“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness."

--Robert Frost

Below is a list of famous poems by famous poets that students should know going into a college literary class. Like all poems, these should be reread as once gets older, as the poems will change meaning with the reader.

Mr. Coon’s American Canon Reading List
 

Benjamin Franklin (1706--1790)

• Letters of Silence Dogood
• Autobiography of Ben Franklin
• Poor Richard’s Almanack

 
Thomas Paine (1737–1809)

• “Common Sense”

 
Washington Irving (1783–1859)

• “Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
• “Rip Van Winkle”

 
James Fennimore Cooper (1789–1851)

• The Last of the Mohicans

 
Catherine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867)

• Hope Leslie

 
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)

• The House of Seven Gables
• The Scarlet Letter
•  “Young Goodman Brown”
• “Rappaccini’s Daughter”

 
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

• “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• “A Cask of Amontillado”
• “The Tell-Tale Heart”
• “The Pit and the Pendulum”
• “The Purloined Letter”
• “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”

 
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin

 
Frederick Douglass (1817–1882)

• Life of an American Slave

 
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

• Walden
• “Civil Disobedience”

 
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

• Leaves of Grass

 
Herman Melville (1819–1891)

• Moby Dick
• “Bartleby the Scrivener”
• “Benito Cereno”

 
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888)

• Little Women

 
Mark Twain (1835–1910)

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

 
Henry James (1843–1916)

• The Portrait of a Lady
• The Turn of the Screw

 
Kate Chopin (1851–1904)

• The Awakening

 
O. Henry (1862–1910)

•  “The Cop and the Anthem”
• “The Gift of the Magi”
• “The Ransom of Red Chief”
• “A Retrieved Reformation”

 
Edith Wharton (1862–1937)

• The Age of Innocence
• Ethan Fromme

 
Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950)

• Spoon River Anthology

 
Stephen Crane (1871–1900)

• The Red Badge of Courage

 
Theodore Dreiser (1871–1845)

• An American Tragedy
• Sister Carrie

 
Willa Cather (1873–1947)

• My Antonia
• O Pioneers!

 
Jack London (1876–1916)

• The Call of the Wild
• “To Build a Fire”

 
Upton Sinclair (1878–1968)

• The Jungle

 
Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951)

• Main Street
• Babbitt

 
 
 
Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953)

• The Hairy Ape 
• The Iceman Cometh
• Long Day’s Journey into Night 

 
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973)

• The Good Earth

 
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

• The Great Gatsby

 
William Faulkner (1897–1962)

• As I Lay Dying
• Light in August
• The Sound and the Fury
• “A Rose for Emily”

 
Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)

• Our Town

 
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

• A Farewell to Arms
• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• The Old Man and the Sea
• The Sun Also Rises
• “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”

 
John Steinbeck (1902–1968)

• Cannery Row
• East of Eden
• The Grapes of Wrath
• Of Mice and Men
• The Pearl
• Travels with Charley

 
Zora Neale Hurston (1903–1960)

• Their Eyes Were Watching God

 
Richard Wright (1908–1960)

• Black Boy
• Native Son

 
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983)

• A Streetcar Named Desire
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 
• The Glass Menagerie 

 
William Burroughs (1914–1997)

• Naked Lunch

 
Anthony Burgess (1917-1993)

• A Clockwork Orange

 
Saul Bellow (1915–2005)

• The Adventures of Augie March
  
  

Arthur Miller (1915–2005)

• Death of a Salesman 
• The Crucible 

 
Shirley Jackson (1916–1965)

• “The Lottery”

 
J. D. Salinger (1919–2010)

• Catcher in the Rye
• “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”

 
Ray Bradbury (1920–2012)

• The Martian Chronicles
• Fahrenheit 451
• “A Sound of Thunder”

 
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969)

• On the Road

 
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007)

• Cat’s Cradle
• God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater
• Slaughterhouse-Five
• Welcome to the Monkey House

 
Joseph Heller (1923–1999)

• Catch-22

 
Truman Capote (1924–1984)

• In Cold Blood
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s

 
Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)

• “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

 
Harper Lee (1926–)

• To Kill a Mockingbird

 
Allen Ginsberg (1926--1997)

• “Howl”

 
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927–)

• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Love in the Time of Cholera
• “Innocent Erindera”

 
Edward Albee (1928–)

• The Zoo Story 
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 

 
 
 
E. L. Doctorow (1931– )

• Ragtime

 
Toni Morrison (1931– )

• Beloved

 
Tom Wolfe (1931– )

• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

 
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)

• The Bell Jar

 
John Updike (1932– 2009)

• Rabbit Run
• “A & P”

 
Cormac McCarthy (1933– )

• The Road

 
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936--)

• Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
• The Bad Girl
• The Feast of the Goat

 
Don DeLillo (1936–)

• Underworld
• White Noise

 
John Kennedy Toole (1937–1969)

• A Confederacy of Dunces

 
Rudolfo Anaya (1937–)

• Bless Me, Ultima

 
Hunter S. Thompson (1937--2005)

• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

 
Joyce Carol Oates (1938– )

•  “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”

 
Margaret Atwood (1939– )

• The Handmaid’s Tale

 
Isabel Allende (1942–)

• City of Beasts
• The House of Spirits

 
August Wilson (1945–2005 )

• Joe Turner has Come and Gone
• Fences

 
Tim O’Brien (1946--)

• The Things They Carried

Julia Alvarez (1950–)

• In the Time of the Butterflies
• In the Name of Salome
• How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents

 
Jon Krakauer (1954--)

• Into the Wild
• Under the Banner of Heaven

 
Barbara Kingsolver (1955–)

• Animal Dreams
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
• The Poisonwood Bible

 
Achy Obejas (1956--)

• Days of Awe
• Memory Mambo
• Ruins

 
David Sedaris (1956--)

• Naked
• Me Talk Pretty One Day

 
Chuck Palahniuk (1962--)

• Choke
• Fight Club
• Haunted

 
David Foster Wallace (1962–2008)

• Consider the Lobster
• Infinite Jest

 
Michael Chabon (1963--)

• Yiddish Policeman’s Union
•  Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

 
Malcolm Gladwell (1963--)

• The Tipping Point
• Blink
• Outliers

 
Augusten Burroughs (1965--)

• Dry
• Running with Scissors
• The Wolf at the Table

 
Junot Diaz (1968--)

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

 
Dave Eggers (1970--)

• What is the What
• Zeitoun

Mr. Coon’s European Canon Reading List
 

Homer (ca. 8th century BCE)

• The Iliad
• The Odyssey

 
Unknown (ca. 7th century BCE)

• The Epic of Gilgamesh

 
Sophocles (496 BCE-406 BCE)

• Antigone
• Oedipus at Colonus
• Oedipus Rex

 
Euripides (480 BCE-406 BCE)

• Medea
• The Trojan Women

 
Aristophanes (446 BCE–386 BCE)

• The Clouds
• The Frogs
• Lysistrata

 
Plato (424 BCE—348 BCE)

• The Republic
• Symposium

 
Aristotle (384 BCE–322 BCE)

• “On Virtues and Vices”
• “Poetics”

 
Virgil (70 BCE-19 BCE)

• Aeneid
• Eclogues

 
Ovid (43 BCE-17 CE)

• Metamorphoses

 
Marcus Aurelius (121-180)

• Meditations

 
Unknown Medieval Authors

• Beowulf
• Everyman
• The Saga of the Volsungs
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Song of Roland

 
 
Maimonides (1135-1204)

• The Guide for the Perplexed

 
 
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

• Summa Theologica

 
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

• Inferno
• La Vita Nuova

 
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)

• The Canterbury Tales

 
Thomas Malory (1409-1470)

• Le Morte d’Arthur

 
Unknown (13th century)

• The Arabian Nights

 
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

• The Prince

 
Thomas More (1476-1535)

• Utopia

 
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)

• Don Quixote

 
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

• The Faerie Queen

 
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

• Doctor Faustus

 
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

• Hamlet
• Henry IV
• Julius Caesar
• King Lear
• Macbeth
• The Merchant of Venice
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Othello
• Richard III
• Romeo and Juliet
• The Merchant of Venice
• Twelfth Night

 
Lope de Vega (1568-1635)

• Fuenteovejuna

 
John Milton (1608-1674)

• Paradise Lost

 
Moliere (1622-1673)

• The Miser
• The Misanthrope
• Tartuffe

 
John Locke (1632-1704)

• Two Treatises of Government
• “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”

 
Jonathan Swift (1667-1794)

• Gulliver’s Travels
• A Modest Proposal

 
Daniel Defoe (1659-1731)

• Robinson Crusoe

 
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

• “An Essay on Man”
• “The Rape of the Lock”

 
Voltaire (1694--1778

• Candide

 
Jane Austin (1775-1817)

• Emma
• Pride and Prejudice
• Sense and Sensibility

 
Mary Shelley (1797-1851)

• Frankenstein

 
Alexandre Dumas (1802--1870)

• The Man in the Iron Mask
• The Three Musketeers

 
Victor Hugo (1802--1870)

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame
• Les Miserables

 
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

• A Christmas Carol
• Great Expectations
• Oliver Twist
• A Tale of Two Cities

 
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)

• Jane Eyre

 
Emily Bronte (1818-1848)

• Wuthering Heights

 
George Eliot (1819-1880)

• Middlemarch

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821--1881)

• The Brother Karamazov
• Crime and Punishment
• Notes from the Underground

 
Jules Verne (1828–1905)

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• Around the World in Eighty Days
• Journey to the Center of the Earth

 
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)

• Anna Karenina

 
Henrik Ibsen (1828--1906)

• A Doll’s House
• Enemy of the People

 
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

• Tess of the D’Ubervilles

 
Bram Stoker (1847-1912)

• Dracula

 
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Treasure Island

 
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

•  The Importance of Being Earnest
• “The Critic as Artist”

 
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

• Pygmalion

 
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

• Heart of Darkness

 
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

 
Anton Chekhov (1860--1904)

• The Cherry Orchard
• The Three Sisters

 
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

• The Jungle Book
• Just So Stories

 
H.G. Wells (1866-1946)

• The Invisible Man
• The Island of Dr. Moreau

 
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

• Of Human Bondage

 
E.M. Forster (1879-1970)

• A Passage to India
• A Room with a View

 
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

• Mrs. Dalloway
• To the Lighthouse
• “A Room of One’s Own”

 
James Joyce (1882--1941)

• Dubliners
• Portrait of the Artist
• Ulysses

 
Franz Kafka (1883--1924)

• The Metamorphosis
• The Trial

 
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

• Lady Chatterley’s Lover
• Sons and Lovers
•  “On Pornography and Obscenity”

 
Jean Rhys (1890--1979)

• Wide Sargasso Sea

 
Richard Connell (1893–1949)

• “The Most Dangerous Game”

 
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

• Brave New World

 
Vladimir Nabokov (1899--1977)

• Lolita

 
George Orwell (1903-1950)

• 1984
• Animal Farm

 
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)

• Brideshead Revisited
• Scoop

 
Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)

• Waiting for Godot

 
Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989)

• Rebecca

 
Eugene Ionesco (1909--1994)

• Rhinoceros

 
 
 
William Golding (1911-1993)

• Lord of the Flies

 
Albert Camus (1913--1960)

• The Stranger

 
Aleksander Solzhentsyn (1918--2008)

• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

 
John Fowles (1926–2005)

• The Collector

 
Elie Wiesel (1928--)

• Night

 
Chinua Achebe (1930--2013)

• Things Fall Apart

 
Salman Rushdie (1947--)

• Midnight’s Children
• The Satanic Verses

 
Kazui Ishiguro (1954—)

•  The Remains of the day
• Never Let Me Go

 
Nick Hornby (1957–)

• High Fidelity
• About a Boy

 
Neil Gaiman (1960–

• American Gods
• Good Omens

 
Mark Mathabane (1960--)

• Kaffir Boy

 
Mark Haddon (1962--)

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

 
Khaled Hosseini (1965--)

• The Kite Runner
• A Thousand Splendid Suns

 
Zadie Smith (1975--)

• On Beauty
• White Teeth

 
Markus Zusak (1975–)

• The Book Thief

 
Ishmael Beah (1980--)

• A Long Way Gone