reader found to his surprise that Stephen Vincent Benét’s John Brown’s Body was readable and even thrilling, though a poem and a long ... the English village of Love Green.

The poem is told from the perspective of a father who, after his family goes to sleep on ... cheerier children’s Christmas books as an alternative. Love for plea and gift and sign.

We were looking for poetry that had struck its readers, for whatever reasons, as unforgettable, enduring, and influential: ...