I had 54 people respond to my classic poetry survey in which I asked you to send me a list of your 10 favorite classic poems. Classic was defined as published before 1923 or no longer copyright protected. Those 54 people had a total of 278 poems listed as favorites in their combined lists. 121 poets were represented in the lists.

The poet with the most poems cited was an American poet (nineteenth century), and the poet with the most total votes was also American (twentieth century). The favorite poems are about evenly divided over the seventeenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries with the eighteenth century underrepresented, and only a few poems from before 1600.

103 of the poets represented were men, 14 were women, and four of the favorites were by unknown authors. The poems that readers chose were overwhelming written originally in English, with only a few poems that were translated from another language included.

Because I had far fewer responses to this survey than to last year’s hymn survey, and because many of the respondents did not rank their choices or did not have 10 favorites, but fewer than that, I decided to give each poem on someone’s favorite list just one vote. With that method of tabulation, I ended up with 72 poems that got more than one vote. So I have decided to “count down” the 100 Favorite Poems, not according to number of votes received but rather in chronological order beginning with the oldest poems on the list. To make it an even 100 I’ll intersperse some of my personal favorites that may have been on one person’s list or may not have made any list at all. Some of the newest poems that received multiple votes were borderline as far as copyright protection, published in the 1920’s or even 30’s, but I’m going to post them, too, maybe with just an excerpt to whet your poetic appetite.

So get ready for a Poetry Pilgrimage through the history of (mostly English) poetry and through the old and new favorites of my most loyal readers and of my own family. I hope you discover some new favorites yourself as you look for your own treasured poems on the list. We’ll begin the journey on Monday, April 5th, with the oldest poem to make the list–a few thousand years old, in fact.

Guesses?

Serena at Savvy Verse and Wit is hostessing the National Poetry Month 2010 Blog Tour, of which this post is a part. Read her welcome post for more information, but it’s going to be full of delicious-ness, including reviews of poetry books old and new, poet interviews and features, information on how to read poetry and how to read it aloud, all sorts of poetic revels for Poetry Month, 2010. Read more poetry there, and be sure to come back here on Monday for the beginning of 100 Top Classic Poems at Semicolon.