This six-hour collection presents the "Top 100" poems determined by a consensus of over 1000 compilers and arranged in chronological order. These gems speak to the ear and to the heart. They tease out our buried life of reverie, feeling, and dream. Many of these poems reveal that freedom of imagination is the oxygen of poetry. Others are true to the sting of experience. Listening to them, we are struck anew by the strange mystery of the commonplace.
The top five poems are "To Autumn" by John Keats, "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "La Belle Dame sans Merci" by John Keats, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe, and "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. Reading these classics are poets Rita Dove, Alfred Corn, Richard Howard, Philip Levine, Maureen Howard, James Merrill, Alastair Reid, and others. This wonderful collection of poems offers great refreshment for the spirit.