The Best Loved Poems of the American People Book

I'm not positive this is the exact one, my cover looks different, but this is the best poetry book I've ever owned. It has Browning, Poe, Wheelcox, EVERYONE! Great read. This inspired me to publish my second book and write more poetry. I'm not positive this is the exact one, my cover looks different, but this is the best poetry book I've ever owned. It has Browning, Poe, Wheelcox, EVERYONE! Great read. This inspired me to publish my second book and write more poetry.

I purchased this book for more nostalgia value then anything else. My mother read from this book every Christmas Eve as we sat around the fireplace. I imagine the fact that she had to find poems that would appeal to my dad, my brother and I is the reason why I now associate The Charge of the Light Brigade and Casey at the Bat with Christmas.



And though I am aware of its maudlin qualities, I think Annie and Willie's Prayer will remain a Christmas staple for me. I purchased this book for more nostalgia value then anything else. My mother read from this book every Christmas Eve as we sat around the fireplace. I imagine the fact that she had to find poems that would appeal to my dad, my brother and I is the reason why I now associate The Charge of the Light Brigade and Casey at the Bat with Christmas.



And though I am aware of its maudlin qualities, I think Annie and Willie's Prayer will remain a Christmas staple for me.

My mother in 1964 gave this book to my grandfather. When he died my aunt somehow got it, she recently returned it to my mother. I immediately procured it for my collection. Its spine is broken from ware, I can tell my grandfather loved it. I do too, it is wonderful collection of poetry, It has some of my favorite poems and some new ones. 'Strictly Germ-Proof' is a wonderful humorous that my mother and aunt read when they were young and is now a favorite of mine.

Oh how I adore this book! I have had this lovely and very old book of poems for a long, long time and not a day goes by without me dipping in and pulling out a treasure to read and reread and savor. Poems can be like gentle rain or a mysterious fog swirling about us. There is magic to poetry and this book is a wonderful balm. If you find a copy, do grab hold of it. This is not something you will read once then put away to get dusty.

I am 15 years old and found this poetry book at a used book store for a dollar, and decided to buy it since I loved reading and wanted to make myself more 'rounded', though I did not expect to enjoy it. Now if you find my copy you see sticky notes and books marks marking all my favorites. I read this often when I can't sleep despite the fact that is has an old cigar smell, and dog eared pages, courtesy of its previous owner. Wonderful collection!

The section titles of this book invite you to sample the feast within: Childhood and youth, Humor and whimsey and on and on. This is a book I'll never tire of holding. Memories take me back to sheltered times. I may have been a benighted fool but these poems never ceased to please and instruct: from the tale of the organist to the story of two glasses one for water and one for wine.



Some of the best from Wordsworth and other stalwarts as well as unknown authors who nonetheless left coverlets of soft, warm words that comforted and encouraged us.



I love it...still!! Finished date is "no later than".

I remember learning to read from this book. One line still sticks in my mind "...boots, slog, slogging over Africa..." Not the best poem, but one a six-year-old could read.



My dad had this book and read from it all the time. Christmas just wouldn't have been the same without hearing "Annie & Willie's Prayer." When the spine broke and the book fell apart, I bought my own copy. Now it is also broken and falling apart. This is a wonderful collection.

I first discovered this gem on my mother's book case when I was in junior high. I opened it to find her maiden name written on the inside cover. I underlined so much and dog-egged it so much throughout the years that it has become my own. I took it to college with me, and when I graduated I read from it that morning to collect my thoughts. Needless to say, I love this book I first discovered this gem on my mother's book case when I was in junior high. I opened it to find her maiden name written on the inside cover. I underlined so much and dog-egged it so much throughout the years that it has become my own. I took it to college with me, and when I graduated I read from it that morning to collect my thoughts. Needless to say, I love this book

My Mother read to me from this book when I was a young girl. She read poems that tell a story, and short inspirational poems. I carry many of these thoughts and words with me and they are a source of joy and peace. I would recommend that all children be feed a healthy dose of this book to nourish their minds and hearts.

Chock-full-o-classics. Originally I bought this book to hunt down a reading for a wedding, but it's very soothing and/or nostalgic to browse. Children especially love the poems that tell a story. They are arranged by helpful themes: love and friendship, inspirational, home and mother, humor, etc.

This book will forever hold great childhood memories for me, mostly of time well spent with my Dad. I can still read the poems over and over. I love the classics, the humorous, the poems that tell a story...all of them! The pages are literally falling out of my copy!

Received this book for a wedding gift.

Includes poems that I have read again and again. The poems cover all aspects of life. A couple of the poems has given me pause.

I did not think much of the gift on our wedding day but after over 30 years of marriage, I highly value this book of poems.

Poems to lift the spirit and inspire the mind. Very nice collection of almost exclusively American poems that I purchased in October of 2001 after finding a need to add more poetry to my life.

This is how I first learned to read. My dad and I would sit and read random poems from the old copy he had from his childhood. It's a great collection of classic poetry. This is how I first learned to read. My dad and I would sit and read random poems from the old copy he had from his childhood. It's a great collection of classic poetry.

I grew up with my father reading me poems out of this book, and I was thrilled to find my own edition so I can re-read the best loved poems of my American childhood.

A great selection of the best poetry ever written. I have found some of my favorite poets through reading this compilation.

Received this book for my graduation from high school 50 in 1968. It has many poems that are often quoted. Just a good book for anyone's shelf. Received this book for my graduation from high school 50 in 1968. It has many poems that are often quoted. Just a good book for anyone's shelf.

A great collection of poems from many different poets.

This book is so wonderful!

One of my all-time favorite books ever!

Gift from Alma to Dad, Christmas 1968.

Includes "My Christmas Train" by Ethel Ceclia Eccles

Love this book! I never tire of reading and re-reading this collection.

A treasure trove of various poetry. I've had my book since the 70s and still return to find a golden gem when needed.

Great collection - many of the most-quoted poems; things you've heard without realizing they are from a poem.

A poem a day! love it. LOVE the country cover.

Versifier's delight!



There's a distinct nineteenth century feel to this wide-ranging collection of mostly American verse, as though perhaps one might encounter the book by the bedside of Huck Finn's benefactor, the Widow Douglas. Ah, but it's really not that old. First published in 1936 and dedicated to the memory of Adolph S. Ochs, long-time publisher of the New York Times, by editor Hazel Felleman, this is a collection for Everyman. The fact that it's still in print is tribute to Felleman's goo Versifier's delight!



There's a distinct nineteenth century feel to this wide-ranging collection of mostly American verse, as though perhaps one might encounter the book by the bedside of Huck Finn's benefactor, the Widow Douglas. Ah, but it's really not that old. First published in 1936 and dedicated to the memory of Adolph S. Ochs, long-time publisher of the New York Times, by editor Hazel Felleman, this is a collection for Everyman. The fact that it's still in print is tribute to Felleman's good sense of what people like. No known species of poetry is shunned. Verse, ditty and doggerel stand side by side with Shelley and Keats (but no Shakespeare!). There are rousing Sousa stanzas and homey hymn-like lines respecting home and hearth, flag and country, and tributes to the dog. There are also epigrams and epithets and limericks and songs sung blue. Felleman arranges the contents by subject matter, beginning with "Love and Friendship" followed by "Inspiration" through "Patriotism and War," "Memory and Grief," etc., ending with "Nature," "Animals," and "Various Themes." There's a slew of poems by "Unknown," some of them doing a mighty justice to anonymity, e.g., "Get a Transfer" ("If you are on the Gloomy Line/ Get a transfer/If you're inclined to fret and pine/Get a transfer...") There are "answers" to popular poems, and burlesques and parodies aplenty. Here you'll find, if you've been looking (and even if you haven't), "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines" and "Animal Fair" ("The birds and the bees were there!"), and Joyce Kilmer's much, much maligned "Trees" ("...only God can make a tree"), but also Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and Poe's "The Raven," and Keats's "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and William Wordsworth's "Daffodils."



Did I mention there's no Shakespeare? One wonders why. Also no William Blake. However there is a poem entitled "A Woman's Answer to the Vampire" by Felicia Blake after Kipling's "The Vampire" ("A fool there was and he made his prayer/(Even as you and I!)/To a rag and bone and hank of hair...,"etc., answered with "A fool there was, and she lowered her pride,/(Even as you and I)/To a bunch of conceit in a masculine hide"). Naturally there is no T. S. Eliot, but there is an Ebenezer Elliott who wrote, "When Wilt Thou Save the People?" ("O, God of mercy, when?"), and strangely no Ogden Nash, who might seem at home here--but perhaps there was a copyright problem. His "answer" to Joyce Kilmer goes, "I think that I shall never see/A billboard lovely as a tree./Indeed, unless the billboards fall/I'll never see a tree at all."



Lest you think I am slyly making fun of this book, let me tell you, I love Kipling's "If," and if it weren't for that unfortunate last line, I think it would be close to a great poem. I also love poems like Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride," (included) and Henry Clay Work's "The Ship that Never Returned," which inspired a take off tune by the Kingston Trio in the fifties, "Did he ever return?/No he never returned/His fate is still unlearned/He rides beneath the streets of Boston/He's the man who never returned." I also love stuff like Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins" and Alan Seeger's romantic, "I Have a Rendezvous with Death." And where else can you find a poem by Abraham Lincoln? Or a religious ditty innocently titled, "No Sects in Heaven" (Huh?) Or one called "To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train ("O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,/Missing so much and so much?") And I positively delight in Robert W. Service (three printed here, including "The Spell of the Yukon," but alas no "The Cremation of Sam McGee," although there's a nice take off by Edward E. Paramore, Jr. called, "The Ballad of Yukon Jake"). There is even a poem reputed to have been dictated to a spiritual medium by the dead Edgar Alan Poe called "Streets of Baltimore" rendered in the rhythms of "The Raven." (Sorry about that.) "Quoth the raven: Nevermore!" becoming (gulp) "thro' the streets of Baltimore!"



Furthermore I love "Poems that Tell a Story"! Although Browning's "My Last Duchess" didn't make the cut, there is here the truly delightful "The Enchanted Shirt" by John Hay, a tale about a king who needed to sleep a night in the shirt of a happy man. And of course there's "Casey at the Bat" followed by "Casey's Revenge" and "Casey--Twenty Years Later." (Some purists might point out that with first base open, the correct strategy was to give Casey an intentional pass; but I ask you, where's the fun in that?)



I could go on, but I think the picture's getting clear. This collection really is a revelation of the American psyche as seen by a newspaper person seventy years ago. (Felleman was for fifteen years the editor of the Queries and Answers page of The New York Times Book Review.) As such this should be required reading for historians and sociologists alike.



--Dennis Littrell, author of the mystery novel, "Teddy and Teri"

I had determined to read a book of poetry this year that I had not already read and this book published in 1936 made me curious to see what sort of things were the "best loved poetry of the American people"in that era. I marked a good many poems that I thought were wonderful and was horrified by nearly an equal amount that were horribly racist. I am glad I took time to mark ones that I liked because it is unlikely that I will ever read through this volume again. The book covered a variety of sub I had determined to read a book of poetry this year that I had not already read and this book published in 1936 made me curious to see what sort of things were the "best loved poetry of the American people"in that era. I marked a good many poems that I thought were wonderful and was horrified by nearly an equal amount that were horribly racist. I am glad I took time to mark ones that I liked because it is unlikely that I will ever read through this volume again. The book covered a variety of subjects and topics and reflected a quite different time in its thinking.

I grew up with this book in my home. As a kid I was drawn to the entertaining poems like "I had but fifty cents". That early exposure to poetry grew into a life-long love of poetry. I still have that old well worn book that Mother rebound and repaired while working in a library. Many of the poems are colloquial in nature, no Byron or great romantic authors. A lot of patriotic and faith based works. I still enjoy it when sleep is elusive. I grew up with this book in my home. As a kid I was drawn to the entertaining poems like "I had but fifty cents". That early exposure to poetry grew into a life-long love of poetry. I still have that old well worn book that Mother rebound and repaired while working in a library. Many of the poems are colloquial in nature, no Byron or great romantic authors. A lot of patriotic and faith based works. I still enjoy it when sleep is elusive.

I feel a bit weird writing a review of a book like this. And a lot of this book is totally uninteresting to me. There are, for instance, lots of Victorian poems intended to make children find chores inspiring.



Still, I'm very glad I have this book. Whenever I flip through it I find poems I like. I think having a book like this around is a good way to get into poetry. I feel a bit weird writing a review of a book like this. And a lot of this book is totally uninteresting to me. There are, for instance, lots of Victorian poems intended to make children find chores inspiring.



Still, I'm very glad I have this book. Whenever I flip through it I find poems I like. I think having a book like this around is a good way to get into poetry.