The Best English Poets

For my money, the best poet in the English language is W. B. Yeats. I think I have read all of his published poems, and most of his prose. He is not read or celebrated nearly as much as he should be because his politics and religion are so foreign to so many. But I think Yeats in the end made it pretty clear that he was a poet above all, and both his politics and his religion were simply what seemed useful at the time to his poetry. The great thing about Yeats is his versatility. He can do it elaborate or simple, romantic or hard-edged, traditional or experimental, and be the best each time.

The best living poet is Leonard Cohen. He might be the second-best of all time. Like Yeats, his politics and his religion seem rather arbitrary, although in this I think he has tended, unlike Yeats, to mature over time. Like Yeats, and unlike most poets, his writing has remained vital into old age. Poetry is more often a young man’s game. But in this, he and Yeats have had an advantage over most poets: a steady income that allowed them to pursue poetry even after they had family responsibilities. The most wonderful thing about Cohen is his minimalism. He can write a poem so simple it is flawless. This is a quality rarely seen since the very beginnings of English poetry.

William Blake has been very important to me, but not so much as a poet: as a thinker. For Yeats and Cohen, the poetry came first; for Blake, the philosophy came first, and the poetry had to bow to fit it. In this, Blake was right and Yeats and Cohen wrong, but the result is that his poetry is not as good, as poetry. Blake’s greatest contribution is his feeling for symbol.

T.S. Eliot is a towering figure. But he is, like Blake, greater as a thinker than as a poet. He had modernism cold before it even began: he invented it, then solved the problem it presented, before anyone else got to the starting gate. Like Blake, he was a great literary critic. His poems lack beauty in the classical sense, which in the end keep them from being the very best poems written. But there is a reason for this. For Eliot, truth came before beauty, and that is to his credit.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge has a numinous quality in his best writing that almost nobody else can match. His prose is also outstanding. The problem is that he wrote so little.

John Donne was the best before the Romantics. Quite breathtaking.

These guys form a club, a school, a tradition. Yeats is very largely responsible for Blake’s reputation today; he promoted him aggressively. Eliot is largely responsible for Donne’s current reputation. Cohen cites Yeats as, after Lorca, his strongest influence. Eliot declared Yeats the best poet who ever lived.

There are other very good poets, but this is the first string. No mean accomplishment to be here: of all man's creations, nothing is as difficult as language. It is almost coterminous with conscious thought itself. In language, writing is the most difficult skill. And in writing, the poem is the most difficult form.