Yes, Tim is right; Hardy must be in this list. And the volume to include is Satires of Circumstance, which includes the poems of 1912-13. Also "Channel Firing", "Are You Digging on my Grave?" and the Satires of the title, which are a nice collection of short ironic narratives.

12. Desperate Measures, George Starbuck
 

Perhaps we all have our under appreciated poets that we love to champion. If Nigel's is R. P. Lister, then mine is George Starbuck.

Since I am unable to choose his Collected (this century, not last), I'll choose Desperate Measures from 1979. I first read it, really read it, in a large and glorious and completely bare (save a sofa and chair) apartment in one of New York's wealthier neighborhoods (I'm a spectacular cat-sitter). The traps and tricks and treats that Starbuck constructs throughout are marvelous, and their intricate design and rococo architecture became the furniture in the apartment.

Anyone interested in form should study Starbuck's construction and technical virtuosity. His best double dactyls are collected here, and some of his most interesting experiments with sonnets and villanelles. He stuffs one poem with four-letter words like zoooogenous and disagreeee (the target of a disagreeor). One poem ends in 15 consecutive one-syllable rhymes. Another poem manages two rhymes for "bilge" before its narrator kills John Hollander, the inventor the double dactyl, with a steel beam.

You are either very confused or very interested at this point, so I'll stop.

Oh, I'll second Don's suggestion of Harmonium. One of my prized possessions is the 1931 edition (with all those nice added poems) on my shelf. And there are the titles which are poems in themselves: "The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician", "Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores", "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon". No one does titles better than Stevens.

George Starbuck. I'll look or George Starbuck. I have and punted THIRTY ONE POUNDS on the Selected. Orwn, this guy had better be good. But don't worry, I have confidence in your judgment. Look what you said about me!

Harmonium would rank pretty high with me too. I read it first at 18, and it was a revelation. Of course Greg is right, poems of 1912-1913 is contained within Satires of Circumstance.

I think you will love it, John. Tell me how it goes.

#13 T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets
 

Did Eliot's Four Quartets come out as a single book? I have a book in which they are the only poems. If so, I think it should qualify for #13

**Yes, I see they were brought out as a single book in 1943.

**Sorry, I forgot to explain why I think it should be included in the top 100.

When I first read these poems, I was about eighteen, and I don't think I really understood a word of them, though like any young poet-wannabe I was enamoured of Eliot's command of language, and of his craft. I approached the Four Quartets at various intervals throughout my life, and gradually, they began to make a little more sense. When last I read them, after my conversion from atheist to theist, and especially after my appreciation of Spinoza's works, who had a huge influence on the Romantic poets as well as on such notables as Herman Melville, and one of my favorite modern novelists, Bernard Malamud, as well as Albert Einstein, I think I finally dug into them with enough maturity to grasp what Eliot was trying to do.

John,

I don't think you'll be disappointed. Interesting bit of background: George was a quiet hero. He was fired from a state university for refusing to take a loyalty oath. He fought the injustice all the way to the Supreme Court, and won. Some background here: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/b...the_great.html

As for his work, every poet writing in form owes him a substantial debt, whether they acknowledge it or not. And I suspect he wouldn't have it any other way.

Thanks,

Bill

14. Another Time, by WH Auden
 

Surely we must have some Auden.

I only have his collected, but from what I piece together, I nominate Another Time, his first volume published from America.

“Law Like Love” (I guess a re-title) alone makes it worthy for me of nomination, for its pure depth and truth -- but the volume also included the stoic, imaginative trimeter genius of “As I Walked out One Evening”, and the morbidly wry “Miss Gee”; the elegy of Yeats; “Funeral Blues” and its famous love poetry; Auden’s homages to Housman and Melville; the brilliantly funny, irreverent and yearning “O Tell Me the Truth About Love”; the free verse masterpiece “Musee des Beaux Arts”; and the famous, infamous, and later disowned, “September 1, 1939”. I ‘m not sure, but “Epitaph on a Tyrant” may also have been included. For me, quite probably, his best single volume: it shows him playful, ponderous, funny, fallible, erudite, randy, and profound.

The Hardy to include (the Robinson as well) is Robert Mezey's Selected.

Frank