Poetry please!  

My colleague Michael Gove, who speaks for the Opposition on education, caused a bit of a stir the other day when he called for the return of traditional elements to the school curriculum.  One  of the things that he wanted was to see more poetry taught in English lessons and all children encouraged to learn more verse by heart. I’m completely behind him on this but then I’ve got more books of verse than books about politics on my shelves at home.   But where Michael was remarkably brave was to identify his favourite poems. Alexander Pope is a most unfashionable poet these days but Michael picked out both The Dunciad and the Rape of the Lock as among his choices, along with Browning's My Last Duchess, Tennyson's Ulysses and Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock . This set me thinking about my own list. The trouble is, my preference can vary depending on the...