Best Poems – Page 41 – Interesting Literature

10 of the Best Poems about Death

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Love and death are perhaps the two most popular and perennial subjects for poetry, and many poets have attempted to put our thoughts about mortality into words that burn, in Thomas Gray’s memorable phrase. So choosing just ten definitive poems about death is going to prove tricky.

We’ve attempted to make the task a little easier in this post by limiting ourselves to very short poems – none of the ten poems that follow is longer than ten lines, and many are somewhat shorter. We hope you enjoy this pick of the greatest short poems about death.

The Best Lewis Carroll Poems

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Lewis Carroll (1832-98) is probably best-remembered for his two novels for children, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The latter of these two books contained the classic nonsense poem, ‘Jabberwocky’, and Carroll’s poetry can easily match that of his fellow Victorian nonsense-maker, Edward Lear for sheer fun and zaniness.

Below we’ve picked what we think are Lewis Carroll’s five best poems, complete with some information about them.

10 of the Best Poems about Dreams and Dreaming

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

What are the best poems about dreams? The word ‘dreams’, of course, is ambiguous: it can refer to both the imaginative stories and visions our unconscious creates for us while we sleep, but it can also refer to our ambitions and aspirations. Here, we’ve taken ‘dreams’ to mean both these things when compiling this list of ten of the greatest poems about dreams.

We’ve tried to limit ourselves to relatively short poems – the kind that can be read in a five-minute break – and so there’s no ‘The Dream of the Rood’ here, one of the earliest poems in English. But we hope you enjoy the poems we have included here.

Five of the Best Poems about Writing Poetry

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Writing poetry can be intensely rewarding, but unfortunately, the words don’t always come. And at some point or another, most poets have found themselves in the grip of writer’s block (something we’ve termed colygraphia, because let’s face it, it’s never going to be taken seriously until it has a Greek name). The following five poems are all about the struggle to write a poem; they are among the best poems about the actual act of writing poetry.

10 of the Best Wendy Cope Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Wendy Cope is one of the most acclaimed living comic poets writing in English. Since her first collection appeared in 1986, she has published a handful of popular volumes of comic verse, though she can also write ‘straight’ poetry very successfully too (as the last poem in this list testifies). Below are ten of Wendy Cope’s finest poems.