From ancient epics to modern masterpieces, poetry has shaped our understanding of humanity. Join us as we celebrate the wordsmiths whose verses continue to resonate across time and cultures! Our countdown honors those poets whose powerful words have transcended borders, challenged conventions, and touched hearts worldwide. Which poet's work speaks most deeply to your soul?
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00:00The comedy of Dante Alighieri of Florence begins here, and so it does.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for those writers whose powerful and affecting words continue to inspire generations.
00:14And so there's something universal about that song, since all of us are caged in some way or another.
00:23Number 10. Rabindranath Tagore
00:25The language of poetry is universal, that desire to connect with humanity unhindered by borders or nations.
00:32As if some ancient mist heard in a moment lifted from my sight, and the morning light on the face of the world revealed an inner radiance of joy.
00:43This has allowed diverse voices to be discovered and celebrated over the years, including that of Rabindranath Tagore.
00:49This Bengali poet often centered his focus on the human spirit, writing about love and nature with a passion that leapt off the page.
00:56His love of music made many of his poems feel lyrical, having been designed to be sung with instrumental or vocal accompaniment.
01:03Tagore also didn't feel limited with regards to his verse, sometimes rhyming, but other times composing in a looser and freer style.
01:10Number 9. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
01:12They may have physical might to crush us, but we can invade and take possession of the most precious territory of all, the hearts and minds of men.
01:20We don't feel that it's a disservice to stress the importance of one singular artistic work.
01:25After all, wouldn't anybody putting pen to paper desperately desire a piece as influential as The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner to wind up on their creative resume?
01:33This is one of the works most closely associated with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet from the Romantic period with a legacy that endures today.
01:41The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner was kept alive in the modern era with musical adaptations from the likes of Iron Maiden, while Coleridge's artistic legacy remains secure.
01:51His was a world of imagination that also felt creatively tied to ideas of God, an exploration of humanity's relationship with both the mundane and the unknown.
02:01It will be ready soon. Ready for you to see, that is.
02:07Number 8. Pablo Neruda
02:08They may always say that actions speak louder than words, but let's also never forget the power those same words possess when spoken in the face of adversity.
02:22Chile's Pablo Neruda was a poet whose works could just as often be substituted for political diatribes as they could more intensely personal reflections of love.
02:30Yet Neruda was also devoted to the ideology of communism, which was outlawed for a time in Chile, starting in 1948.
02:37My passport says Pablo Neruda, but here it says Reyes.
02:42Because Neruda is the artistic name.
02:46It's my name of war.
02:47This didn't stop Neruda from working or writing, even in the face of those who desired his death.
02:53Pablo Neruda may not have lived to see Chile's Communist Party legalized in 1990,
02:57but his reputation for integrity and passion have ignited influential fires that will never burn out.
03:03In 1970, Neruda became politically active for the last time,
03:08when the Communist Party selected him as its candidate for the presidential elections,
03:13so that the left could use his fame as a basis for building popular unity.
03:18Number 7. Rumi
03:19It's human nature, sometimes, to desire a distillation of an artist's work,
03:24a sort of pared-down itemization of quotes and epithets from which we can then judge that work for ourselves.
03:29The poetry of the Persian poet Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi has seen many memorable quotes over the hundreds of years since the man's death in 1273.
03:37Decidedly small quips, such as,
03:39What you seek is seeking you, or try something different, surrender, say a lot with very little.
03:44And it's this poetic iceberg of sorts that makes investigating Rumi so interesting for new scholars.
03:50It's comforting, in a way, to know that a writer who lived so long ago
03:53still feels so tapped into the universality of human love and relationships.
03:58Number 6. John Keats
03:59The world is full of misery and heartbreak,
04:03pain, sickness, and oppression.
04:07We see not the balance of good and evil.
04:11We're in a mist.
04:12His is one of those softball sort of names that was destined for inclusion on a list such as this one.
04:18John Keats was a legend of Britain's Romantic period,
04:21but he wasn't celebrated as such while he was alive and working.
04:24It wasn't until after his death that Keats' ode to a Nightingale or Hyperion would be rediscovered
04:30and placed alongside such contemporaries as Lord Byron or Percy Bysshe Shelley.
04:34Hooted from the stage of life.
04:37Shelley thought so.
04:39His friend thought so.
04:41There was only one, it seemed, who didn't.
04:44That was John Keats himself.
04:46Keats was a wordsmith whose language almost felt chewed and savored prior to hitting the page.
04:51His poems were often beautiful, but also realistic.
04:54Keats knew that this life was fleeting and celebrated love and friendship during that all-too-short time we all have upon this earth.
05:02Number 5.
05:03Maya Angelou.
05:04I say, ha ha ha, yes ma'am.
05:08For working's sake.
05:10I'm too proud to bend and too poor to break.
05:13So, ha ha ha ha, I laugh.
05:17This is another choice that's gonna surprise absolutely no one.
05:20Maya Angelou was an activist whose very distinct-sounding voice and easily replicated cadence
05:25has allowed many comedians and performers to do impressions of her work.
05:29Yet these imitations never belittle the content of Angelou's overall legacy,
05:33which is largely regarded today as formative when it comes to describing a contemporary and emotional human experience.
05:39It was a very important literary feat.
05:42Because it said, it's okay for a black woman to say what happened to her in public in a literary form.
05:52Angelou possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of language that was matched only by her ability
05:57to choose just the right words to convey just the right feelings.
06:00It's a rare and very special power that has continued to resonate for generations.
06:05And when I finally understood what I had to do,
06:09then I started writing and I took my hotel room and I went to it every morning
06:15and I sat there and wrote about my country.
06:20Number four, John Milton.
06:22When I consider how my light is spent,
06:25ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
06:30with God exact a labor light denied, I fondly ask.
06:35It's certainly true that John Milton was no one-trick pony when it comes to his epic and sprawling works of poetry.
06:42Both Samson Agonistes and Lycidas remain important cultural touchstones and enduring examples of Milton's talent.
06:48Yet this English icon will always remain tethered to the masterpiece that is Paradise Lost.
06:53It's a heavy-duty piece that muses upon humanity's place in the world,
06:57as well as its relationship with a heavenly creator.
06:59Atmospheric descriptions of Satan's fall from grace are juxtaposed against apologetic descriptions of Adam and Eve
07:05within the context of their own fall.
07:06It's hopelessly and gorgeously evocative stuff that's served as a crux of English poetry for hundreds and hundreds of years.
07:13Like the blind Samson, Milton finally triumphs.
07:19All is best, though we oft doubt what the unsearchable dispose of highest wisdom brings about.
07:28Number 3. Dante Alighieri
07:30On the left you can see Dante and Virgil, and on the right you can see the whirlwind of lovers,
07:36which includes Paolo and Francesca.
07:39This is another poet whose talent for telling mythological and epic adventures
07:42remains relevant for so many scholars and historians.
07:46Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy was a monumental achievement during the Middle Ages,
07:51cementing his reputation as one of Italy's most iconic poets.
07:54The Inferno section of Divina Comedia has become particularly famous for its often macabre and explicit depiction of hell.
08:01This includes not only its demonic denizens,
08:04but also those famous figures from history who remain tortured and imprisoned within its depths.
08:09Beyond this, however, Dante's skill with words exists beyond so many contemporaries from his time.
08:14His extraordinary ability to paint with words has inspired artists around the world to visualize his verses.
08:22Number 2. William Shakespeare
08:24It's truly incredible and mind-boggling to think of just how many contemporary stories
08:29still take their story cues from the works of the bard, William Shakespeare.
08:33Classics such as Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth
08:36all possess universal themes that have enabled them to be updated for generation after generation.
08:40Of all men else I have avoided thee, but get thee back.
08:45My soul is too much charged with blood of thine already.
08:47It's sort of like the bones of a good song that can be played on piano, acoustic guitar, or with a full band.
08:53The structure is sound, and not limited to just one specific avenue.
08:57So too has the work of Shakespeare transcended writing and poetry
09:01to become a proving ground for actors and artists from all walks of life.
09:05Good sir.
09:07I heard you were a poet.
09:09I heard you were a poet of no words.
09:15Before we unveil our top pick, here are some honorable mentions.
09:19Sylvia Plath, A Tragic Death, does not define her creative legacy.
09:23That she was creating the situation in which she could write Ariel, I'm absolutely convinced of.
09:30She needed to be that amount destructive of both herself and everything that mattered to her.
09:35Emily Dickinson, this talented poet, wasn't properly appreciated during her time.
09:40So I think it's acceptable to understand that she wrote most of her poetry in her room,
09:47perhaps as she indicated once or twice, after the others in the family had gone to bed.
09:54Sappho spoke from the heart about subjects of love.
09:57Written about 600 B.C., in it, Sappho talks to someone close to her.
10:02A sister, maybe, or her mother, about the fate of her two brothers.
10:08Simply leave it to the gods.
10:11Walt Whitman worked free from the constraints of rhyme and meter.
10:14Whitman would revise and republish Leaves throughout his life,
10:18but it was the first edition that changed everything.
10:21I think it's the holy book of American poetry.
10:24Edgar Allan Poe, the macabre maestro of mystery.
10:28There is so much emotion in those stories that we sometimes misread only for horror or for shock.
10:38But really what it is, is a kind of love.
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10:56Number 1. Homer
11:01Every time you pick up one of those stories, you're on the edge of talking about something archetypal,
11:07something that's always with us, something that's wonderfully generalized.
11:10Casting our collective eyes and ears to the age of antiquity,
11:14we can still observe the reverberating echoes of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad.
11:18These two foundational works of Greek literature are enough to cement Homer's place as a grandmaster,
11:23a craftsman whose stories of adventure united the ancient world.
11:26This is a crossroads of myth, magic, and morality that are adventure stories, sure,
11:31but also hugely important to Greece's cultural identity.
11:35These are poems that feel cinematic because they are cinematic,
11:38as evidenced by the multitude of sword and sandal films that have adapted either the Odyssey or Iliad to the silver screen.
11:44Now you know who you're fighting.
11:52Is poetry a lost or dying art?
11:54Where do you think it belongs within our current society?
11:57Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
11:59So I don't know who Homer is.
12:01All I know is that I'm entertained magnificently.
12:05I've heard a lot of truth.
12:12mesmerism.com
12:13Arrogicent playing