The following list is just a sampling of some of the books that I think any eclectic reader should discover. They are not mass market paperbacks (although some were eventually packaged that way after settling on the bestseller lists for eons). Some are fun, some are thoughtful, some are just…well…have a whole weekend ahead of you before you start them.

It's just a start. Don't let this list stop you from exploring on your own.

1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
2. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (and if you're over 50, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid)
3. ANYTHING by Edward Rutherfurd
4. Pillars of the Earth (and sequel World Without End) by Ken Follett
5. Beach Music by Pat Conroy
6. The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon (okay, warning to men-romance)
7. A Painted House by John Grisham
8. The Redwall Series by Brian Jacques (be nice and share with your children)
9. Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
10. The Eight by Katherine Neville

The main character of the story line in the novel is Robert Langdon, the same name as in “Da Vinci Code”. Moreover reference to Roman Catholic Church, secret societies is also taken from the previous novel. Robert Langdon is a professor at Harvard University of art history and religious iconology. The main plot of the story is where he tries to stop the destruction of the Vatican City by a secret society. Leonardo Vetra, who is a respected physicists is found murdered in his quarter by the director of CERN, Maximilian Kohler. Kohler finds Vetra's one eye dislodged and illuminati branded on his chest. So Kohler contacts Robert to assist him in getting the murderer as Robert is an expert with illuminati.

After finding the symbol on Kohler's chest, Robert gets frightened as the symbol belongs to a secret society which was believed to be finished long ago. So the thought that the secret society is back again, disturbs Robert. Later Vittoria, Kohler's adopted daughter is called on to the scene. It is found that a dangerous substance canister which is comparable to a nuclear bomb is also stolen from there. The problem occurs when it is found that the bomb is placed in Vatican City and the countdown of the bomb is ticking with a security camera showing it.

To stop the bomb from destroying the Vatican City, Robert and Vittoria reach Vatican City where they found that pope died. Because of the death, a new pontiff is to be elected but the cardinals are went missing who are the likely candidates to be elected. So both Robert and Vittoria begin their search for Preferiti, in a hope that they will encounter canister as well. Following this, the story takes many twists and turns that keep the suspense going and finally Robert manages to prevent the bomb to burst within time. After this the story begins which is the main part of the story. But to keep the suspense going on, do read the novel. For all the people who found “Da Vinci Code” a good novel, would find Angels and Demons to be better. It is highly recommended for people who love to read plot driven novels as well as the ones with full of thrills.

Most students would never read Baroja unless their college major took them in that direction. Those studying modern Spanish history might, since much of Baroja's work involved criticism of Church-dominated politics and social class divisions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Survey courses in modern Spanish literature should include his work, and probably do. This is, however, a tragically small audience for writing of such extraordinary excellence and relevance.

Baroja is a member of a literary group known as the Generation of "98 (1898). He sits in illustrious company with authors such as Unamuno, Valle-Inclan, Azorin, and Vincente Blasco Ibanez of The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse fame. This graphic and eloquently written novel--made into the 1921 silent film-is considered one of the first anti-war books of the modern era.

All of the "98 writers in their youth questioned Roman Catholicism and sympathized with the downtrodden. Though in their time they were more inclined to dream of utopias, their works and ideas, including Baroja's, have been woven into the social fabric of modern Spain. One might say they were, like many visionaries, ahead of their time.

Baroja's writings are uniquely applicable to contemporary issues. Reading them is like reading sociology papers written today. His view of religion as hindering societies from achieving their full potential was as unpopular with the establishment then as it is among similar groups today. In Baroja's day separation of Church and State did not exist, but voices including his were beginning to explore the issue to the extreme displeasure of the Catholic Church and its upper class champions.

The unfortunate characters of his books are victims of not only class prejudice but of generationally inherited poverty to be quietly suffered in the interests of faith and salvation. The writings of Baroja posthumously contributed to Spain's eventual rejection of this notion. Spain today, as a modern progressive society, has the most stringent separation of church and state in the Western world.

The poetic writing style of Baroja offers readers a literary experience rarely available in today's modern novels. Granted, writing styles are generational and change with the tastes of the times. Many readers put off tackling the classics for that reason. Writing styles simply do not resonate with the modern ear. Baroja's, however, are different. Reading his works makes you realize that there is no substitute for the ability to bend words into riveting images. Truth is many writers today simply can not do it; thus a lesser use of language has become the norm--accepted and preferred by readers.

Anyone wishing to be thrilled again by a more eloquent and insightful literary voice should consider reading Baroja.

From The City of the Discreet, by Pio Baroja

Escobed proceeded. “Knowledge is the enemy of felicity. This state of peace, of tranquility, which the Greeks called with relation to the organism, euphoria...can not be attained in any other way than by ignorance. Thus at the beginning of life, at the age of twenty, when one sees the world superficially and falsely, things appear brilliant and worth coveting. The theatre is relatively fine, the music agreeable, the play amusing; but the evil instinct of learning will make one some day peer from the wings and commence to make discoveries and become disillusioned. One sees that the actresses are ugly...”.

The bond between Huck and Jim displays fraternal elements. The component of brotherly protection and care shows itself when Huck defends Jim from the men on the raft by telling them that no black men are with him.

"'Is your man white or black?' I didn't answer up prompt. I tried to, but the words wouldn't come. I tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I warn't man enough--hadn't the spunk of a rabbit. I see I was weakening; so I just give up trying, and up and says: "He"s white'" (Twain 89).

The magnificent level of trust within a fraternal connection is reflected in Huck and Jim's relationship when Huck assures his companion that he will not tell anyone about Jim running away. "Well, I did. I said I wouldn't, and I'll stick to it. Honest injun, I will" (43). The repetition of the promise that Huck will not tell anyone and keep Jim's secret, further emphasizes the trust between the two and the genuineness of their brother-like relationship.

The anti-institutional boy and the runaway slave's affiliation exhibit some father-son features. The quality of eternal love present in a paternal relationship comes through when Jim describes his feelings when Huck was lost out in the river. "When I got all wore out with work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en I didn't k'yer no' mo' what become er me en da raf'" (85). Jim uses a common image of a "broken heart" to describe the emotional tear he felt throughout this confusion. The image of the "broken heart" is a powerful one and the love behind it could only be expressed in a paternalistic correlation. The protection and safety sought out by fathers for their sons is a magnificent part of any fatherly relationship. Jim mocks this struggle to keep Huck safe when the two come across a dead body in the floating house. Jim tries to protect Huck from the sight of the body, fearing Huck's emotional and psychological disposition just like a real father. "It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He's ben shot in de back. I reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan' look at his face--it's too gashly" (50). These elements of a paternal relationship are present and shown within the relationship of Huck and Jim.

The interracial connection between Huck and Jim is nothing like that of the time, as both Huck and Jim are tolerant toward each other at the least. The reverse of societal rolls as master and slave reverses when Huck "humbles himself" to Jim. At this time in history, a white male no matter how old would never feel this way towards a black person. Huck essentially states that he cares about Jim no matter what color his skin is. "It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn't every sorry for it afterward neither" (86). Also within the same passage, Huck mentally apologizes to Jim and feels sorry for the emotional stress Huck put over Jim. "I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't done that one if I'd "a" knowed it would make him feel that way" (86). Huck realizes that Jim was very scared and detached over Huck' trick; Huck is sorry for the grief and states that he would have never done it if he knew Jim would feel this way. Huck's simple, guilt-stricken thoughts toward Jim reflect the tolerance the two show toward each other's skin color. The generalization and common ethics of society do not influence the way Huck and Jim feel about each other.

Different types of relationships, fraternal, paternal, and tolerant, show through in the close bond between Huck and Jim. Many may argue that the relationships between Huck and Jim go only as far as that of two traveling companions escaping to the same place and nothing deeper. However, Jim graciously fills the absence of a true friend and an authoritative, paternal figure throughout Huck's life and the runaway slave is perfect for the missing characters. Jim, lacking a brother and a trusted friend in his life, unites well with Huck because the two desperately need each other. Their relationships are mutual; the two men give each other exactly what the other needs most.

In the middle of a war, a transport plane carrying a group of English boys from Britain was shot down over the ocean and it crashed in thick jungle on a deserted island. Scattered by the wreck, the surviving boys lost each other and cannot find the pilot. The story starts with Ralph who meets with a chubby boy named Piggy. Ralph and Piggy look around the beach, wondering what has become of the other boys from the plane. They discover a large cream colored conch shell, which Piggy realizes could be used as a kind of fake trumpet. He convinces Ralph to blow through the shell to find the other boys. The boys were summoned by the blast of sound from the shell and they staggered onto the beach. The oldest among them are around twelve and the youngest are around six. Then a choir led by Jack shows up and all the assembled boys decide to elect a leader or Chief. Ralph is elected chief but with serious opposition from Jack and in order to satisfy Jack, Ralph appoints Jack and his choirboys as the hunters of the "tribe." He then takes Simon, and Jack to explore the island. They find a mountain and explored the land and they return to the beach.

Chapter 2

Ralph returns and tells everyone that the island has no adults that all have to learn to live together. They also agreed on meetings whenever the couch is blown and that, at meetings, the conch shell would be used to determine who has the right to speak. The boy holds the conch shell will speak, and the others will listen silently until they receive the shell in their turn. Even Jack agrees with this idea. Then one of the little kids claims that he saw a "beastie" on the island, which puts fear and scares everyone. Ralph tells the group to build a large signal fire on top of the mountain on the island so that any passing ships might see the fire and know that someone is on the island. Piggy tries to reason with the group about survival but they all ignored him.

Chapter 3

Jack follows and tries to kill a pig but he fails. He returns and finds that Ralph is busy with building the hut with Simon. Ralph is annoyed that boys are unwilling to work on the huts and Jack promises Ralph that they will have better luck with the pig next time. Ralph implies that Jack and the hunters are using their hunting duties as an excuse to avoid the real work. Jack responds to Ralph's complaints by commenting that the boys want meat. Jack and Ralph continue to bicker and grow increasingly hostile toward each other. Simon goes off by himself and finds a place where he can peacefully stay.

Chapter 4

The little kids now called "Littluns" plays all day long and at night has frightful experiences. Ralph is worried about this. The large amounts of fruit that they eat cause them to be sick in the stomach and get diarrhea. Roger and Maurice torture little kids by destroying their sand castles. Jack who is obsessed with catching a pig goes off with his hunters to get a pig. While they were gone, Piggy and Ralph spots a ships that passes by and finds that while the boys were out for the hunt, the fire on the mountain went out ending with the ship passing by without their rescue. Ralph is angry but the boys brought the pig back from the hunt and roasted it and gave it to everyone. Jack is now resenting Ralph and his leadership.

Chapter 5

Ralph goes to the beach and calls a meeting in order to bring the boys into line. Ralph tells them about their failure in duty and that they should do their duty. Ralph also tries to tell the young boys that there is no beast and that they should not be afraid but it failed. The little ones say that the beast hides at day and at night come out of the ocean to haunt the kids and that these kids are in danger. Suddenly, Jack proclaims that if there is a beast then he and his hunters will hunt it down and kill it. Then the group breaks away while Ralph tells Piggy and Simon that he might cease this leadership but they tell Ralph that he need to be leader or Jack might go on a rampage.

Chapter 6

In the darkness, military planes fight in the air above the island but the boys were sleeping so they miss it and they also miss when a parachute lands with a dead person onto the island. When Sam and Eric woke up, in the flickering firelight, they see the twisted form of the dead parachutist and mistake the shadowy image for the figure of the dreaded beast. They rush back to the camp, wake Ralph, and tell him what they have seen. Ralph immediately calls for a meeting, at which the twins reiterate their claim that a monster assaulted them. They look for the monster and when they get to the place where they did not explore the island, the boys start to play around so Ralph gets angry with them.

Chapter 7

As the boys eat, Ralph look at the sea without hope but Simon reassures him that he will get home safe. The boys go boar hunting as they chase the beast and Ralph gets excited when he get a "snot" at the boar's snout with his spear. The group frenzied with the hunt, reenacts the hunt with a boy named Robert as the pig and he gets almost killed before the boys realize what they are doing. Ralph sends Simon back to Piggy to tell him that the group will be back after dark. The group climbs to the mountain and Jack goes to the summit while Ralph and Roger wait at the mountain. Jack tells Ralph that he saw the beast and Ralph also checks it out and sees a beast too so they go to warn the group.

Chapter 8

The next morning, they call a meeting and Jack tells everyone that there is really a beast. He also goes to tell everyone that Ralph is a coward and a scared loser and he tries to vote him out of power and be the new chief but no one cares to remove Ralph. Then Jack goes off with his own followers. The boys wanted the fire back so Piggy suggests building a fire on the beach and they build one. At night, many boys go off to join Jack and Piggy tells Ralph that it is good that the deserters left. Then Jack declares himself the chief of his tribe and they hunt a pig and impale its head on a stick. Then they raid Ralph's tribe and steals fire while Jack invites them to come to his tribe and eat the feast and join them. Meanwhile, Simon sees the head on the stick and feels as it is talking to him so he faints.

Chapter 9

Simon then comes upon the dead body of the parachutist and he sees how the boys got mistaken about the beast so he takes the parachute to the feast by jack to tell them about it. At the feast, the boys eat and have fun and Jack invites Ralph's followers to join his tribe and many do even though Ralph tries to stop them. Ralph also tells them that in the storm, where will his tribe stay and jack ignore him. As the boys are dancing and reenacting the pig hunt, Simon comes to the party with the parachute but the boys did not see him but sees his shadow and thinks he is the beast and kills him. Then the wind blows the parachutist's body unto the beach and they run off scared.

Chapter 10

The next day, Ralph is feeling guilty over the death of Simon while Piggy claims it as a small accident. Many of Ralph's followers joined Jack's tribe and now Ralph and Piggy are almost alone. Jack made his base at Castle Rock and he is the true ruler. He commands his tribe to be on the guard against the beast since it can assume anyone's shape (they believe Simon is the Beast) and since it is not truly dead. He also tells roger and Maurice to go to Ralph's camp and steal the fire. Jack's hunters steal the fire and Piggy glasses and beats Ralph and his tribe.

Chapter 11

The boys at Ralph's tribe try to light the fire but fails. So they go to Jack's tribe where the encounter Jack coming back from the hunt with a pig. Jack tells Ralph to leave but Ralph tries to reason with him but ends in failure. They fight. Jack them orders the twins Sam and Eric to be ties up, leading Ralph into rage causing another fight. Piggy tried to reason with them but they continued fighting. Roger pushed a boulder at them and Ralph doges them but it breaks the couch and knocks Piggy off the mountainside into the rocks (he dies). Ralph runs into the jungle as Jack and others in the tribe attacks him. Sam and Eric started to get tortured as they were forced to join Jack and his tribe.

Chapter 12

Ralph hides in the jungle and then he goes back to jack's camp. The twins, who were the guards, see Ralph and gives him food but doesn't join up with him. They tell him that Jack is going to send the whole tribe after him tomorrow. Ralph hides in a jungle thicket. The boys try to get through but the thicket was too dense so jack sets it on fire. Ralph come out and fights his way past jack and his hunters. He runs and at last collapses on the beach after frantically trying to find a hiding place. Ralph look up and sees a navy officer standing there. The officer tells him that he saw the smoke and came to check the island out. Them Jack and his boys arrive and Ralph tells the officer everything that had happened and he was amazed how civilized boys turned into nothing more than barbaric savages. They get saved.

To truly understand and explain Stephen Crane's Poems, one must take a closer look at his background.  Stephen Crane was born in 1871 in Newark, New Jersey as the youngest son of a Methodist minister.  His family values and his view on religion especially on God influenced is writings in a new reveling light.  "In 1896, Crane went to Jacksonville, Florida as a correspondent to Cuban Insurrection.  Then in 1897, Crane volunteered to the US Nay for Spanish-American was but was rejected by the Navy and he still went as a war correspondent for Pulitzer.  Crane's actions involve daring combat situations at Guantonamo, Cuzco, Las Guasimas, San Juan Hill.  He is acclaimed as writing the war's best dispatches"  (David J. Nordioh. 1). His failed attempt to enlist in the U.S Navy and his work as a journalist covering war stories inspired his works concerning war.  These events shaped him and his famous literary works with profound impact.

Daniel Hoffman said, "Stephen Crane is fascinated with war (and with other perilous situations)"  (Daniel Hoffman. 3).  Stephen Crane's poems are affected by his love for his work as a journalist covering war stories and telling the crude events and tragedies of war.  Stephen Crane writes in War is Kind "What many have said or would like to have said to those who have lost loved ones in war"  (Daniel Hoffman. 3).  Concerning Crane's war poems and works, Joseph said, "The energy of that projectile hurt nothing and no one (such as its good fortune), and delighted a good many.  It delighted soldiers, men of letters, men in the street.  It was welcomed by all lovers of personal expression as a genuine revelation.  Satisfying the curiosity of a world in which was and lobe have been subject of song and story ever since the beginning of articulate speech"  (Joseph Conrad. 1). 

Hoffman praised Crane's use of "juxtaposition and repetition" claiming "The power of the poem is in its style.  Crane's style was a more flexible instrument than most critics of his poetry have allowed" (Daniel Hoffman. 2).  Irony plays a major role in War is Kind.  Mary Ruby and Mark Milne stated "Some critics see the irony in the contrast between women's tears and the fact that death will soon relieve the dying man of his suffering.  But the irony is the reason, which is not a reason.  War is not kind."  They go on to state, "Crane uses bitter irony to comment on the ways in which government lies about the nature and purpose of war" (Mary Ruby & Mark Milne. 2).  "Crane's style is prose pointillism, it is composed of disconnected images, which coalesce like the blobs of color in French impressionist paintings, every word-group having a cross-reference relationship, every seemly disconnected details having interrelationships to the configured whole" (R. W. Stallman. 1).  Daniel Hoffman again asserted that Crane's poems represent "experiences and states feeling more complex than the simple attitudes of the allegorical poems" (Daniel Hoffman. 1).  Hoffman claims that poem War is Kind expresses Crane's shift from allegory to symbolism.

According to Mary Ruby and Mark Milne, "The acid cynicism" in these poems "burn".  They are saying, "For using patriotic pride and the myth of heroism to sanction men's natural tendencies toward violence, the military and the government are condemned although not named" (Mary Ruby and Mark Milne. 1). These poems are retelling the harsh conditions of the war for a reason, to show the people caught up in the war that this is not a joke, but a real event that is taking lives and devastating families. Concerning commitment and freedom, when reading poems present day, McDonald said, "we need have no worry about their experiments in form. The struggle for freedom was won long time ago; with Cane's help...we don't need poetry to confirm our beliefs. I think we can always recognize his sincerity, his commitment to hard and lonely path to truth, his determination to be honest with himself" (Gerald McDonald. 2). 

In the nineties, "Crane's poems seemed startlingly new in form and disturbingly new in content, without rhyme and without rhyme, they employ irony and paradox. They introduced unfamiliar symbols and metaphors, which sometimes ranged toward ambiguity. They were packed with tension and presented with terseness. They had, indeed, many of the characteristics, which seem especially typical of modern verses" (Gerald McDonald. 3).  In Crimson Clash of War, "women wept and babes ran wondering" because the war was traumatizing and confusing. War caused misunderstanding and chaos. No one understands what is happening. People ("millions") strove to answer his question, Why?  Why war? Why Fight?  Bettinal Knapp declared that the poem is "replete with scenes of martyrdom and bone-hard metaphors." Knapp continues saying that "despair, a morbid presence, permeates the world as individuals are forced to endure the agony of war" (Bettina L. Knapp. 1).  "The was stories probes a state of mind under the incessant pinpricks and bombardments of life. The theme is that man's salvation lies in change, in spiritual growth. It is only by immersion in the flux of experience that man becomes disciplined and develops character, conscience or soul" (R. W. Stallman. 2). These stories represent the constant battles in life that shape a human being in a disciplined way. Stallman goes on to state that, "Potentialities for change are at their greatest in battle- a battle represents life at its most intense flux. Crane's work is not about the combat of armies, it is about the self-combat of the youth who fears and stubbornly resists change, and the actual battle is symbolic of this spirited warfare against change and growth" (R. W. Stallman. 3). 

According to Mary Ruby and Mark Milne, "Crane's poem also foreshadows some of the great anti-war poems of the first world war, chief among them Wilfred Owens's Dulce et Decorum Est, which after being literally translated, means "it is sweet and meet to die for one's country" (Mary Ruby & Mark Milne. 6).  In War is Kind, "the last stanza, an image of mother weeping over the body of her fallen son, is the most heart-wrenching of all, as it underscores the hopelessness of the victims, both living and dead" (Mary Ruby & Mark Milne. 8).  It relays the unspoken message of despair. Are all this despair, destruction and death necessary?  What ever the reason was for war, it was not good enough. No reason is good enough to shatter families, destroy fellow humans and turn "lands black and bare." Whenever someone tries to answer the question why, people strive to answer the question with intricate clamor of tongues but always fail short of answering the question.

Stephen Crane's background, his styles, his fascination with war and his messages in his poems made his books and poems an inspiration for many people. His works and how he related to war made him a "Speaker for the Dead", for people to truly understand what the cost of wear is and the wages of war. Stephen Crane's obsession with war caused him to write many poems that he though might expose to the public the harsh reality of war behind all patriotic versus and pride. He wanted to show to the world the beast, the "God of war" that was dominating their lives. He wanted them to understand that war has costs. He wanted them to see that every action of war has prices to pay and that every price can be very costly.

The experiment basically consists in “trying to synthesize an artificial bacterium in the lab - for scientists to create life from non-living chemicals”. The scientists implicated in the experiment agreed that they would not proceed to start with this experiment until a publicly open debate about the moral and ethical side of the issue is discussed, and also until all the consequences that the same could bring to the whole world are taking into account and consideration; as said by Dr Craig Venter, the founder of Tigr and now head of the Celera Genomics Corporation: "We are not going to carry out this experiment until there has been a broader debate on the issue." But when interviewed, he also admitted the following to the BBC News Channel: "Will we eventually get to a molecular definition of life? I hope that will happen, yes,”

The connection between these two works of literature and writing is very transparent. They are both at the same time proof and an example of that curiosity humans have demonstrated to have throughout history. One might call it a thirst for knowledge. Trying to discover the unknown. Looking for the explanation of why do we exist, or more exactly how do we exist. We have come up with different believes through the years regarding our creation, such as the Big Bang, and all the different religious believes as well. But still, we don't yet know what exactly is it that gives us life. What is it that makes our organism function? What makes us think and have feelings? Some call it spirit, and others call it soul. But no matter what you call it, and regardless of religions or believes, it exists. It's in you, it's in me, and it's nature. It's part of the world, and for me that all that there is to it. But for others, well I guess humanity will have to just wait and see. See what experiments like this one leads science to. See where books like “Frankenstein” leads literature to. See where they both lead cultures and humanity to. And until then just keep thinking, writing, discovering and living.

But as I said, I've got a long way to go before I can call myself an expert. Reading an incredibly well-read critic like Edmund Wilson-who truly was an expert-makes this painfully clear. And of all the fields of literature in which I am not an expert, I am probably least expert in poetry. Having said that, I think the subject is fair game for anyone with a passion for the medium-and I do believe I have that.

It wasn't until high school that I sat down and read Poetry with a capital "P" in a systematic way. I'm not sure why that is. I think I internalized early on a lot of prejudices about poetry. Probably these came to me from school, which spent a lot of time assuring me that poetry is not something which can be understood on the first reading, or even the second or third. And if the poem can be understood, there must be something wrong with it. This is a fairly standard myth and it used to make me wonder how anyone could sit through a poetry reading if the words were not meant to be grasped. So I felt early on that I "didn't like poetry," which is ridiculous, because in my limited encounters with it, it always carried me away. It's bizarre how many people continue to love the poems they occasionally read, yet feel instinctively that they don't like poetry. This probably has to do with the snobbery that's built up around it-the idea that the more obscure and esoteric the verse, the better it is. The sniffing of academics and pedants is enough to turn anyone off. But what's odd is that poetry was once considered to be the "common man's art."

But as I was saying, the poems I did encounter picked me up and shook me in a way I have never felt with other forms of writing. It's true! No matter how much a novel or an essay may move me, the sort of breathless gut impact that you get from poetry can't be found in any other medium. My taste was (and is) fairly philistine. The truth is that it's possible to remain a philistine even after you've read a great deal. In those days, I tended to go for things for the obvious and well-known poems-things like "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" or "The Raven." It was phrases like "For the good lord loves all," or "My soul shall be lifted-nevermore!" that got me. In other words, those neat little ribbons tied to the ends of poems which give you the message of the narrative. These pleasures are fairly obvious and easy to obtain-the pleasures of the little end-rhyme that seems like it was meant to be there before the poet ever set pen to paper-but when I was a kid, they felt like punches in the gut, and very pleasing ones too. Whenever I read poetry I look for that feeling again, that rush you get from reading something simple, stupid, and beautiful. It's hard to find it now that I'm older, so frequently, the poems I enjoy the most are those which I dimly recall encountering as a kid. When I do find that occasional neat little verse, the pleasure still carries me away. My palms start to sweat at the right combination of sounds.

But the meaning of the verse too is definitely important. There's a myth about poetry that it is only valuable for the sounds it makes. This leads us to believe that even if we can't understand a word of a poem, that doesn't matter-we should delight in the sheer word-craft of it. But I'm not aware of any poem which has profoundly affected me which was incomprehensible. Even, say, T.S. Eliot's "Preludes," which is both "difficult" and affecting, succeeds because it really isn't difficult at all-the feelings conveyed in the poem are entirely comprehensible. They matter as much as the sound of the words themselves. Meaning and words have to work together. Which isn't to say that poems have to have the "right meaning." For instance, when I was a kid, I understood that poems like "Gunga Din" and "The White Man's Burden" were racist and offensive in the extreme, but they still affected me as poems. It didn't matter whether the meaning was an agreeable one or not-it just had to be comprehensible on some level.

I'm sure I sound like I'm making a list of the worst sort of hallmark-card poetry in English and passing it off as the best there is. But I'm being honest-these were the poems which affected me as a kid, and, to some extent, when I look for that poetic rush, I still look in similar places. I've outgrown "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," but I look for the same sort of thrill you get from the first two lines of that poem. The thrill of recognition. The thrill of seeing words lined up together in a way so perfect it seems preordained.

I rediscovered poetry in high school, as I said. Not, may I remind you, in any class. English classes have a unique power to drain all life and interest out of any book or poem. But it was as a teenager in high school that I found poetry once more. And the man who did this for me was Robert Burns. From him, I moved on to other poets. As a senior in high school, I read a lot of Hazlitt. His essays led me to the Romantics in general and to Romantic poetry in particular. All this time, I was reading a lot that wasn't poetry, and poetry has never been my central focus. But I have read and enjoyed enough of it to form one or two ideas on the subject.

Poetry, to me, is the most genuinely moving form of writing, and there are many days when I feel defeated in my search for a good novel to read and have to sit down with some familiar poems. Familiar poems! Those are by far the best. The poems I've read over and over again. I'm always looking for that thrill which I've tried to describe already, and, in that search, I tend to go over the poems in which I remember first feeling it. Sometimes I reread poems which I remember affecting me quite strongly, only to discover that the magical feeling-whatever it was-is lost. Sometimes I feel a faint tremor of the thrill but it fails to materialize. That's when I tend to sit down and write my own poem in order to capture it. I'm a very, very bad poet, but this effort to capture an essence, for me at least, is usually successful.

There's a huge amount of poetry out there which doesn't get me going. This I must admit. I've spent most of my time reading English poetry, but between Caedmon and Wordsworth there are a lot of weak hands. There's this incredibly wonderful era of early anonymous ballads ("The Twa Corbies," "Sir Patrick Spens," "Barbara Allen," "The Three Ravens," etc.) which strike a brilliant balance of cynical wit, musicality, and narrative force. But then, it would seem, the Brits forgot whatever magical properties these early poems had and took a turn for the worse.

The truth is that these early ballads were meant to be sung by ordinary people and passed along. They had to say something about life as people actually lead it. They had to be worth remembering. But as poetry became the property of courtiers and landed aristocrats-people who are totally out of step with real life, real concerns, and any sort of sympathy with the mass of humanity-it lost a lot of emotional power. And so you get court toadies like Edmund Spenser monopolizing poetry. To be sure, there were great poets in the Elizabethan era (and I realized I've jumped a bit from the era of the ballads). I don't even have to mention Shakespeare. Sir Walter Raleigh was a good poet even if there's a bit of pastoral silliness in his poems. The pastoral fetish of the Elizabethans can be found in Marlowe's short poems and Sir Philip Sidney's work as well. It was a way for courtiers and monarchs stuffed full of game hen to pretend that life outside of the palace was also full of fun and games. These poems tend to have references to "little shepherds," a so forth: a patronizing sentimentalism which hasn't aged well. Then there are word-smiths like Lyly who simply bore me.

But I've gotten away from myself-I was listing good Elizabethan poets. Ben Jonson-what little I've read of his short poems I've enjoyed. There was also Thomas Campion. As a song-writer, he falls outside of the mainstream Elizabethan circle and he's all the better for it. "I Care Not for These Ladies," "What Fair Pomp,"-his poems are misogynistic, there's no denying it, but as I've said, the meaning doesn't have to be a good one to make a good poem. Campion is probably one of the saving graces of his era.

And it goes on. John Donne? I've never really been that impressed with him, but maybe it's just that I haven't really read him, or haven't read the right poems. And then, of course, there are those associated with him-the metaphysical poets. My indifference to Donne tends to extend to these as well. George Herbert leaves me unimpressed. Thomas Carew and Andrew Marvell interest me enough-particularly Marvell who wrote one truly wonderful poem, "An Horation on the Return of Cromwell from Ireland." But his most famous poem, "To His Coy Mistress," strikes me as unsympathetic and even unpleasant. It's symptomatic of the general indifference and selfishness of English poets prior to the Romantics. The poets I really enjoy from the 1600s would be the Cavalier poets. The Cavaliers tended to be Romantics before the term came about. They had a cause and they believed in it, and even if the cause (the maintenance of the monarchy) was a lousy one, it led to some great poetry (e.g. Richard Lovelace's "To Althea," and "Going to the Wars"). Robert Herrick? Another sometime Cavalier although not a political one like Lovelace. I enjoy his work but it gives off the impression of irrelevance. Not that it's unimportant poetry, it's just so far removed from real life that it ceases to matter. For instance, Herrick addressed some of his best love poems to a woman (Julia) whom he appears to have invented.

Nestled in amongst the rest on the roll of English poets is a strange and overlooked poet who doesn't fit into any movement. Still, he's one of the best they've got-John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. The man was a libertine and a 17th-century scoundrel, as well as a great poet. His strength lies in the fact that everything he wrote was filled with venom and sardonic wit. Maybe he couldn't support a nation's poetry on his shoulders, but he is definitely a refreshing and iconoclastic writer who wrote some of my favorite poems. In a national poetry in which everything is unerringly lofty, Rochester's bawdy and cynical lines come as a breath of fresh air. My favorites are, "A Satyre against Mankind," and "Upon Nothing."

I have to say that I haven't read what is probably the best verse of the Augustans (in other words, Swift, Pope, John Gay, and others). I've read a few short poems by Swift which I enjoyed, but the great works of Pope, including "The Dunciad," "An Essay on Man," and so forth, I haven't attempted.

Further on in the 18th-century, we come to the Churchyard poets and, more broadly, the pre-Romantics. Here things start to look up. I've mentioned some older poets I enjoy but they are few and far between. But with Thomas Gray, William Collins, Christopher Smart, William Cowper, Thomas Chatterton, George Crabbe, and others, we get into some interesting stuff. True, Gray is fairly affected in his emotions-the "Distant Prospect of Eton College" doesn't exactly make me choke up every time I read it. But Collin's odes and Cowper's short poems are genuine, personally significant, and moving.

But still, whatever we can get out of those old anonymous ballads was missing from English poetry. Some zest for life had faded from it. The basic problem with English poetry-that is steered clear of narrative, that it lacked musicality, that it was irrelevant and unconcerned with the real meat of human life-was still unsolved. It only began to be solved with two poets-William Blake and Robert Burns. These two should have changed the world, but they didn't. Still, it was a start. Blake blew me away when I first read him. The poem, "The Chimney Sweeper" gave me that mysterious rush and more: when I finally came to it in an anthology of English poetry, it seemed to me that Blake had breathed life into a national poetry that was flaccid and bombastic. That bit about the boy wandering the city "crying ‘weep, ‘weep, ‘weep"-you never encountered that kind of thing in Andrew Marvell. Here was poetry that had to do with real life. Here was poetry which meant something. I felt the elusive rush.

But it was Burns, as I said, who reintroduced my high school self to poetry. It was, of course, "To a Mouse," which drew me in. But it was "Man was Made to Mourn," "A Man's a Man for a' That," and "A Parcel of Rogues in a Nation," which got me hooked. Especially "Man was Made to Mourn"-that absolutely bowled me over. I don't think I've ever felt the same way about a poem since. Of course, it wouldn't mean much to most people who read it-it probably isn't even a very good poem. But at the time in my life when I read it, it was the perfect poem for me. It was almost as if it had been written purely for my sake. That's a rare feeling. It is much more than the "mysterious rush."

Burns was deemed a "peasant poet." But what that really meant was that he was trained in the tradition of the anonymous balladeers, and all their virtues were in him. Burns understood human life in its raw intensity. What an incredible relief after a load of court poets drooling over monarchs. Burns wrote with the voice of the people.

Burns, I think, would have saved poetry single-handedly if people had paid more attention. But because of his use of dialect and his traditional balladic turn of phrase, he was dismissed as a cute side act from Scotland and nothing more. It took Wordsworth and Coleridge to get the job done.

And it is with those two that everyone recognizes the revolution in poetry-mostly because they articulated and formulated what they were trying to do. Along with Southey, the other Lake Poet, Wordsworth and Coleridge systematically ignored all pre-existing English poetry. They did away with elegance and bombast and replaced it with some of the best and most moving verses there are. The rush occurs again and again when I read the pair, particularly their Lyrical Ballads, which they published together during their early radical phase. The ballads went back right to the source I've been talking about-the anonymous ballads. They attempted to escape from Ivory Tower-ism and say something genuine about the lives of real people.

But Coleridge and Wordsworth's post-Lyrical Ballads work is less interesting to me. They had to give way to the next generation of Romantics-Shelley, Byron, Keats, and their circle. Leigh Hunt, the essayist, was also a very good poet from this era. As was Walter Savage Landor, but he just can't be grouped with the others. No, Shelley, Byron, and Keats definitely get the most attention. But my own opinion is that Shelley is by far the best of the bunch, although he seems to get less attention than the others. Maybe it's just that Byron suffers in anthologies. I haven't read "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," "Don Juan," or the other famous long Byron poems. But his shorter works don't stand out for me. Keats, meanwhile, was definitely a great poet, but his work doesn't seem substantial in quite the same way Shelley's does.

If you were to ask me the name of my all-time favorite poet, it would hands-down be Shelley. He too suffers in anthologies, but in his case, I've read his longer works, and it is in them that his talents shine through. Unfortunately, most students know him for a very boring poem called, "Ode to the West Wind." But I would recommend the lengthy (but unfinished) "Triumph of Life," as his best work. His "Masque of Anarchy," is without doubt the best political poem ever written, with a true revolutionary intensity, and I would also recommend "The Revolt of Islam" and "Queen Mab." To enjoy Shelley you have to get lost in the flow of words. This can only happen in the longer pieces.

It would be nice if we could shut the book at this point. The hero (the Romantic revolution) has saved the damsel in distress (English poetry) and they should have all lived happily ever after. But we still have to deal with the mass of poetry which has been published since then, as well as with American poetry. Should we deal with German, French, and Spanish poetry too? No, for two simple reasons. First of all, I don't know that much about it, and second, most national poetry is self-contained. English poets haven't been too influenced by, say, Mallarmé or Rimbaud. The reason, of course, is that poetry doesn't translate. So if we want to talk about what has shaped English poetry, we can stay in the English-speaking world.

So, in England, what happened next? We had John Clare-another one of my favorites. He was very much in the Burns tradition of the peasant poet. I haven't read a tremendous amount of Clare, but his best poems, I would say, are those he wrote after he felt he had been abandoned and betrayed by the poetic establishment. Robert Browning, originally a worshipper of Shelley, grew up to become a very different and interesting thing. Out of step with "Victorian Poetry," Browning wrote some of the weirdest and most fascinating stuff out there. "Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came" is one of the best poems I've read. It bears definite traces of Shelley's influence, particularly "The Triumph of Life," although it's stranger and more abstruse than anything Shelley wrote. But in this poem, I think I can honestly say that the meaning is unimportant-what matters is the feeling of stepping into a nightmare, which is very real.

Tennyson wrote some interesting stuff, along with a few banal pieces like, "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and "Of Old Sat Freedom." It's hard to believe that the same person who wrote these also wrote "Locksley Hall," "Ulysses," and "The Lady of Shalott." The problem was the conflict between Tennyson's very real and interesting gifts and his role as Poet Laureate, which involved writing a lot of dumb little verses commemorating every pointless royal occasion.

There are plenty of other Victorian poets whom I could name: Hopkins, Matthew Arnold, Arthur Hugh Clough, or perhaps the Pre-Raphaelites: the Rossettis, Swinburne, etc. But the truth is that I don't know these poets well enough. They all wrote some excellent poems, but nothing which comes back to play itself over and over again in my mind. Some of the later Victorians do achieve this. Hardy was definitely a great poet. Housman had a few good verses here and there, but most of the pleasure lies in the fact that you can say, "Oh, I see what he means by that." Although one of his poems, "Hell Gate," definitely stands out above the sentimental "Athlete Dying Young" sort of Housman poem.

I also happen to like the great Victorian
nonsense poets, Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Maybe that upsets my neat theory about the meaning of a poem being important, but I would say that the appeal of "The Jabberwocky," lies in the fact that the supposedly nonsensical words actually seem to mean something to us. They aren't words we recognize, but they call up something from childhood which makes sense in the context of insanity. Same goes for Lear and his "runcible spoon."

There are two other Victorians I've encountered recently who are very interesting but whom I haven't managed to read all that extensively. They are William Ernest Henley and John Davidson-a Scottish balladeer in the best possible tradition.

And after the Victorians? People tend to believe that the modernist revolt was born out of a reaction against these poets, but really, it came in the midst of a whole stream of gooey Edwardian and Georgian poetry. By "gooey" I mean that it was, on the whole, motivated by a lot of good-fellow boosterism, a lot of hearty patriotism and Old Etonian values. Not that it was always bad poetry. As I've said, I still can't resist the verse of Kipling, even though his ideas are totally against my own. If you seek that feeling of "neatness," of rhymes which fit nicely together and seem to tie everything up like ribbons, then Kipling is the place to go. "Danny Deever," "Gentlemen Rankers," even that horrible "stiff-upper lip" bit in "If-": my intellect rebels against it but I can't resist the thrill of the rhymes.

Another gooey post-Victorian would be Rupert Brooke, although he doesn't have the narrative or musical gifts of Kipling. He wrote a lot of fairly lousy poems during the lead up to the First World War comparing stout patriots to "hearts unmoved by honor." After the likes of him, Wilfred Owen comes as a real breath of fresh air: and here we come to another of my all-time favorites (I know that I probably throw the word around so much it's lost all meaning, but Owen is definitely worthy of it). "Dulce et Decorum Est" is probably what could be called an "obvious poem," but I think I've tried to make it clear that obviousness doesn't deprive a poem of all value-in fact, it can increase it. Poems, I believe, were meant to be read aloud, to be sung even, and the meanings should not be so obscure that you need an encyclopedia and a biography of the poet close at hand to make any sense of them. But despite, or perhaps because of its obviousness, "Dulce et Decorum Est," took the wind out of me in a truly startling way when I first read it. The Owen poems I've encountered since have had the same effect, every single one of them. That's a very rare treat-with most poets at least a portion of their work leaves me yawning. True, I haven't read all of Owen (and, unfortunately, he didn't live to produce a great deal, thanks to the war), but everything of his I've encountered has bowled me over. Owen's mission, of course, wasn't an aesthetic one, but simply to reveal "the pity of war," as he put it. The pity of it! That's just it! If poetry is meant to inspire certain emotions then Owen was dead-on, and I don't think he gives enough credit to his own aesthetic gifts. Isaac Rosenberg is another excellent war poet, and what little of him I've read I've enjoyed.

Before I move on to the modernists, I have to look at American poetry in general, since a lot of modernism was imported by American ex-pats.

Of course, I am an American, and as such, I have to give credit where credit is due. American poetry was more or less born out of that band of feel-gooders, those warm old Unitarians, the "Fireside Poets." That is: Longfellow, Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and so forth. And even though his themes, his intellectual milieu, and everything else about him are so different, I would list Poe along with the others for the simple reason that he occupies the same position as mental furniture in my mind. All of these American poets wrote verses which seem to have been a part of our lives since before we could even read. That's why the "Fireside" label is so accurate-these poets give off that warm glow, that faint sense of American nostalgia and familiarity. I wouldn't list any of them among my favorite poets, but you really have to be cold not to get a secret pleasure out of "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere." But what's more, these poets also wrote some truly excellent poems which don't give off any hallmark-card nostalgia and are powerful in their own right. For instance, Whittier's "Ichabod," and "What the Birds Said." True, he was responsible for the reprehensible "In School Days," but even that has a certain wet, soppy charm. And Longfellow was truly an excellent poet in my opinion, a man, like Tennyson, capable of coming up with obvious, catchy poems which would be memorized in countless class-rooms, as well as more troubling, personal, and searching poems. And Poe? Well, he's jolly good fun. That's all you can really say for him.

Who are my other favorite American poets? A lot of the truly iconic ones have so far failed to gain my attention. Whitman, for example. Maybe I just haven't encountered him properly yet, but his long, half-prose lines with their non-rhymes never really gave me the thrill I'm after. Dickinson has certainly impressed me; she could be one of the better American poets out there. Particularly her short and troubling poems, such as "I never heard the word ‘escape'" or "A toad can die of light." But I haven't explored her work extensively enough to really list her as a personal favorite. If I we were to get to my personal favorites, they would have to be Edgar Lee Masters, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Vachel Lindsay, and Carl Sandburg.

I haven't read the complete "Spoon River Anthology," but I've read enough of it to know that Masters is one of the best there is. Something about his verse sketches strike a chord deep in my American core-there's a weird nostalgia and recognition associated with Masters which I don't get from any sentimental poems about childhood or the past. Masters writes about the real America and there is nothing idealized or false about his portrait.

Edward Arlington Robinson seems almost to fit in with the same tradition. He's one of those poets I remember enjoying but who doesn't leave me with any individual verses which echo through my mind over and over again. Still, his sad portraits of lonely, constrained people, as in "Miniver Cheevy," and "Mr. Flood's Party," definitely affect me.

Dunbar is one of the best and most versatile poets I've encountered. He's the sort of writer who can move between different styles, dialects, voices, and tones, and still come out with great poems. What's more, his poems are all great in different ways! His dialect poems and his (what's the word?) "straightforward" poems, are wonderful, but they also seem to have come from different people.

I'm also fond of Stephen Crane, but only because I don't quite know what to make of his short little narrative poems, sometimes of only four or five lines. He doesn't give me "the thrill," but he does leave me with a strange confusion, which is by no means a bad thing.

Vachel Lindsay is a poet I've only recently discovered, but what I've encountered so far is very interesting. His use of sound, sheer noise, in his poems is unlike anything I've read, but he also wrote some fairly straightforward verse, like "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight," which is powerful stuff. Sandburg, meanwhile, is more obvious. There's rarely any doubt as to what he is trying to say-he reminds me of Owen in that sense-but as someone currently living in Chicago, I can say that no one understood the city better. My favorite Sandburg poems are his more overtly political pieces, such as "They Will Say," and "I am the People, the Mob." And I don't just enjoy the pieces because I share Sandburg's democratic socialist views-as I've pointed out, I enjoy a lot of poems which express views I find distasteful. But Sandburg, like Owen, gets to the heart of things, "the pity" of them, if you will.

Now I suppose I have to deal with the modernists, and I have to say, I think they have done poetry more harm than good. Not that they shouldn't have existed; probably the strictness of meter and rhyme ought to be broken up occasionally. I'm all for doing away with arbitrary rules in writing. But it was the modernists who infected poetry with this notion that it ought to be obscure and esoteric. Many of the modernists leave me unimpressed. Pound, for instance, doesn't interest me much. H.D. is too deliberately snooty and classical. Williams? He was an interesting poet, even an excellent one. But not a personal favorite of mine. I have to give credit to Eliot for being a truly great poet-probably the best of the modernists-but only because his poems make sense. He may be "difficult," but he is by no means unapproachable, as I find Wallace Stevens, Gertrude Stein, and others to be. E.E. Cummings and Marianne Moore were both quite good. I haven't read much Moore, but "Poetry" and "Silence" both impressed me profoundly. But again, both Cummings and Moore are decidedly understandable and approachable-they just choose to convey their message in experimental ways.

As we get into more recent poetry, my sympathies definitely tend toward the other side of the Atlantic. I haven't read extensively in the Auden circle-for instance, I haven't read any Spender or Day-Lewis-but Auden himself was a truly great poet. There's the well-known "Musee des Beaux Arts," but I also enjoy "Epitaph on a Tyrant," "Old People's Home," "The Unknown Citizen," and others. Auden, to me, represents a return to the virtues of the Romantic Revolution-and here, I'm giving a different interpretation of that revolution than is generally offered, but we'll come back to that. Other modern Brits I've enjoyed are Geroge Barker and Edwin Muir.

I do enjoy some 20th-century American poets. For instance, Richard Wright, not generally thought of as a poet, wrote one of my all-time favorites, "Between the World and Me." I'm also partial to Langston Hughes. But my most modern "personal favorite" poet is a very English one-Philip Larkin. A part of "The Movement" which opposed the neo-Romanticism of Dylan Thomas, Larkin has written some truly eerie, violent, and beautiful poems. They are fuelled by a lot of misogyny at times, but as a unique and powerful poet, you can't beat Philip Larkin. "This be the Verse," "A Study of Reading Habits," "Aubade," "High Windows": I could go on. Maybe it seems strange that a lover of the Romantics would prefer Larkin to a neo-Romantic like Dylan Thomas. But I do, and the reason, I believe, is that Thomas got the Romantics all wrong. He and the rest of the world saw the Romantics as a generation of long-haired, sensitive types. But remember, Lyrical Ballads, the book which really launched the revolution in poetry, was not meant to be a showcase of sentimentality-its purpose was to rediscover the traditional folk-ballad. In other words, to bring the so-called "common people" back into poetry. It was a very democratic and revolutionary movement.

So what is my guiding principle in reading poetry? I look for "the thrill," as I've explained, but I've also read enough poetry by now to know where I can find it. Sometimes I find it (and this is the guilty pleasure) in "neatness"-in nice, familiar, and predictable verses. But I also find it in verses which get back to the heart of the traditional ballad-which combine musicality, narrative, and a sense of what life is all about. Whenever poetry is furthest from the Ivory Tower, that's when it is at its best. So, to return to the title of the essay, I'll offer up a list of my favorite poets. First of all would be the Romantics and their immediate forbears: particularly Shelley, Blake, and Robert Burns (does he count?). Other favorites would include Browning, Auden, Wilfred Owen, and Philip Larkin from England (although Auden was almost a full-fledged American), and Dunbar, Sandburg, and Masters from the United States.