The Top 6 Greatest English Poets | The Cornerstone Canon

[@RBDawg]

You had me at, "Shakespeare is the greatest poet of the English canon."

[@DanLyndon]

He objectively isn't, unless you conflate greatness with influence. Many poets who came after advanced on what he did, and innovated far more than he did.

[@RBDawg]

@@DanLyndon I don't conflate, I equate.

[@nezahuatez]

Yes, such a stunningly unpopular and unique position lol.

[@sleeba1]

I love your ability to quote spontaneously.

[@poohoff]

Read more and you'll get there too

[@HauntedPete]

What really sets your videos apart, Adam, is how convincingly you demonstrate that literature, in particular poetry, is an encounter. You center the text and dialog with it, instead of just flashing a cover and giving commentary. Lovely stuff. Also, when will you make a video to help the helpless like myself to memorize passages? You’ve got to have some tricks or tips.

[@closereadingpoetry]

Ah, thank you, my friend! poetry as "an encounter" - exactly!

[@laughinjax]

Adam, You should publish an audiobook of Chaucer read in Middle English! Lovely

[@solaceandshine]

I’ll second that request.

[@ryansmallwood1178]

Anyone who wants an audiobook now of most of Chaucer’s works can get them from Chaucer Studios (along with other medieval language audiobooks). Though of course always nice to have more readings if Adam wants to commit to it.

[@azureNotsure]

18:36 was so sweet. So very sweet 🥹🥹

[@MT-hy6pr]

Of course we all disagree with at least two of the six, but this guy's love of poetry is infectious and inspiring, it's hard not to go straight to your bookshelf after watching.

[@NTNG13]

I'd agree that Wordsworth has a sort of mystical aspect to some of his poems and also a very psychological perspective on things speaking frecuently of emotions and memories. I was surprised by these themes in Tintern Abbey and I think he takes them up again in Ode: Intimations of Immortality...

[@brutusalwaysminded]

Before I even watch I wanna list my idea of the six greatest and compare: W. Shakespeare, W. H. Auden, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Derek Walcott. Thanks for the post!

[@etymonlegomenon931]

Lol, lmao, are those just the six you've read? Auden? Are you kidding me?

[@brutusalwaysminded]

@@etymonlegomenon931 No. And no.

[@etymonlegomenon931]

@@brutusalwaysminded Lol!! Laughing stock.

[@brutusalwaysminded]

@@etymonlegomenon931 Glad you’re amused. 🙂

[@nathanhassallpoetry]

Lovely idea and really looking forward to your cannon videos. A previous video you had inspired me to buy a separate notebook to only write my favourite poems in. So far got poems by W.B Yeats, Rilke, Louise Glück, D.H. Lawrence, and Kathleen Raine poems written in there. Much more to come. Looking forward to more videos.

[@RJRobertson-fd8xy]

First-time listener. What a fresh approach from the typical literature channels. I am currently working my way through St. Johns College classical education syllabus, a self guided approach, so this is a good intro into poetry, which I hope to be delving into soon.

[@martincabrera5466]

Me sorprendió no ver a William Blake en esa lista.

[@jasonwest9425]

Love your videos. This is an interesting exercise. Wonderful insights on Milton, e.g. no library is complete without him. I'd quibble with Woodsworth and want to put Keats here. But 3 cheers for Alexander Pope.

[@robkeeleycomposer]

Definitely Pope - he seems to get better all the time Keats too,I can’t live without most Wordsworth, but Tennyson is magnificent.

[@lukehardin9]

Great video, you’ve gained a subscriber. I would place Whitman above Eliot, but American literature is my speciality, so I admit a bias. Love the inclusion of Spenser, he is indeed the fountain of romantic poetry.

[@joannamellon6779]

I really enjoyed the Canterbury Tales, I liked how Chaucer introduced us to so many varied characters and represented the social classes. Nice video, I look forward to watching more!

[@jonathanmarcelthome]

Thank you for introducing me to Eliot Mr Walker.

[@Zuddama]

I like that you put a fullstop everywhere.

[@christophercurdo4384]

Informative, inspired and inspiring site.

[@robertgainer2783]

Hi Adam, I generally reject the idea of superlatives such as ‘best’ or ‘greatest’ (or even worse, the ‘GOAT’ or ‘greatest of all time’). However, I find myself agreeing with your selection as justified by the sensible criteria. Indeed, I was guessing them before you revealed them and there were no surprises. I think honorable mentions need to go to two non-English poets though, being Walt Whitman and Charles Baudelaire, without whom the ground would not have been paved for Eliot and modernism.

[@postmodernrecycler]

As a recovered Eng Lit major, I was always reading on the side Baudelaire and the other French Symbolists and felt the instinctive root of Modernism (Wallace Stevens, for me).

[@eskybakzu712]

Baudelaire is an early modernist

[@sebsy6429]

I think Adam's list is correct. (Mostly because I've read little and know little.) But I am curious where Walt Whitman sits among the greatest poets. And to be honest, I was sort of expecting him over T.S. Eliot! . . . In the way the Romantics looked to Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare for inspiration and wisdom, I see a lot of American writers turning to Whitman, Dickinson, and Frost for the same things. I am specifically thinking of Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, and other poets from their generation / flavor.

[@williamfahey6066]

Another great video, indepth and enjoyable. Thank you, Jeff

[@vanessazz]

i'm so happy i found your channel! thank you for sharing your knowledge :)

[@Islandlifefornow]

Thank you for what you do Adam. I was never a literature person but I look forward to exploring this subject. Yeap, I'm a noob in this area. 👏🙏

[@jamesduggan7200]

My degree isn't English tho I have read most of those six (not much Wordsworth or Spenser) and agree with you they are very good. You know I frequently mis-remember the Chaucer story, the Miller's Tale, confusing it with the one about the two Oxford students who take their grain to the miller, who tries and fails to cheat them. Tremendously raunchy, and funny too.

[@asemicwriter]

Thanks for giving a basic starting point to English poetry. I write poetry but still need to read more poetic works from the past. Blake is also one of my favorites who I consider one of the greats, especially since he blended the verbal with the visual. Who are some of your favorites writing English poetry in the 21st Century? SJ Fowler is my favorite UK poet who is writing today. Jim Leftwich is currently my favorite US poet writing in the English language. Greetings from a Minneapoet.

[@thethikboy]

The Prospero quote moved me to tears. But I knew you would say Wordsworth who's written some of the worst poetry in the English language. The best feature of "I wandered lonely as a cloud" is that I didn't write it. I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze

[@shrelpshrelp]

Have you ever read Melville's or Emerson's poetry? Library of america published two volumes separately of their complete poems. I feel they're as good a poet as prose writers.

[@closereadingpoetry]

I have complex feelings about Emerson's poetry. I'll address that this fall in my Transcendentalism course. But yes, he has a skill in his own way. But I think they both made important contributions. Emerson was more innovative; Melville was more "correct" by traditional standards.

[@ColinSandberg]

I love Bloom’s classification of Moby Dick as a “Shakespearean prose poem”. That first chapter thrilled me to the core last fall when I first read the words “Call me Ishmael”. The prose soars into poetic heights with such flair, so good

[@DanLyndon]

@@ColinSandberg Ah Bloom. That guy will make you more clueless about literature after reading his work than when you started. He was one of the worst critics of all time, yet one of the most celebrated.

[@eskybakzu712]

@@DanLyndonBloom has a few good insights and many, many bad ones. But I don't think you can deny that his energy regarding literature is something the world needs.

[@ronmills5234]

Wow. Eliot's stock has soared in the four decades since I escaped graduate school. Yeats was more widely considered the top Modernist. Stevens was a far stronger influence on contemporary poets. Eliot was taught as a dangerous model and, with Pound, a political blip and future minor figure (Bloom). We all loved him to death, of course, and I really can't argue with your well-supported assessment. But imho the whole Movement grew in the fundament of Whitman.

[@closereadingpoetry]

It's true that Whitman made straight the way for Eliot and many others, but Eliot's debt to Whitman isn't all that grand, in my opinion. I wouldn't say my opinions are representative of graduate school, since most of my colleagues would, and do, disagree with me!

[@nezahuatez]

Stevens was in no way a bigger influence than Eliot haha. Also when when you born? Eliot was one of the biggest figures in the 20th century. He single handed tarnished Miltons reputation and encouraged a whole generation to do so, until people like Ricks course corrected. All great nonetheless.

[@ronmills5234]

@@nezahuatez I was born in 1960 and trained in the last bastion of the New Criticism. We could get in a fistfight about Stevens, but I would lose, as he did, by TKO, to Hemingway, that time in Key West :-)

[@etymonlegomenon931]

There's less of him to read and it's not as hard as Yeats or Stevens.

[@AvaIor]

21:07 What do you mean Harold Bloom talks too hyperbolically about Shakespeare? Shakespeare literally invented himself, and then other humans, so he could have an audience. Only then did he invent his characters. Genius move.

[@closereadingpoetry]

That Shakespeare invented the modern human is, in my view, hyperbolic. But it makes for an interesting thesis.

[@geoffreycanie4609]

Enjoyed the video. I think you made a solid case for including Wordsworth among the six.

[@closereadingpoetry]

Thanks, Geoffrey!

[@Of_infinite_Faith]

Can you make videos about writing a book review for a work of literature?

[@wildsonnets]

While I love it that Wordsworth essentially taught his readers how to approach his poems, to the idea that poetry should mirror common speech I say: If you are just going to sound like everyone else, what's the point of being a poet? I'll side with Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Dylan Thomas in that poems (and poets) should make a music all their own. Sincerely appreciate that you included Spenser in your Cornerstone Canon - he's so exceedingly skillful it's a shame the archaism of his subjects and spelling exclude him from modern reading. His Amoretti LXXV is one the finest poems I know. Thanks again for this channel, Adam.

[@closereadingpoetry]

Thanks, Andrew. Yes, Spenser's star has sadly fallen in recent years. Regarding Wordsworth: his idea of poetic diction is not that it should sound like everyone else but that it should reflect natural, that is *human,* feeling through genuine language, not artificial diction. His Preface to the Lyrical Ballads sought to legitimize a poetic diction that looked to native idiom and deep feeling as its source rather than the neoclassical diction and Latinate syntax of the Augustan and eighteenth-century poetry. In that respect he's in good company with the excellent poets you mentioned above.

[@wildsonnets]

@@closereadingpoetry Thank you, Adam for your reply to my comment above and the additional insights to Wordsworth's preface and its intent. But the way, my name is Nicholas (Korn) - and I am the Poet of The Wild Sonnets. And I am grateful for these discussions on the history of English Poetry, and the amazing work great minds have left behind.

[@closereadingpoetry]

@@wildsonnets Ah, hello, Nicholas! And my name is Adam. I thought you signed off your last comments with "Andrew," but I see that was to me😁

[@PatricioLima-pw5qn]

Wow, what a treat! And very moving in places: your reciting of a passage from Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’ struck the heart and gave rise to a spontaneous burst of tears, short but strong. I’m eager now to read some of Shakespeare’s poetry and delve deeper into Elliot. Also appreciate your pointing out a source for Chaucer’s work with the modernized text directly under the original - saves glancing from the right hand page to the left. My (75 year old ) eyes are tired of reading from screens and I plan to search out 2nd hand books - possibly ‘the complete works - of all of your top six poets. Having divested of all of my books recently (before selling the house we’d lived in for 50 years), I now have a completely empty bookcase ready new old volumes. I also want to say how refreshing it is to hear a young person speak so eloquently, so knowledgeably and with such obvious passion about the great poetry of the past - talk about having stood the test of time - without the need to ‘deconstruct’ it, or ‘view it through the lens of’…fill in the blank from a list of the usual suspects (and suspect they are): race, gender, colonial sensibilities. Way too easy, and a fine way to miss the deeper truths and rob the work of essential meaning. New subscriber and I’ll check out the ‘study group’ (is it?) now. I have to say I hung on your every word and look forward to the rest of the series. Thanks

[@wildsonnets]

@@closereadingpoetry The fault is admittedly mine, and I have corrected my comments. My sincere apologies. You are doing great work here, and I want to acknowledge it. I am deep in finishing my next book, but that is a poor excuse for my mistakes on this feed. I appreciate your kindness and understanding.

[@christophercurdo4384]

Thanks!

[@closereadingpoetry]

@christophercurdo4384 Thank you so much! Get in touch if you'd ever like to chat. Would love to thank you personally.

[@mahirsantal2867]

Could you make a video on how to recite poems? I love your every lecture. I'm a literature student(in India🇮🇳)

[@js.3490]

Adam, I picture you sipping a beer or a Tom Collins, but not hard spirits neat. BTW, I love the video.

[@ben2949]

Hey, Adam, do you have any advice on learning how to pronounce and recite Chaucer,s poetry? I loved hearing you speak a short passage.

[@closereadingpoetry]

@ben2949 Yes! I cover pronunciation in my lecture on Middle English Poetry and provide some resources in the description.

[@ben2949]

@@closereadingpoetry Thanks a lot, I’ll definitely check that out. Up until now I have neglected Chaucer as a poet, however hearing the rhythm and music of the passage you shared has inspired in me a great interest in reading his work.

[@WhoOneIs]

Where’s John Donne? George Herbert? Thomas Traherne?

[@willmwinters]

I love this so much

[@ExxylcrothEagle]

Shakespeare, Shelley, Milton, Swinburne, Hughes to name a few

[@user-gs4ui4zq7n]

Eliot over Keats is crazy.

[@etymonlegomenon931]

I far prefer Keats but Eliot (insofar as he's a stand-in for The Modernists™, several of whom I acknowledge didn't really care about him) had more influence and that's one of this guy's criteria.

[@EyeLean5280]

Thanks so much!

[@jahi5]

So cool!

[@jeffreymeyer1191]

Rymeyed is such a better sounding word than rhymed. Bring back Middle English! Though it doesn’t rhyme with much now except “provided.”

[@Tolstoy111]

The Germans brought Shakespeare back to prominence. Lessing, Goethe etc.

[@closereadingpoetry]

Yes, well, to some extent that is true. At the same time (late eighteenth century) in England, Shakespeare was making a comeback among his native readers. You had David Garrick's performances on the stage leading the resurgence in performance, and Samuel Johnson's Preface (1765) enriching the academic discussion and enjoyment of Shakespeare among a private readership. But yes, Schiller, the Schlegel brothers, Novalis, along with the Germans you mentioned made him popular in Germany to the point where August Wilhelm Schlegel called him "ganz unser" (totally ours).

[@Tolstoy111]

@@closereadingpoetry Indeed. But Tolstoy "blamed" the Germans hehe. He said they did not have a dramatic culture of their own and adopted Shakespeare's model to act as a bulwark against the French neoClassicism that dominated German language theater.

[@closereadingpoetry]

@@Tolstoy111 true!

[@nostraa6125]

Adam, considering your video on the influence of "elegy" on American country music, have you ever noticed the influence of T.S. Eliot on Paul Simon's early song, "The Dangling Conversation?" It always seemed a little "Prufrockian" to me. (I'd love to hear your thoughts on Paul Simon as a poet.)

[@searchmeinyoutube]

Samuelson was a good writer too.

[@eskybakzu712]

Seems right, but I think it can be said for a lot of modern art. Prufrock is one of the essential meditations on alienation and fragmentation, two key aspects of the modern experience

[@flame85246]

No Walt Whitman? Why?

[@flame85246]

@@kmjkmjkmj lol, you totally got me, my b. I associated “English” poet with “poet who spoke English”. My fault for not recognizing that English referred to the country

[@SerWhiskeyfeet]

@@kmjkmjkmjTS Elliot is American though. I would’ve picked Whitman over Elliot because while modernist poets and beyond can’t escape Elliot, Elliot couldn’t escape Whitman. Based off the criteria outlined in the introduction, Elliot makes a lot of sense. However, Whitman’s use of free verse is just as innovative as Elliot’s fragmentation. A case can be made for Whitman, Dickinson, Blake, Pope, and many others, but as far as cornerstones go, it’s difficult to argue against any of the six that were listed. Surely all of them are canonical and will be included in the canon as a whole even if they are not cornerstones.

[@closereadingpoetry]

@flame85246 @SerWhiskeyfeet Whitman would have made the top 7 for the reasons you mention above. I decided to prefer Eliot over Whitman because, although Whitman is a titan of poetry, Whitman's influence was more local than Eliot's and affected the tradition of American poetry more heavily than anywhere else. Whitman doesn't have as great an influence outside of the American tradition (there are some exceptions). Eliot's work demanded global attention and confrontation in a way that Whitman's did not. Some poets may choose to ignore Whitman and do alright (some do), but no poet today may choose to ignore Eliot.

[@SiddharthaCC]

​​​​​​​​​@@closereadingpoetry I'll have to disagree on Whitman's lack of influence outside the American tradition, unless by "American" you mean to say "confined to the United States". Whitman had an enormous influence on Latin American poets (and also on great poets from the Iberian peninsula, such as León Felipe and Fernando Pessoa!). Whitman's influence was decisive on many towering figures such as Rubén Darío, José Martí, Jorge Luis Borges (who translated Song of Myself into Spanish), Pablo Neruda, Pablo de Rokha, Vicente Huidobro, and Octavio Paz, among others, and his influence can be seen either in the formal aspects of their poetry or in the ideas behind it. One can hardly understand the developments of 20th-century Latin American poetry without taking into account Whitman's influence. I very much agree that Eliot's influence worldwide is unavoidable and all-encompassing, but one could say the same about Whitman, even if his influence might be more indirect than Eliot's: one often ends up reading Whitman not in his own poems, but in the work of the poets that were influenced by him. Of course, if we refer only to the Anglophone canon, then it could be argued that Eliot's influence is greater than Whitman's, but since you also mentioned "local influence" and "global attention", it must be said that Whitman's was by no means a poet of "predominantly local" influence.

[@13tuyuti]

​@@closereadingpoetryI'm not sure if what I am about to say fits into your criteria and I absolutely agree with choosing Eliot over Whitman but Whitman was very influential on Pablo Neruda, and through Neruda, on a lot of Latin American poetry.

[@jasonwest9425]

Is the assessment of Shakespeare based on his strictly poetical work, the sonnets and other miscellaneous poems, or on the basis of his work as a playwright as well?

[@closereadingpoetry]

As a playwright as well!

[@jasonwest9425]

@@closereadingpoetry thanks, that makes sense.

[@Arjmm]

Byron is better than any english poets bar Shakespeare imo.

[@RBDawg]

I would have had Tennyson

[@valentinekizito661]

Pope Milton Shakespeare Keats Tennyson Byron

[@danila__fi]

Hell yeah!!!

[@user-dj7lx9ec8j]

Pound was the true craftman of The Waste Land.

[@etymonlegomenon931]

Meaningless conspiracy + what we know of Pound's influence seems like disassembly and muddling.

[@AuburnAfterglow]

Personally I prefer Coleridge over Wordsworth so I always feel like he's snubbed 🥲

[@closereadingpoetry]

"Poor C!" Yeah. As someone who loves Coleridge's work, I get that. I think in terms of poetic theory and criticism, Coleridge is superior, but even he knew Wordsworth was the poet of the age and of ages to come. And I think Wordsworth-the-poet owes a huge debt to Coleridge's support and encouragement.

[@wanderingpoet9999]

I'm sure Tolkien respected Spencer but he did not really like him. Too ornate. The gritty Sagas were much more his thing... C S Lewis of course loved Spencer and was something of an expert on him..

[@henrylecoanet2160]

Thank you for the video ! As much as I love all the poets you have mentioned, I still have a question I would like to ask. I was wondering if you considered variety and diversity to be assets to a given literary canon. If so, I’m curious to know whether these poets’ sharing many characteristics might not be considered problematic somehow. Not only do most of them rely on the same literary sources, composition style and techniques and tropes, but they also share a common vision of what poetry is and what the poet's function ought to be (gross oversimplification if we consider you included Wordsworth and Eliot yet that is a point I am ready to make for the other four). They also appear to be overwhelmingly English, male and white. I'm wondering if we might not want to put together an alternative canon that would reflect English poetry's diversity and playful inventiveness. Thank you again !

[@closereadingpoetry]

Hey, @henrylecoanet2160. Thanks for this. Important question. Although it is a condition of culture and history in England that its greatest and most influential writers are English, male, and white, that's not to say that their Englishness, maleness, or whiteness is at all a criterion for greatness. I think there ought to be a widening of the canon to include great women poets and poets of color, including global anglophone poets, and many others. It's partly why I prefer to think of literature in terms of *porous traditions* rather than *inflexible canons*. This particular canon is called "cornerstone" because every poet writing in English today contributes to an edifice of literature built, in various ways, upon these poets. Any poet writing today is necessarily in relation to the greater parts of the whole. The other canons that I've compiled aim at making a more comprehensive list, which includes poets who have contributed in any way to the body of English literature.

[@henrylecoanet2160]

@@closereadingpoetry Thank you for your answer ! I'm looking forward to knowing more about those other canons you mention ! I also want to take this opportunity to thank you for the work you've been doing in general. Your lectures have been extremely helpful to me as a French student of English literature. Your close readings are fantastic !

[@etymonlegomenon931]

Why in the hell would anything except greatness matter?

[@henrylecoanet2160]

@@etymonlegomenon931 Let me clarify my reasoning. I consider a canon to be a reading tool. A canon should help you identify what poets you should prioritize reading. What poets should you read ? Well, to me I want to have a list of poets that helps get a glimpse at the endless shapes poetry can come in. Sure each poet should be talented, but each should display their mastery of metrics/imagery/you name it in different ways. Only thus can you truly appreciate how multi-facetted and complex poetry can be. Choosing to say that only, let's say 17th century poetry is great may simply narrow down your understanding of what poetry is and can be.

[@etymonlegomenon931]

@@henrylecoanet2160 Pointing out that you need to read widely to understand a genre is not good enough to defend an ethos for canon-making. A *canon* is not a "reading tool"; it wouldn't be useful to refer to a reading tool as a *canon* instead of, y'know, a reading list. Regardless of how you use it, a canon is a list of the best or the most influential; formulated as anything else, it is misnamed. Say you wanted to write out a canon of the great works of antiquity. If you limit yourself to an arbitrarily small canon (which of course is what this video does), you wouldn't save room for Beowulf and the Neibelungleid so that the Greeks and Romans didn't crowd things out too much.

[@JC-qh6wl]

You lost me with William Wordsworth and T.S. Eliot.

[@adamgrimsley2900]

There is no greatest. Poetry is not a competition.

[@eskybakzu712]

Many poets would disagree.

[@adamgrimsley2900]

@@eskybakzu712 no they wouldn't. Poets write to satisfy there muse, not to be lauded.

[@lucasstrople4767]

Classic cop out from the discipline of study. "eVeRyThInG iS gOoD iT's AlL tHe SaMe SuBsTaNcE"

[@adamgrimsley2900]

@@lucasstrople4767 no, you completely misunderstood. Never said everything is good.

[@jasonwest9425]

@@adamgrimsley2900poets are just as vain as any other group of people.

[@HorowitzCarilla69]

You forgot quevedo

[@stevendavis1940]

I wouldn't put Eliot in that list.