sandandfoam
Veteran Member
I think Yeats
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Who is the greatest poet in the English language?
- Thread starter sandandfoam
- Start date
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
Expand lads. Why no contest?
I like a lot of english poetry. Homer's greek is superb poetry, and their is some latin and german that I like a lot too. Auden is a big hit with me, and A. E. houseman is too. And I like bits and pieces from Shelley, Yeats, Graves, even Byron and Crane. The oxford book of english verse is my favorite collection of poetry.
But no english poet has ever commanded the english language and produced such masterpieces as Shakespeare.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Me:
Roses are red,
But violets aren't blue,
Otherwise they'd be called blues,
Not violets.
But anyway,
Can you pass the salt?
Nuff' said.
Roses are red,
But violets aren't blue,
Otherwise they'd be called blues,
Not violets.
But anyway,
Can you pass the salt?
Nuff' said.
Well done!
That fella from Nantucket was a pretty good poet too. How'd that go again...?
monta
.
Don't get me wrong, I love Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, but his dramatic work far outshines his poetyr.
I love W.Shakespeare but i think Wilfred Loyd Owen and Sasoon the WW1 Poets are up there with the best and William Wordsworth
His plays and sonnets are his poetry. The soliloquies in his plays are poetry, and so are the sonnets
monta
.
That is what I meant that I like the poetry in his plays and the poetry of his sonnets, this is going to a weird place, I love Shakespeare but chosing the greatest poet is like chosing the worlds greatest dad, too subjective I think.
Most definitely. It's definitely subjective, but I have no problem in proclaiming Shakespeare as the greatest poet and writer in the English language. The characters, the universal appeal, humor, plot structure, etc. are all just timeless. There are others who come close (Wordsworth is phenomenal), and there are even certain poems or works of literature I prefer, but as for judging a body of work in its entirety Shakespeare is the best. Subjectively speaking of course. 
Choosing the world's greatest dad is easy. Just look for the coffee mug.
Choosing the world's greatest dad is easy. Just look for the coffee mug.
Kipling. What he lacks in quality, he makes up for in quantity.
Levite
Higher and Higher
Don't get me wrong, I love Shakespeare; but to watch, to perform, to heard read...not just to read on a winter's night or a summer afternoon, whiling away the hours. His best work is his plays: his sonnets are lovely, but they aren't, IMO, head and shoulders above a lot of the sonnets that were being written in those times.
For a "pure poetry" poet, I think my vote has got to go to John Donne. I think his "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" is one of the two or three best love poems written in the English language. And his holy sonnets are gorgeously crafted, though I don't always care for the theology. And I have always loved "The Canonization." I just love the way he writes: simple, elegant, heartfelt, carefully crafted...each word so well chosen....
For a "pure poetry" poet, I think my vote has got to go to John Donne. I think his "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" is one of the two or three best love poems written in the English language. And his holy sonnets are gorgeously crafted, though I don't always care for the theology. And I have always loved "The Canonization." I just love the way he writes: simple, elegant, heartfelt, carefully crafted...each word so well chosen....
Smoke
Done here.
I think of his plays as his poetry. I can take the sonnets or leave them.
The greatest English poet would have to be somebody monumental like that. Shakespeare or Chaucer, somebody who wrote such great works that he changed the language and the way people looked at it. Even Miles Coverdale, though not a poet in the usual sense, was what you might call a poetic sort of translator, and he had a masterful way with the language.
But as far as what I like, I like poets like Shelley and Byron and a mixed bag of poets from Emily Dickinson to Walt Whitman to Phyllis McGinley, Edward Lear, Don Marquis, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Leonard Cohen, and many others. They don't stand out as the kind of poets who define epochs, like Chaucer or Shakespeare, but I like them better.
If somebody asks me what my favorite poem is, I have no idea. It's just too hard to say. But the first thing that springs to mind is:
The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
and his cohorts were gleaming in silver and gold,
and the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
when the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
I also love all the old traditional poems like Sir Patrick Spens and Get Up and Bar the Door.and his cohorts were gleaming in silver and gold,
and the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
when the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Last edited:
dust1n
Zindīq
What the **** does 'greatest' mean?