Just in case anyone other than Michael Cantor missed my point, I was looking for a rough measure of popularity, rather than of merit. So whether Alfred Nicol is a better ("more accomplished") poet than Michael is beside the point. My hit totals were based on placing the names of the poets in quotation marks, i.e., "Alfred Nicol." I'd be interested to know how Michael got 47,700 hits. By the way, I tried adding "poem poet" to the names, but (for example) many of the hits on Robert Frost apparently didn't mention either of these terms, so I decided to keep it simple.
And while I (again) acknowledge the roughness of the measure, I think "Robert Frost 7,830,000; Billy Collins 472,000; A.E. Stallings 25,500" means something. Too bad, since I prefer Stallings to Collins. But Michael Juster's original question specified "regardless of your own tastes," and while the discussion has broadened somewhat, I thought we were still discussing reputations, not merit.
Last edited by Kyle Norwood; 03-17-2016 at 10:30 PM.
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