Dude, it's a cool list and everything, but saying you WILL EVENTUALLY write better poetry than Elliot is like me saying I WILL EVENTUALLY be better than Hendrix on the guitar, even though I only started today. It's a useless & frankly infuriating sentence.

Yer insane fief. That Thomas poem is good (well, beautiful immediate intense...actually), but once you've read it a couple times - you've read it. Personally I don't really like The Waste Land that much, but I would say it's considerably deeper than Dylan Thomas (I'd of course point to The Four Quartets as a better example). Dylan Thomas better than Coltrane, Zappa, Welles (insert great artist name here). You're delusional. On another note, I was quite impressed with the wrimblings you had posted before.

Have you read any Ralph Waldo Emerson? I don't think any of his pieces would qualify for this list (maybe his poetry, I haven't gotten there yet) but he's a far superior writer to most.

Circles, Divinity School Address and Self-Reliance (I had links, although I don't recommend reading him on the net, but I kept triggering the spam filter) are perhaps best demonstrative of his greatness, although they don't take into account the sheer breadth of his work.

Oh, and <3333 One Hundred Years.

Yes to Invisible Man! Maybe my fave novel, though I haven't read many.

You are right, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night is probably the best thing ever written. Despite its scale it speaks volumes. Emotional intensity at levels even music has yet to offer. You a fan of Under Milk Wood?

i understand that most people either hate On The Road, or they think it is a bad version of Hemingway, or it is just boring and repetitive with nothing more to offer the reader than Sal went here, Dean said this, then they went there, and back here again...and most Americans think this - this is in fact an American novel, and not very universal, not that someone from another country cannot enjoy it, but it is certainly closer to "The Great American Novel" than a great novel, but i have a problem with how my teacher tried to go in depth about it:
1. it is a very superficial novel, in that one can read it on its surface and put it away and get nothing else from it than a bunch of crazy WHITE GUYS who cannot sit still (women are objects of objects in the novel - i do not think anyone would say this is not a misogynist, racist...novel, at least i would not debate those points) - the novel could have been called Move, or some variation of that if "on the road" was already taken. ok but,
2. it can be read as a novel OF the Cold War, in that it is a product of America=Freedom, Freedom to travel where and when you want; this is my professor's view - ok, great, it fits in with the theme he set up for the class, and i agree, but,
3. i think the most important part of the novel is Dean's "green tea visions" (Part 3, Chap 2) (just a name that may be a bit of a misnomer to those who have read and understand that part of the novel). the "green tea visions" is the whole bit about nostalgia, and Dean's refusal to look back, and burn himself out constantly looking for his next fix, whether that be drugs, women, Jazz, the road, people, etc. And those "green tea visions" foreshadow the end of how Dean just does not get it. he makes one last trip back to New York to visit Sal, and Sal has given up the life style of "On The Road", but dean cannot; he was born on the road, and has to keep moving or die, and that is just what he does (in real life, a decade later - Neal Cassady). the sentiment of nostalgia is huge in the novel considering every novel ever written is always written after the thought/action that the novel portrays - time is a bitch - and considering that this novel was not written in 3 weeks, but revised over 5 years, the structure needs to be taken very seriously. my thought: Sal (Jack) is remembering all these great times (like Proust) and knows he cannot go back and relive past glories, but he can remember them and keep them "forever" on the page, but Dean (Neal) never got this. he never became the writer he said he wanted to be. he never became the person he wanted to be. he just kept moving. this is not a terrible thing to do, but he took it to so many extremes and burnt every bridge he ever crossed or came by, or came near, or even thought about, somehow always finding some way to keep on going and get to the other side of life, and eventually death. and a quick trivial thought is that the craziest person in the entire novel, Old Bull Lee (William Burroughs), is the one who out lived everyone; the junkie; the one who ties off with his neck tie in the bathroom, shoots up (one of many times he has done so, in the novel and in real life), and then comes out and continues life more calm.

there are other points that i have forgotten to make here if anyone wanted to know why i rank it so high - where is the depth of the novel, and how is it above One Hundred Years of Solitude? - but the 3rd point is really all i wanted to make at this time and my professor made no mention of it, or any reference of nostalgia anytime during class, and it is hard to get a point in that class, and if you do and he does not agree he moves on very quickly to what he wants to say, so i just shut up and take the quizzes and get out of there - some professors allow you latitude to make points, others have their grand vision of what everything means, he is the latter.

James Lyon = you??

I feel as though Luis de Camões might be right up your alley. I particularly love the last one.