It is a tedious question that indicates a continued level of unhealthiness. Why so few? We put no such restrictions on 1960s rock bands, Romantic composers, bebop jazzers, or post-Impressionist painters. Indeed, in most things the aim of fandom leans toward promotion rather than demotion. I always kick myself for leaving things out in those "favorite twelve album" exercises on Facebook, and that even with limiting myself sub rosa to post-1960 pop music. Do two, and only two poets stand above the others among a billion or so English-speakers over the past seventy-one years? Doubtful. And it just isn't how we actually read books. Or it isn't how I read them.
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