Reception remained positive into the early 20th century. Epstein considers it to have been one of the ten most popular English language poems of the 20th century. In his book Canons by Consensus, Joseph Csicsila reached a similar conclusion, noting that the poem was "one of the two or three most highly praised of Whitman's poems during the 1920s and 1930s"; he also wrote that the poem's verse form and emotional sincerity appealed to "more conservative-minded critics". In 1916, Henry B. Rankin, a biographer of Lincoln, wrote that "My Captain" became "the nation'saye, the world'sfuneral dirge of our First American". The Literary Digest in 1919 deemed it the "most likely to live forever" of Whitman's poems, and the 1936 book American Life in Literature went further, describing it as the best American poem. Author James O'Donnell Bennett echoed that, writing that the poem represented a perfect "threnody", or mourning poem. The poem was not unanimously praised during this period: one critic wrote that "My Captain" was "more suitable for recitation before an enthusiastically uncritical audience than for its place in the Oxford Book of English Verse".