Okay, so Justin and Steven added a rule to Jeff's idea: Say someone asked me, "I kind of like poetry, but I don't know anything about contemporary poetry. Who should I read?"
My previous list is here. But now I have to take out "personal friends, mentors, or blogroll buddies". And I have to take out the German and French poets, because they are all folks I have translated. And, following Justin's lead, I'm going to include not one (like him) but two songwriters (the people I quote the most!). So I end up with this:
Armitage, Simon
Brown, Greg
Carson, Ann
Duffy, Carol Ann
Dylan, Bob
Heaney, Seamus
Levine, Philip
Longley, Michael
Maxwell, Glyn
Murray, Les
Padel, Ruth
Paterson, Don
Wilbur, Richard
Young, C. Dale
Yes, I admit it: C. Dale is on my blog roll. But CDY was on my shortlist of favorite contemporary poets long before I began my blog, let alone discovered that he was a blogger himself. So I reserve the right to keep him there! :-)
If I were to put together such a list,
ReplyDeletethe first two poets who immediately
come to mind are much better known
as novelists:
Marge Piercy and Reynolds Price.
They are the only poets whose collections
I have read in their entirety, front to back,
in toto, and more than once.
-- dhsh