[Ed Shacklee]

Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

[Michael Cantor]

Andrew - are you "Hot and moist and ready for passion"? Oh my God!

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

It just hurts that it took you so long to get me.

[ross hamilton hill]

Oh dear, let's not be frivolous, let's not bring joy and a smile.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Yes, by all means, let's be (according to some of the dictionary synonyms of frivolous):

"fatuous, inane, senseless, thoughtless, time-wasting, pointless, trivial, trifling, minor, petty, insignificant..."

[Mark Blaeuer]

If WWIII should intervene between now and 2045, I'd say Simon Armitage has an excellent chance of having some of his work survive: http://www.michaelmelvin.co.uk/stanzastones/

Edited in: Or even if there isn't nuclear war. But he'll have less competition if there is. Feeling a bit pessimistic this afternoon. I can just imagine warheads being aimed at libraries, given the popularity of certain lines of belief nowadays.

[Kyle Norwood]

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.