[Roger Slater]

I find the question impossible to answer since I cannot help but be influenced by my own personal tastes and assume that they reflect what posterity will favor, but Catherine Tufariello makes my short list.

One thing the question does is show me just how many of the poets I read and enjoy the most were born before 1945, which, after all, isn't such a recent cut-off. Strange thing.

[Michael Juster]

Yes, Roger, I agree. It was a shorter list than I thought it would be.

[Gregory Palmerino]

Originally Posted by Susan McLean

as soon as I first read their work, I felt that an electric shock had hit me, and I had to read everything they had written. (I am borrowing, of course, from Emily Dickinson's definition of poetry).

Susan, I agree. Here's the Dickinson quote: "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

Cheers,
Greg

[John Whitworth]

The poets I like best were born a long time before 1945, most of them before 1845. Surely that is the case with most of us.

[Michael F]

I've never really understood that part of the Dickinson quote, Gregory. Is that her way of saying “mind-blowing”? I think I understand the part about feeling very cold much better.

There are too many contemporary poets I haven’t read, but, perhaps like John, I try to spread the love for James Fenton when I can...

[Julie Steiner]

My sixteen-year-old is nuts about Lin-Manuel Miranda. Not really my thing, but my kid's more likely to be around in 2045 than I am, so her vote counts more than mine.

[Kyle Norwood]

Just out of curiosity, I ran Google searches to get a rough idea of how popular the poets named in this thread are right now: i.e., in the years leading up to 2016. Google searches are obviously an imperfect measure and will tend to overestimate the numbers for people with common names (like Kay Ryan, Charles Bernstein, or Kevin Young), those well-known for genres in addition to poetry (like Sherman Alexie), those who are recent poets laureate or have won many major awards (like Ryan, Billy Collins, and Juan Felipe Herrera), those with active academic careers (nearly everybody), and those who have been around a long time (a factor which works against poets like Catherine Tufariello). Since Frost, Stevens, Auden and Schwartz have been mentioned, I threw them in. By the way, Schwartz doesn't do half bad for a poet designated here as a "loser." In general, contemporary American formalist poets don't do very well (though British formalists like Fenton and Cope do better), suggesting that their future reputations may depend on a major change of heart in the poetry world. (But we knew that already, right?)

Robert Frost: 7,830,000
Wallace Stevens: 522,000
Billy Collins: 472,000
Sherman Alexie: 453,000
Kevin Young: 403,000
W. H. Auden: 357,000
James Fenton: 317,000
Charles Bernstein: 280,000
Rita Dove: 273,000
Kay Ryan: 271,000
Roberto Bolano: 251,000
Mark Doty: 180,000
Juan Felipe Herrera: 153,000
Natasha Trethewey: 152,000
Wendy Cope: 133,000
Delmore Schwartz: 131,000
C.D. Wright: 126,000
Jorie Graham: 94,200
Christian Bok: 85,400
Dorianne Laux: 54,000
Albert Goldbarth: 50,700
Carolyn Forché: 47,600
Mark Jarman: 41,000
Mary Szybist: 34,000
Norman Dubie: 27,600
A.E. Stallings: 25,500
Joshua Mehigan: 23,500
Bill Coyle: 19,600
Alfred Nicol: 4,020
Catherine Tufariello: 2,550

[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.

[ross hamilton hill]

Kyle Adele's song 'Someone Like You' has received well over one billion hits 1,000,000,000 on Youtube. Just one song. We are in the wrong business.

[Ann Drysdale]

No, Ross. We just need to adjust our definitions of success.