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Very interesting assertion that these would be the most familiar opening lines of any poem in the 20th century.

Even if one only read English poems, as the author did, how about

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both



Or Is this the real life? / Is this just fantasy? / Caught in a landside / No escape from reality


I agree. In fact they are not even the most familiar opening lines by this poet:

“Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table”


How about Howl for the over 18 crowd though?

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, [. . .]

Or is that not a well known poem, because I think it is.


How about Dylan Thomas:

"Do not gentle into that good night"

or

"To begin at the beginning

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched, courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat- bobbing sea"


"In Flanders fields the poppies blow ... Between the crosses, row on row."




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