not into literary ideas can be put of by such interests, when we start going on. However your enthusiasm is very motivating, such that i am uplifted by your vids. Much love and many thanks from Luton.

[@Dan-jd4os]

I can’t believe nobody has mentioned his ode on melancholy. My favourite poem at the moment, I have never read anything so beautiful and powerful. It’s perfect.

[@Blondie101010100]

My favourite poet, WB Yeats. "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" is sublime - humble, achingly longing, and melancholic. I can't believe I have typed the start of this as you are taking about sublime!

[@ocdtdc]

I also love Bloom. For what it's worth, I often find your videos the most enriching on various literary topics and definitely find them inspirational. Been studying literature and art for years but these videos make me feel like a Day One freshman. Great selections in this video btw.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you so much, my friend. That's really so kind of you :) You have completely made my day! I'm thrilled that you're a fan of the great Harold Bloom too ☺️

[@ocdtdc]

@@BenjaminMcEvoy That's so cool to hear! I have actually been watching videos of him most of today after this video inspired me

[@philipmcluskey6805]

Thank you so much for this. This affected me deeply- not just the choice of writings but your thoughts on them

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you so much! I really appreciate that :)

[@philipmcluskey6805]

@@BenjaminMcEvoy it seems there is no one like you here: a one-off Sir...and a good Celtic name to boot;0

[@js.3490]

I just read "Ode To A Nightingale" for the first time. WOW! I love this poem. The imagery, the language, the reflection on death, on time, on how all is temporary. I am moved. I will be checking out more Keats. I cannot get the poem out of my mind.

[@BUKCOLLECTOR]

Enjoyed your discussion about Keats. I’m a poet specializing in Japanese forms: haiku, tanka, haibun, kyoka, senryu. I hope you don’t mind me sharing my tanka and my haiku, a tribute poem to Bashō’s frog with commentary by the late AHA founder and poet Jane Reichhold who considered my Basho haiku among her top 10 haiku of all time. What an honor. Here’s the Bashō poem and commentary: Bashō’s frog four hundred years of ripples At first the idea of picking only 10 of my favorite haiku seemed a rather daunting task. How could I review all the haiku I have read in my life and decide that there were only 10 that were outstanding? Then realized I was already getting a steady stream of excellent haiku day by day through the AHA forum. The puns and write-offs based on Basho's most famous haiku are so numerous I would have said that nothing new could be said with this method, but here Al Fogel proved me wrong. Perhaps part of my delight in this haiku lies in the fact that I agree with him. Here he is saying one thing about realism-ripples are on a pond after a frog jumps in, but because it refers back to Basho and his famous haiku, he is also saying something about the haiku and authors who have followed him. We, and our work, are just ripples while Basho holds the honor of inventing the idea of the sound of a frog leaping is the sound of water As haiku spreads around the world, making ripples in more and larger ponds, its ripples are wider-including us all. But his last word reminds us all that we are only ripples and our lives are that ephemeral. It will be the frogs that will remain. ~~ And my tanka: returning home from a Jackson Pollock exhibition I smear my face with paint and turn into art ~~ -All love in isolation from Miami Beach, Florida. Al

[@kennethterrell7409]

I'm curious what you think of Pound's haiku.

[@BUKCOLLECTOR]

@@kennethterrell7409 Pound’s haiku was a great one. Loved it. Al

[@kennethterrell7409]

@@BUKCOLLECTOR Weldon Keyes wrote a parody. In the fields the agrarians Come and go Speaking of Michaelangelo.

[@randomdude8327]

I have never read any haiku. Do you have any good recommendations ?

[@barrymoore4470]

@@randomdude8327 I know this question was not addressed to me, but Basho (1644-1694), cited by the originator of this thread, is universally regarded as the greatest haiku master. Collections of his works can be easily found at good bookstores and libraries, and his haiku are frequently included in haiku anthologies. Other estimable names among haiku composers include Buson, Issa, and Shiki. Chiyo-ni (1703-1775) is generally held to be the greatest female composer of haiku.

[@issadad]

I enjoy memorizing poems out loud while walking, a sort of practice. After years of hearing poets read their work, I've noticed five distinct approaches, each with its own sonority -- call them ways of holding forth -- and developed the habit of running any poem I want to memorize all five ways. Helps open my ears. These are my five types, tags I made up, with some poets who embody them: 1. The Chanter Almost singing. Cantorial, strong on stress + drone, like Gregorian chant. Poets tied to their Anglo-Saxon roots, the sound world of Beowulf. Ezra Pound (Cantos), David Jones (Anathemata), Ginsberg (Howl), Yeats (that 1939 rec of "Innisfree"). 2. The Lush Singer As musical as chant but more tuneful, exuberant, clarion. Splitting the air w your verses. Dylan Thomas (Fern Hill). How I imagine Coleridge or Hopkins sounding. 3. The Dry Singer Just as lilting + artificial in its way but thinner, more ironic + self-conscious. TS Eliot reading "Prufrock," that sing-song joyless whine (weird coming from an American poet transitioning to British royalist). Bloodless but devastating. 4. The Reader for Meaning Deliberate, as if rewriting the poem as you recite it, thinking through each word + enjambment. Wallace Stevens (to my ears a great reader, not everybody agrees) will take 30 seconds to say one line: "She sang . . . beyond the genius . . . of the sea." The music of thought. 5. The Voice Next Door Plain speaking. Casual, conversational, everyday voice. The illusion of the first time. Sounds unaffected + unmusical but isn't either. Exemplar supreme? Robert Frost, who recites offhand, like an actor improvising or throwing the lines away -- all part of Frost's disguise. Just my five. I'd call them all assumed dictions, five varieties of music in poetry, suited to various occasions or particular ways of thinking + feeling. On any given poem, I try them all on for size. Helps me hear what I might be missing.

[@chdhelper8684]

In the last few days I've been thinking about what good the year brought, and remembered how thrilled I was to discover this channel and its community of book lovers and book wrestlers, and the enthusiasm and genuine love for literature you demonstrate. Harold Bloom would be honored that you are carrying on his tradition, in the underground university of free and inquiring minds. Your idea that he might have passed his blessing onto you through the Emily Dickenson poem at the time of his death seems perfectly reasonable. He was passing the torch. :-) There are so many synchronicities through literature, and I truly believe in a world of Cosmic Arrangers who nudge us to open a certain book, or lead us to certain place, or introduce us to an important, life-changing person. We share a love of the Lake Isle of Inisfree, even the same lines. I was shy of poetry for a long time, except for Yeats (Yeets! adorable!). I read the Lake Isle of Inisfree in college, and I couldn't stop thinking about the linnet's wings. When I had enough money to travel, I headed straight to Ireland in search of noon's purple glow and discovered my spiritual home. Heartbroken when I couldn't remain, I returned to Boston, where I'd moved after college. Making peace with the country of my birth, I discovered Henry Throeau, and in summers swam the perimeter of Walden Pond. In time I came to love New England, and felt very lucky to live a stone's throw from the trancendentalists. The heartbreak eventually mended. Imagine my surprise when, years later, I learned that Yeats was inspired to write The Lake Isle of Inisfree after learning about Thoreau and his cabin life at Walden Pond. ;-) Thanks for the introduction to Donne's St. Lucy's Day-- I made a note to myself to read it on 12/21-- and the recommendation for the sermon on Jesus wept. I want to know Donne better and will put that on my list. Happy New Year, Benjamin-- happy to share what I hope may be a new poem for you, The Encounter by Czeslaw Milosz We were riding through the frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness. And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand. That was long ago. Today, neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture. O my love, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles, I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

[@vickieprieto959]

I think the stone sculpture in Shelley's "Ozymandias" is a fabulous example of the sublime. Or is it, once it has eroded so much? One of my favorites. Thanks again, Ben. And for anyone who wants to know from a member, the Hardcore Literature Book Club Ben leads is absolutely amazing. IT is sublime, in fact.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Aw, thank you so much, Vickie! I really appreciate that so much 🙏❤️

[@Flowering_Glume]

Gasp! Benjamin, if you aren't just the most delightful little minx reciting these poems to poor, innocent, illprepared bleeding hearted like you do! I found myself grinning listening to the passion you bring, the inflections, etc like you were right there when they were written. I realize I started crying somewhere along the way and I can't even know why, but it felt grand. You are literally my sunshine this morning, which says much as I live in Phoenix, Arizona. Do you write poetry? I would absolutely love more than anything right now than to read your poetry. Please say you do! Well done, love your spirit, and you are sweet and brilliant, but not quite in equal parts. I can't decide which wins. Want my favorite poem as of late? Comcerning A Drowned Girl by Bertolt Brecht. Favorite ever? Anti Worlds by Andrei Voznesensky. I suppose I have a morbid or maybe Sci Fi bent. I try (too hard) to not be a middle aged woman who doesn't cry myself to sleep reading Sylvia Plath. I better shut it before I have feminists sending me death threats. xo

[@nunyabidness9895]

...and Browning's epic poem inspired the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I love literature's rabbit holes...

[@scullycasey]

My own poetic epiphany came, at age thirteen, upon reading the final lines of Dylan Thomas's "Fern Hill": "As I was young and easy in the mercy of his means/Time held me, green and dying/Though I sang in my chains like the sea." Now, some six decades on, I find the line still holds up well.

[@paladin7429]

Poe's The Raven is my favorite poem. I also like Noel Coward's Nothing is Lost.

[@TheMillwallbill]

I still find I am haunted by Keats` "When I have fears that I may cease to be" A poem that touches the inner most parts of the soul

[@davecostello3095]

To me, Sonnet 73 is the most impactful of all of his sonnets. It speaks to all of us, about our mortality, and how, what once was beautiful will fall into decay. He sees the fire that is turning all life to ashes, His love is sincere and strong because he loves that which will expire and die. All of this power and meaning in just 14 lines. Shakespeare has no equal. That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

[@LollygaggingRabbit]

Maud by Tennyson, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge, My November Guest by Frost, Ulalume by Poe, The Bear by Galway Kinnell, Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich, Some Other Woman I Loved by Curtis Bauer, and for Shakespeare I’m going to say Caliban’s “Be not afeard” speech from act 3, scene 2 of The Tempest.

[@trigger_9642]

I suppose it’s a more contemporary poem but “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop haunts me to this day. A beautiful exploration of the grief which comes with loss: “the art of losing’s not too hard to master/ though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster”

[@barrymoore4470]

Bishop is one of my favorite poets, one of the true American masters of the art in the twentieth century. Her style can read as deceptively simple, but she was always attentive to form, and, like Flaubert, worked on her texts painstakingly to find just the right word.

[@88Agatka]

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour." Blake

[@tarquinmidwinter2056]

I studied Wilfred Owen at school in the 1960s. Not all great poems, but a great collection; you don't have to plough through a dozen or more before you come across a good one. I think my favourite is Spring Offensive, one which seldom makes it into the anthologies.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Wilfred Owen is one of the few writers who consistently moves me to tears. I find some of his works to be almost unbearably tragic. 'Spring Offensive' is one of my favourites too!

[@theculturedbumpkin]

I love what you said about John Keats. His Ode to a Nightingale is my haunting favorite for many reasons . Love your channel!

[@blubeagle55]

It may not be as sophisticated as some, but Langston Hughes' "Dreams" is my favorite. It is a great poem.

[@Wisdom1944]

Yes!!!!!

[@terrysullins9218]

I hope you do more poetry videos. The poems that haunted me is "Bereft"m about being all alone in the world. The line,,,Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,struck blindly at my knee and missed...really gets me

[@eamonhannon1103]

Here are some of my favourite poems . The Wild Swans at Coole WB Yeats . It is an October poem …..The trees are in their autumn beauty , the woodland paths are dry and under the October twilight the water mirrors a clear sky ….etc 2 . In Memory of my Mother and The Ploughman by Patrick Kavanagh . Thomas Mc Donagh by Francis Ledwidge

[@basketballfan5763]

That Tennyson poem is a fancier version of the sentiment I like in Patrick Kavanagh ....

[@wolfgangschacht6353]

Just recently discovered your videos, Benjamin. You're taking me back four decades to my time as a Literature Major, and it's both refreshing and nostalgic. Many poems stick to me, but one stanza in particular has always stopped me short, from Yeats' Sailing to Byzantium: Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. That transformation from a "tattered coat on a stick" to the sublime....well, it gets me every time (as does the whole poem, frankly). In any case, Bemjamin, thanks for rekindling something that hadn't exactly died (I've always enjoyed challenging literature), but that had, shall we say, missed the company of like-minded admirers. Keep up the great work!

[@tonirose6776]

I'm a new subscriber and am loving all your content. For the life of me, I could not find an analysis of the Dickenson poem on line. I wish you had given us a little bit of how you interpreted its meaning. Regardless, Benjamin, your channel is brilliant. (Even though I've tried Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake, Middlemarch and Don Quixote, I got through about a quarter of Cervantes, a chapter of Middlemarch, and to page 38 of Ulysses! I've tried them all at least twice, but couldn't like or understand them. Even Anna Karenina I heard as audiobook, and simply was not captured or enraptured. I did love Moby Dick and In Search of Lost Time...). Thank you, Benjamin: you are doing all of us literature lovers an invaluable service!

[@CurtRowlett]

So happy to see that you started off with a poem by Emily Dickinson. She and Emily Bronte are the two poets who primarily drew me into a love for poetry. Well done.

[@sharon2764]

Emily Dickinson. “ I heard a fly buzz when I died……”. Also Poe. “And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain….”

[@brucewilson1958]

I am a 68 year old American man with BAcun Literature. I'm no Academic. Just love what I love. I often drift back to Pablo Neruda's TWENTY LOVE POEMS AND A SONG OF DESPAIR. Novel? LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA. And, Saul Bellow, HENDERSON THE RAIN KING.

[@davecostello3095]

Love me some Yeats as well. Easter, 1916 is my favorite, but, perhaps, his most haunting is An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

[@ryfree]

Synchronicity strikes again. Three nights ago I began watching Harold Bloom videos on KZbin in search of illuminating insights on the works of William Blake. I knew nothing of Bloom except that he loved Emerson (which for me is good enough to trust a man) and as I listened to his interviews I quickly forgot about my initial purpose and became enraptured by his noble battle against 'The School of Resentment' as well as his other ideas and overall personality. Such an interesting man! Last night I heard him introduce Shakespeare's sonnet 121 in a lecture and was so struck by its beauty and meaning that I hastily took down my complete works (for the first time in many years) and read it myself by candle light. This morning, in the sober light of dawn, I read it again and decided to see what others thought of it on KZbin. That's when I found this video and needless to say I was delighted to hear that you're carrying on Bloom's torch.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Oh wow. If you're interested in Blake specifically and love Bloom, he's got a book out called The Visionary Company that gives a really nuanced deep-dive into his works. I've always been fascinated by his illuminations... Ah - the School of Resentment! Hah! All of his predictions have come true on that one. We've lost the battle in the universities, but a secret underground of real scholars and lovers of literature is emerging. I'm so happy to hear you had such an enrapturing reading experience with sonnet 121 - perhaps my favourite sonnet and one that I recite to myself almost daily! Thank you for such a great comment, Ryan :)

[@ryfree]

@@BenjaminMcEvoy Thank you for sharing that, I don't have an insider's look into the current literary scene so hearing that does encourage me. I'll keep that book in mind, thank you sir.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

@@ryfree Amazing!!!

[@TruthSeeker-333]

The Dies Irae sequence in the Traditional Requiem Mass stands with these great poems as well

[@joneyjolfsson4263]

Just ran into you and you´re already my new hero. Thanks.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Aw, thank you, Jon :) I appreciate you being here!

[@peskylisa]

Sailing to Byzantium was my favorite by WB Yeats

[@barrymoore4470]

It's a truly great poem, from one of the supreme masters of the art.

[@norafrench8486]

@@barrymoore4470 YES!

[@creationspast.janebowell1903]

Just love the Yeats poem which is one of my all time favorites and sits on my bedside table.

[@basketballfan5763]

It's not Yeets as u pronounce Yeats....I'm Irish...it's pronounced Yayts....love your channel...just found u....I love that everyman series of books.....poems are music of words...meant to b read out loud....greatest thing I ever did was study 'elocution' where we called out poems learnt off with gusto and hand gestures....this is my 3rd video of yours today (found u this morning by typing 'something new' ino KZbin )

[@machanrahan9591]

Thank you, thank you, thank you !!! I'm not Irish but Willie B is my all time hero (as perhaps guessed at with "son of Hanrahan" for email address.) As much I'm enjoying Benjamin 's videos, the mispronunciation was really jingle-jangling my nerves (I know, I know-but I enoyed Borstal Boy so much, I couldn't resist 😊)

[@kevinrafter282]

Hmm...seems that Yeats and Keats don't rhyme!!

[@MrInterestingthings]

Thanks for highlighting Shelley .Hearing you read the lines from Ode To A Grecian Urn made my night glow for a moment . I felt a part of me come to life briefly .The idea of "sylvan historian" this silent object silent witness standing thru time. Unforgettable.I must go back to him immediately .Shelley never gets old .Thanks for reminding me of the gorgeous wailing heavy torrentsof rock like sound that is Tennyson . I am a musician and now decades after first being enthusiastic about Tennyson and others his work can live again in my ear -no matter many others say it is too old-fashioned and Victorian . It's alive in its heavy, ricocheting sound .Every word tied to the previous and next and all tied to image and idea .

[@brianfinnegan9700]

I love Bloom as well

[@MandyJMaddison]

I know that this went up many months ago, but I want to respond none the less. I was very happy to see Tennyson, Browning, Shelley and Keats, not to forget Shakespeare. "Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower Came" is also on my top seven . I was brought up on "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, when was first read to me by my Mother when I was five, and the imagery had stuck with me every since. I have two sonnets on my list- Wordsworth's Lines written on Westminster Bridge, and . Shelley's Ozymandias My favourite Tennyson is "Break, break, break" but instead I must include Kenneth Slessor's "Five Bells", an elegy to the journalist, Joe Lynch who drowned when he fell off a ferry crossing Sydney Harbour after a night spent out on the town. I cannot ignore Gray's "Elegy written in a country Churchyard"....... And my choice of Shakespeare is Titania's Monologue "These are the forgeries of jealousy". Shakespeare so vividly and prophetically describes the climate changes that we are witnessing and lays them t the feet of the speakers.

[@mikehutton9178]

One poem that I continually return to, and more so as I get older, is Spring and Fall by Hopkins. The last line always resonates. For me it’s a small perfect poem. And the Windhover always takes my breath away.

[@norafrench8486]

Yes, I wandered when G. M. Hopkins was going to be mentioned. His Golden Daffodils, Juice and Joy, and his Holy Ghost as a brooding hen ( female) with bright wings. to evoke the grandeur of God.

[@88Agatka]

"I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing" Mary Oliver

[@Hybridman7]

Thanks for sharing these beautiful works, my personal favourite has to be either 'Le cimetière marin' by Paul Valéry or 'Celle de toujours, toute' by Paul Éluard!

[@lenochka2221]

I listened to your revelation about Bloom passing you a torch several times. It is not spooky at all. In fact for me this mystical insight is what sublime poetry is all about.

[@jonrutherford6852]

As I remember, my first "Wow!" moment with poetry resulted from encountering Milton's: "...yet from those flames/ No light, but rather darkness visible/ Served only to discover sights of woe..." when we read selections from Paradise Lost in high school. The "darkness visible" simply opened up a new world of linguistic possibilties and soon I was purchasing books of poetry: Dickinson among them. I well understand your affinity with "Had this one day not been..." from a similar personal encounter with death of a loved one.

[@mrs.bonnieshockey6321]

I adore that you say: "If you don't love Keats, we will not get on." I teach my Honors 12 IB Lit students Keats and it stays with them through their adulthood. I have "Touch has a memory" tattooed on my heart because of the ways in which he has touched my life, and how the students I have taught have affected me. It is indeed difficult to choose what Keats will become the entry point. Thank you, Benjamin. Over the summer, I am going to be able to visit Keats House and stand quietly at Hamstead Heath. I do not know if my heart is ready for Keats at Hamstead and Byron at Interlaken, Geneva, and to trace the footsteps of my Masters across Europe this summer.

[@welkin7028]

Hopefully you won’t stop filming new video since I very like your accent and your voice, and your content is as good as always

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you very much :) If people keep watching, I'll keep filming!

[@ziahameed2065]

@@BenjaminMcEvoy Sir i wonder why u r so underrated .. i love ur videos. I see no one who loves literature as much as u do and u make such insightful videos ..no one can replace u. With love, from Pakistan.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

@@ziahameed2065 Thank you, Zia :) I truly appreciate that, my friend. Happy reading over in Pakistan - a beautiful country with a rich culture! I've always wanted to visit!

[@ziahameed2065]

@@BenjaminMcEvoy you are most welcome! anytime ❤️

[@alkaloitongbam6684]

Thanks for introducing me to some really great poems, really appreciate it❤

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

My absolutely pleasure! Thank you so much for watching 😊

[@SpudWil]

How great to see Tithonus there! Such a stunning poem. Sometimes bits of poems will hang around me, but not often: off the top off my head, Edinburgh Courtyard in July (Maccaig), the Harvest Bow (Heaney), the World (Vaughn), the Garden (Marvell), Four Quartets (Eliot). Reading lots of Zagajewski at the moment in Clare Cavanagh's translations. Good to see these robust discussions of literature here!

[@fredsharp7419]

I 'did' the Four Quartets at school, read them snd tech them regularly - and now I think I am beginning to understand them. More often than not, one needs to have 'lived' a bit before one truly understands these great works...

[@SpudWil]

@@fredsharp7419 Oh, absolutely right, Fred! I studied Waste land and Quartets when I was young, but they didn't really mean all that much to me; now, reading the latter is a regular thing, especially around Christmas for some reason, its vivid spiritual struggle set within beautiful, rigorous verse almost like reading someone's diary!

[@hamoudalnasser]

I love these. I have to admit I was expecting more surprises; I'm no poetry expert but I am familiar with most of the poems you mentioned/recited. They say so much, in so little space. The first poem I remember reading as a child was The Tyger by William Blake, so evocative. "When the stars threw down their spears and watered heaven with their tears Did he smile his work to see Did he who made the lamb make thee?" I did not fully get into poetry until adolescence, it was Robert Frost who was my entry point, Nothing Gold Can Stay, Walking by Woods on a Snowy Evening. From Frost I went through a lot of American poets: Hughes, Dickinson, Whitman." And then I rediscovered the Romantics. And then Tennyson, Browning and Arnold. Browning could be verbose, like many a Victorian. Have you read "The Ring and the Book"?

[@88Agatka]

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar" Lord Byron

[@basketballfan5763]

My favourite poets are John Donne, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson and Patrick Kavanagh and only the early Seamus Heaney

[@hgoodin1013]

Nick and the Candlestick by Sylvia Plath always leaves me just speechless.

[@eamonhannon1103]

Me too . I like Patrick Kavanagh as well !

[@jeanbryant4903]

One of my favorite college classes was a class I took one summer at Baylor University. The Robert Browning class was held in the Armstrong-Browning Library surrounded by beautiful stained glasses illustrating his poetry and Browning memorabilia, his desk, for example. The only other place with a comprehensive Browning collection comparable class is in England. When I went to talk to my advisor at the University of Michigan the next fall, he was not going to give me credit for my Baylor class. He said the only class we have that includes Browning is a survey of Victorian poets. I said I can understand your limited offering. You haven't the facilities to offer a comparable class, which is why I traveled to Baylor to study under superior teachers this one Victorian poet. Poor Grad Ass advisor. I metaphorically stood with him toe to toe and glared the Ann Arbor glare. I got to count my Baylor Browning class. "A man's reach should excede his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

[@robertchuter884]

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) - e. e. cummings

[@AnnieT369]

That Yeats poem haunted me all my teen years.

[@Wisdom1944]

Truly!! Reading Yeats always transports me out of the mundane world to places dream-worthy and mysterious. Song of wandering Angus! I never fail to feel suspended in time and place after reading Yeats.

[@Brianbrianbrian71]

Thanks for your very enjoyable content and hi from Dublin. We pronounce it Yeats as in dates; not Yeats as in Keats. Maybe you know something I don’t… fyi.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Hello over in Dublin, Brian. My family all come from Dublin :) Many of my mangled pronunciations were learnt from reading when I was little, long before I heard the pronunciation. They can be rather difficult to shake off!

[@fleabynight]

"Andy's Gone With Cattle" is one of my favorites by Henry Lawson. Also "Andy's Return" . Nice hearing you read those wonderful poems.

[@axlramirez14]

Wonderful video Benjamin! It’s good to know the poems that have haunted you in your life; I think we can know other people better through the poetry they love reading, because somehow these poems connect with us deeply and thoroughly and they can show an image of who we are. ☺️ By the way, I’d like to share with you my favorite poem so far, perhaps you have read it; if not, I highly recommend you to do it. This poem was written by Federico Garcia Lorca and it’s named “Romance Sonámbulo” (Sleepwalking Ballad), I hope you can read it and enjoy it. 😉

[@jonathangilmore3193]

My favorite critical “hero” is also departed: Colin Falck, who wrote a seminal book on the Western Canon, called Myth, Truth and Literature (1989, 1994). Falck’s book is a philosophical defense of the extra-linguistic value of ontological, revelatory or transcendant use of language to “body forth” meaning not quite captured by the existing concepts for which every day language stands in. He proposes the Romantics have something important to teach us: “All deities reside in the human breast!” (Blake)

[@floriandiazpesantes573]

Thank you for presenting to us your list of poems that most are haunting you in such an inspiring and enticing way. Now so you ask: I find it so difficult to choose and rank: also my favourites change all the time. I knew the majority of the poems you presented and do agree mostly: to add some you haven’t mentioned that really got to me: “Darkness” by Byron; from Yeats: “the Crazy Jane Series” and “The second Coming”; the “Ballad of Reading Gaol” by Oscar Wilde; John Clare, couldn’t choose one of his many I loved; from W. Blake “The Chimney Sweeper” and “The Schoolboy”; from Shelley “Ozymandias”; “A Summer Night 1933” by Auden; “Ozymandias” by Shelley; the “Song of Solomon” from the King James Bible; “Greater Love” by Wilfred Owen. I could go on and on but shall finish with my absolute favourites, written by a living English poet, Arthur L Wood, who happens to be my close friends: “Macavity the Cat II” and one he’d written and performed for me on KZbin (Poetry from the Shires) called “Yesterday” where he showed more knowledge and insight into myself than I had.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Wow! Phenomenal list, thank you so much. This right here is an anthology of some of the best poetry in all of human history! Nice one on Song of Solomon - a strong personal favourite of mine too.

[@floriandiazpesantes573]

@@BenjaminMcEvoy I feel honoured by your comment, Ben. I didn’t mention the poets of my country. Rilke, George, Goethe, from Spain Lorca, from France Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire. But I only recently discovered poetry for me, so I have an ocean of precious stanzas to discover. Words are music, I especially thank you for your advice to read loud, as this truly unlocks the power of good poetry. For some poems I feel their worth but don’t get it easily and right away.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

​@@floriandiazpesantes573 "an ocean of precious stanzas to discover" - I love that!! Also love that you mentioned Rimbaud and Rilke. Rimbaud was my gateway into poetry and world literature when I was a teenager. I learnt how wildly translations vary. And Rilke was somewhat of a life-saving angel to me a few years back. I found his Letters to a Young Poet in a bookstore in Vienna - it basically leapt out at me - and it was a real spiritual help during a trying time.

[@asmaqayum7835]

I love your content and ideas and stuff you talk about. Keep up the good work 😌

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you, Asma! I really appreciate that :)

[@geoffreynhill2833]

"Yeats" rhymes with "greats", Benjamin!

[@geoffreynhill2833]

PS: Have a gander at Wordsworth's "Immortality Ode" (if you haven't already). 😉

[@thomasthompson6378]

Hard to decide on a favorite poem, as there are so many. But I've always loved Wallace Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." "I do not know which to prefer / The beauty of inflection / Or the beauty of innuendo, / The blackbird whistling / Or just after." (I may not be quoting it entirely accurately, however.)

[@PRIZOOMY]

Robert Browning Love Among the Ruin. “With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!” “Love is best.” Dark tower came was another favorite of mine although it is very difficult

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Browning's a strong favourite of mine. You've just named two of my favourites of his. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came' is incredible. You're right - very difficult and demanding work!

[@julieduncan4075]

Many of my favorites! Thanks for sharing! ❤

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you, Julie! :)

[@kimesch9698]

I ❤️❤️❤️💕💕 my Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets books.

[@natashastanarevic7381]

'Krvava Bajka' ( ' Bloody Fairy Tale' ) by Desanka Maksimović, thank you for your videos, a lot.

[@marietheron7579]

Oh, and the lovely Eve of St Agnes, and some Roy Campbell! Thank you, your enthusiasm is addictive! And high school staple Ozymandias of Egypt should haunt all leaders as a warning.

[@norafrench8486]

Yes, Eve of St Agnes has always been one of my favorites, along with La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad.

[@eddiec2711]

My Favorite is Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, "Curfew" (1850).

[@cynthiatodd]

What haunts me … WB Yeats … ‘oh she had not theses way, when all the wild summer was in her gaze’… struck me when I first read his works.

[@moniqueheubel8970]

What a great poetic title for your podcast!

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you, Monique :)

[@manuelcantu8572]

Way Cool. Thanks for the recommendations. Great stuff. Cheers!!!

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you so much for watching! :)

[@briancoveney3080]

'"I felt a funeral in my brain..." Oh MY GOD! Peace, Bra'

[@johnturmelle94]

1) Jane Eyre 2) Madame Bovary 3) the Handmaid’s Tale 4) All the Pretty Horses 5) Pride and Prejudice

[@basketballfan5763]

I love plays. Chekhov's 'The Three Sisters' and Brian Friel's 'Philadelphia here I come' are favs of mine

[@adolphsanchez1429]

I've never been "haunted" by a poem, but there are those that stick with me. One is by Tennyson that he wrote after heard about the sacrifice of the "Fighting 54" (the black regiment led by young Bostonian Robert Gould Shaw). I think it goes, "So nigh is grandeur to our dusk, so near is God to man, when duty whispered low "Thou must," the youth replied, "I can." I also remember most of a Dickenson poem I learned in high school for class, "I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea, but I know how the heather looks, and what a billow be, I never something-something, nor visited in Heaven, but sure I am of the spot, as if the checks were given."

[@Wisdom1944]

GREAT poetry discussion! Thank you for reading a bit of Yeats💙! I love John Donne, too, but havent read his sermon, Jesus wept. Will look for it now. Thank you Benjamin!!

[@Calcprof]

The Second Coming by Yeats, Parts of the Pisan Cantos (The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world.. ), Blue Guitar and The Emperor of Ice Cream by Wallace Stevens. Lots of Walt Whitman. Much of the longer Blake, like Milton and Jerusalem. Howl. Some of Ferlinghetti. The Red Wheelbarrow by WCW.. John Barryman. Parts of Spencer. I absolutely dove Donne's punning on his own name. My poetic guilty pleasure is Vachel Lindsay.

[@basketballfan5763]

Good to hear u read them out....it will b 4years this Sept 30 that I got a sudden double occlusion down the middle section in both artery and vein from suspected vasculitis in my left eye...ie I am almost blind in that eye....it's a huge pale grey blur down the centre....but that 'bad eye' blinds my good right eye..... now I have a blocking lens I spent €150 on that I NEVER use....I want to b as I was and I wanted to get used2 the way things are....it's only the past year I've gotten back to reading at all.... I was never an a avid daily reader the way my brother is...and he's a computer programmer...who reads more than me! I had selected special poems and books I would often re read.....I now VALUE all the books I EVER read....esp Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan

[@PASeay]

One of the first poems that had a profound impact on me was “February 2, 1968” by Wendell Berry. Written during the Vietnam War, it is another haunting piece. Though it is a very short poem, every word was deftly chosen and placed exactly where it belonged. "In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover." - Wendell Berry

[@stephenpennell]

Really enjoy your list videos any chance doing pne on war poetry for and against . Cheers

[@tyronebiggums8660]

Some of Shakespeare’s sonnets are very dark: some of my favorites are 87 and 129. Also The Raven is an incredibly haunting poem.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Great choices. You've named two of my personal favourites - masterpieces!

[@feanorian21maglor38]

Great selection, the Shelley and the Yeats are among my favourite poems. Yeats himself is probably my favourite all-round poet. My daughter's boyfriend is from Sligo, his family grew up and still live a stone's throw from Innisfree, beautiful country. I love WH Auden's haunting poem 'In Memory of WB Yeats" is, with its presage of war. You've probably been told that the correct pronunciation is "Yates", btw.

[@fredsharp7419]

Chapeau! I was about to include the correct pronunciation of Yeats, but felt it would be a little presumptuous. Can't think why. I am actually the type who calls a spade a bloody shovel!

[@eamonhannon1103]

The Wild Swans at Coole is a beautiful reflective October poem by WB Yeats .

[@thomasthompson6378]

About Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came is difficult, but it's so magical it can be appreciated without much in the way of exegesis. Thanks for reading some of this aloud -- I'd love to hear you read Andrea del Sarto, too.

[@johnford6967]

So far, thanks to watching your podcast l have aquired 8 volumes of the Everyman's library of pocket poets.They are little gems

[@thomasthompson6378]

I suppose you'd never do it, but . . . you have such a great speaking voice you'd do us all a great favor if you devoted all of one or more of your podcasts just to you reading some of the great poets to us. I hope others will join me in this suggestion.

[@GarryBurgess]

That coincidence you mention is called "synchronicity" by Carl Jung. Read Jung to understand synchronicity.

[@briancoveney3080]

Emily might be the most enigmatic poet, I think. One reads a Dickinson poem and you just go "what the F.!?" But always, no doubt, it's beautiful. And so timeless...

[@johnrodonis4186]

I'm a big Jack Gilbert fan. And "Duende" tops 'em all! Btw, love your content!!

[@barbarapenfold2097]

I’m ‘Sussex’ and I love Kipling’s. ‘The Land’ a potted history of Sussex