[R. Nemo Hill]

Thank-you Annie.
This seems an unforgivably frivolous thread.

Nemo

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

Kyle - as you say, it's an imperfect measure - but you don't say it forcefully enough. It means nothing. Example: Alfred Nicol, who's a buddy of mine, so I'm particularly curious, shows 4,020 google hits. I show 47,700. But there is a successful doctor, and a lawyer and even a magician named Michael Cantor. So I added "poet" to both labels. And, dammit - "Michael Cantor" poet still clobbered "Alfred Nicol" poet 2,750 to 1,360. And - believe me - Alfred is a far more accomplished and award-winning and etc. poet than I am. . But if you're reading this, Alf, I'm sure that if we added Boston Red Sox to the Google search you'd be top dog. It's just a matter of asking the right questions.

If it helps to get to the bottom of this, 2659 of those searches on Michael Cantor poet were me. Some searches rise from the art of it all. Others, just the infamy.

[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.

[ross hamilton hill]

Actually my point was quite serious, most young people get their poetry through songs, not books. If you check out Julie's link or my suggestion, these two poets are performance artists, Julie's a rapper, mine Kate Tempest, a performance poet who memorizes all her poems and wows them around the world.
The media has changed and slim volumes of verse are not going to make it in the future and are not making it now. The idea that this is because poetry is an elite art that only certain people can understand is bunkum. Poets have been expecting the public to keep coming back to an art form that hasn't changed since the invention of the printing press, any young poet starting out would be well advised to remember that poetry started before books, it was recited and sung and not read and the new media are allowing that to happen again to a mass audience.