the best american poems you say...

     Jay Parini offers his accounting of the ten best American poems [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/mar/11/best-american-poems].  Gave me pause, it did, so I had to come up with my own.  As you'll see, we agree on Whitman, Stevens, Bishop, and Williams, though I had the good sense to include the latter in my official list.  I've also decided not to limit myself to just ten poems, though I will try not to cram too much into this.  So, here goes, some of the best American poems according to little ol' me, in no particular order I might add.

Yes, Whitman's Song of MyselfAnd yes, 'The Idea of Order at Key West' by Wallace Stevens, along with The Man with the Blue Guitar
Yet again with a yes to 'One Art' by Elizabeth Bishop, and I would include 'A Miracle for Breakfast' and 'Sestina'
Trumbull Stickney's 'Mnemosyne'
Edwin Arlington Robinson's 'Eros Turannos', 'Sonnet', George Crabbe', and...hell, all of the sonnets, and 'Rembrandt to Rembrandt'
I include Frederick Goddard Tuckerman's Sonnets as a unified work
Asphodel, that Greeny Flower, by William Carlos Williams
'The Fear', 'The Oven Bird', 'Never Again Would Birds' Song be the Same', 'Design', 'After Apple Picking', 'Home Burial', 'The Silken Tent', 'Star in a Stone Boat', 'The Need of Being Versed in Country Things', by Robert Frost
'Lying', 'Mayflies', 'A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra', 'Thyme Flowering among Rocks', by Richard Wilbur
Louis Zukofsky's A
The Venetian Vespers, 'Terms', 'Death Sauntering About', Anthony Hecht

I'll stop now.

no one should ever ask me anything...

     A fellow at work wants to be a poet.  This came as a surprise to me, for he has always seemed such a sensible sort.  Anyway, he knows I write poems, so he asks, 'How do you know you're a poet?'  Well, that's a good question.  'Because I write poems', I replied.  Then I ask, 'Do you write poems?'  'No', he says, 'but I really want to'.  'Well, until you start writing poems you aren't a poet'.  'So, all I have to do is start writing poems?' he asks.  'Yes.  But be careful - not all who think they're writing poems are writing poems'.  'But if it looks like a poem, I mean, if it's got rhymes and all, isn't it a poem?'  'Not always.'  'Then how will I know if I am really writing poems?'  'By writing poems'.  'This is confusing', he says finally. 
     Yes, yes it is...