Ernest Davis, Dept. of Computer Science, New York University
Gary Marcus, Dept. of Psychology, New York University
Data for this survey of favorite passages was taken from the collection "Life/Lines", created by the Academy of American Poets, URL http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/339 downloaded September 28, 2012. The authors of this data set have saved this state of this collection for stable reference; this is available on request, if the web site changes or becomes unavailable.
The collection of favorite passages contains 108 passages, including two repeats (the same passage quoted by two contributors). The data set at the end of this web page has one text line for each passage showing:
The distribution of categories is as follows:
Entire: 9. Begin: 24. Middle: 31. End: 40. Begin-End: 2. Unknown: 2.
The poem Not by Bread Alone is a rather curious case. The 5 line passage posted in Life/Lines and there (and elsewhere) attributed to Sa'di is in fact a common misquotation of the first 4 line stanza of the 12-line poem Not by Bread Alone in the collection In Sa'di's Garden in the book A Garden of Remembrance by James Terry White. This is apparently very loosely based on a passage in Sa'di's Gulistan though we have not been able to locate the original. Many thanks to Michael Chagnon for finding this.
Poet/Poem First Last Passage Poem Category
Length Length
Emily Dickinson "There is a pain so utter" 1 8 8 8 Entire
Emily Dickinson "Time and Eternity" 1 3 3 26 Begin
Emily Dickinson "I felt my life with both" 1 4 4 4 Entire
Gerard M Hopkins "Thou art indeed just" 12 14 4 14 End
Gerard M Hopkins "As Kingfishers Catch Fire" 5 8 4 14 Middle
Mark Strand "Keeping Things Whole" 14 17 4 17 End
Szymborska "Autotomy" 14 16 3 22 Middle
Raleigh "Epitaph" 1 8 8 8 Entire
Corman "Things to be Said" 1 6 6 6 Entire
Duncan "Venice Poem" middle 2 long Middle
Rich "Snapshot of a Daughter-in-Law" 12 13 2 119 Middle
Brigit Pegeen Kelly, "Song" 62 65 4 65 End
Frank Bidart "Guilty of Dust" 16 20 5 20 End
Robert Frost "Directive" 1 1 1 64 Begin
Robert Frost "Reluctance" 19 24 6 24 End
Robert Frost "Stopping by Woods" 13 16 4 16 End
Robert Frost "Birches" 52 52 1 59 Middle
Allen Ginsberg "Howl" 1 3 3 130 Begin
Allen Ginsbert "Ego Confession" 1 1 1 38 Begin
Theodore Roethke "Lost Son" ~110 ~118 9 ~180 Middle
Theodore Roethke "The Waking" 18 19 2 19 End
T.S. Eliot "Burnt Norton" 41 44 4 ~170 Middle
William Stafford "With Kit Age 7" 13 16 4 16 End
Henry Taylor "Green Springs the Tree" 1 4 4 14 Begin
Robert Lowell "Epilogue" 20 20 1 23 Middle
Robert Lowell "Quaker Graveyard" ~140 ~140 1 ~140 End
Robert Lowell "Fall 1961" 1 5 5 30 Begin
Walt Whitman "Song of Myself" middle 3 long Middle
Walt Whitman "Song of Myself" middle 2 long Middle
Richard Hugo "The Lady in Kicking Horse" 1 1 1 56 Begin
John Berryman "Dream Song 1" 17 18 2 18 End
John Berryman "Dream Song 1" 13 18 6 18 End
Ezra Pound "Canto I" 1 1 1 80 Begin
George Herbert "Bittersweet" 5 8 4 8 End
Hart Crane "Brooklyn Bridge" 16 16 1 44 Middle
Wordsworth "World is Too Much With Us" 1 4 4 14 Begin
Wordsworth "Intimations of Immortality" 183 191 9 208 Middle
Kenneth Koch, "In Love With You" 1 4 4 42 Begin
Kenneth Koch, "To 'Yes' " 24 26 3 27 Middle
Carl Sandburg "Anna Imroth" 5 8 4 8 End
Yeats, "Easter 1916" 57-61 75-80 11 80 End
Dylan Thomas "Do Not Go Gently" 1 3 3 19 Begin
W.S. Merwin "Separation" 1 3 3 3 Entire
C.K. Williams "Doves" 41 48 8 48 End
Milton "On His Blindness" 14 14 1 14 End
Milton "Paradise Lost" 330 330 1 1000's Middle
Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning" 1 5 5 120 Begin
Wallace Stevens, "Esthetique du Mal" middle 4 long Middle
Wallace Stevens "Sunday Morning" 110 120 11 120 End
Wallace Stevens "Notes toward a Supreme" middle 1 long Middle
Issa "Haiku" 1 3 3 3 Entire
Edna St. Vincent Millay "Renascence" 203 214 12 214 End
Edna St. Vincent Millay "Spring" 13 18 6 18 End
Randell Jarrell "Player Piano" 28 35 8 35 End
Sharon Olds "The Race" 23 33 11 57 Middle
Paul Lawrence Dunbar "In the Morning" 39 40 2 48 Middle
Czeslaw Milosz, "Confession" 1 1 1 16 Begin
Louise Bogan, "Dark Summer" 1-1, 6-6 2 6 Begin End
John Ashbery "Evening in the Country" 1-8, 15-20 14 47 Begin
John Ashbery "Notes from the Air" 1 1 1 40 Begin
James Schuyler "A Few Days" 1 6 6 ~1050 Begin
Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day" 18 19 2 19 End
Pablo Neruda "Poetry" 45 46 2 46 End
Anna Akhmatova 2 Unknown
Wendell Berry "Within the circles" 1-4, 19-21 7 21 Begin End
Wendell Berry "Peace of Wild Things" 6 11 6 11 End
Sylvia Plath "Poppies in October" 10 12 3 12 End
Sylvia Plath "Family Reunion" 25 29 5 29 End
Langston Hughes "Dreams" 1 3 3 8 Begin
Jane Cooper "Weather of Six Mornings" 59 60 2 60 End
Nikki Govanni "Beautiful Black Men" 1 7 7 27 Begin
Robert Penn Warren "Tell me a Story" 6 6 1 16 Middle
Frank OHara, "For Grace After A Party" 13 19 7 19 End
Frank OHara, "Why I am not a Painter" 21 22 2 28 Middle
Edgar Allan Poe "Annabel Lee" 7 10 4 39 Middle
W.H. Auden "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" 62 65 4 65 End
W.H. Auden "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" 64 65 2 65 End
W.H. Auden "Funeral Blues" 9 12 4 16 Middle
A.R. Ammons "Small Song" 1 4 4 4 Entire
Paul Muldoon "Making the Move" 19 20 2 20 End
Jason Shinder "Dedication" 8 Unknown
Philip Larkin "The Mower" 9 11 3 11 End
James Wright "How Spring Arrives" 15 15 1 15 End
Winifred Letts "To a May Baby" 1 6 6 18 Begin
Elizabeth Bishop "One Art" 13 15 3 19 Middle
Roque Dalton "Like You" 10 18 9 18 End
e e cummings "if there are any heavens" 1 9 9 18 Begin
Heather McHugh "20-200 on 747" 4 10 7 50 Middle
Robinson Jeffers "Cassandra" 8 12 5 12 End
Robinson Jeffers "The Bloody Sire" 6 10 5 17 Middle
David Ignatow "For My Daughter" 1 5 5 14 Begin
Linda Gregg, "At Home" 9 9 1 9 End
John Logan, "Spring of the Thief" middle, 1 long Middle
Adam Zagajewski "A Flame" 1 4 4 6 Begin
Miyazawa Kenji, "November 3" (Sato trans). 1 16 16 54 Begin
Shakespeare, "Sonnet 73" 4 4 1 14 Middle
Homer, "Odyssey" middle, 3 long Middle
Naomi Shihab Nye, "Famous" 19 21 3 21 End
James Terry White, "Not by Bread Alone" 1 5 5 5 Entire
Alfred Lord Tennyson "Ulysses" 70 70 1 70 End
Carlos Bolusan "Monuments" 7 12 6 14 Middle
Charles Simic "Heroic Moment" 5 6 2 6 End
William Carlos Williams "Of Asphodel" middle, 3 long Middle
Anne Sexton "Rowing" 23 30 8 50 Middle
Galway Kinnell, "Flower of Five Blossoms" 88 94 7 94 End
Raymond Carver "Late Fragment" 1 6 6 6 Entire
Leonard Cohen "Poem" 1 8 8 8 Entire
Clare Rossini "Brief History of a Sentence" 34 41 8 41 End