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Thread: The greatest living poet

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    In the pines. Catamite's Avatar
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    The greatest living poet

    This is probrably a topic that has been stripped to the bone, but still, why not once more. Obvious contenders are Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott (my personal choice) and Wislawa Szymborska. But who else, and why?
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    Bibliophile JBI's Avatar
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    Wilbur is still alive, who I like very much, but greatest, well isn't that a guessing game.

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    In the pines. Catamite's Avatar
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    I'd never even heard of him until now. Well yes, a guessing game, but a fun one if there is enough friction between opinion on poets, and what makes a poet 'great' etc.
    ''Actual self-awareness is the knowledge that we are all characters in someone elses dream.''

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    Quote Originally Posted by Catamite View Post
    This is probrably a topic that has been stripped to the bone, but still, why not once more. Obvious contenders are Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott (my personal choice) and Wislawa Szymborska. But who else, and why?
    I've always thought Heaney a bit overrated. For me, the last great poet the British Isles produced was Philip Larkin.

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    Alea iacta est. mortalterror's Avatar
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    The real test is their accomplishments. What have they done that elevates them above all the others? Construct a history of contemporary poetry and you will know the score. Personally, I like Heaney but think the best thing he's done was his translation of Beowulf, not his own poetry. Walcott is good and he has a few short poems that work well, but I couldn't really get into his epic Omeros. As for Szymborska, I haven't really read her, but 250 poems in 60 years? Where did she find the time? Those poems had better be some serious Wasteland or Four Quartets type stuff. Adunis is pretty good, but I've only read one of his books, so I don't know how he stacks up overall. He might have written some really powerful stuff I just don't know about. Wilbur is overrated like John Ashbery and Anne Carson.

    I suspect there is someone out there I haven't even heard of who is really throwing it down like a Neruda, an Eliot, a Baudelaire, or even a Milton, or a Dante, but only time will tell. JBI follows the contemporary scene more than I do. Things just don't get sexy for me until they are about a thousand years old.
    Last edited by mortalterror; 01-30-2012 at 02:25 PM.
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    Artist and Bibliophile stlukesguild's Avatar
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    Ultimately the question becomes: "Who is the greatest living poet from among the poets you have read and are familiar enough with?" Heaney, Wislawa Szymborska, Anne Carson, Yves Bonnefoy, John Ashbery, and a couple others immediately come to mind. I understand where Mortal is coming from. There are no clear-cut examples of the poet able to pull off a brilliant epic poems or even the longer poem like The Wasteland or a body of related poems that add up to something we might agree is a masterpiece.


    Like Mortal I'm not sold on Omeros. Perhaps the closest are Anne Carson with her poem/novel, The Autobiography of Red, Geoffrey Hill with his knotty elegiac poems (which I'm surprised Mortal doesn't like considering their link with Eliot) confronting the larger issues of history, and perhaps Homeros Aridjis, the leading poet of Mexico, who also produced the larger text that blurs the novel and the poem... as well as a good body of rich lyrical poetry.
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    In the fog Charles Darnay's Avatar
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    I'd have to go with Ashbery
    I wrote a poem on a leaf and it blew away...

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    In the fog Charles Darnay's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by stlukesguild View Post
    Ultimately the question becomes: "Who is the greatest living poet from among the poets you have read and are familiar enough with?"

    This is also true of "who is the greatest dead poet" or "who is the greatest...." - you can only speak of those you are familiar with.
    I wrote a poem on a leaf and it blew away...

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    Alea iacta est. mortalterror's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by stlukesguild View Post
    Perhaps the closest are Anne Carson with her poem/novel, The Autobiography of Red, Geoffrey Hill with his knotty elegiac poems (which I'm surprised Mortal doesn't like considering their link with Eliot) confronting the larger issues of history, and perhaps Homeros Aridjis, the leading poet of Mexico, who also produced the larger text that blurs the novel and the poem... as well as a good body of rich lyrical poetry.
    Autobiography of Red sucked, The Triumph of Love sucked, The Shadow of Sirius sucked. I've been burned by you too many times! And Geoffrey Hill doesn't sound anything like Eliot to me. You know who sounds like Eliot? Apollinaire. I read Alcools last year and thought, "Hmm, this guy is a lot like Eliot." Ezra Pound sounds a little like him too. Hill reminds me of other mannerists who came after them and couldn't tell the weaknesses from the strengths of the master's style. Eliot would have been a great poet even if he hadn't been complicated.
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  10. #10
    Tomas Tranströmer and Wislawa Szymborska.
    There is hope, but not for us.

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    Bibliophile JBI's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mortalterror View Post
    The real test is their accomplishments. What have they done that elevates them above all the others? Construct a history of contemporary poetry and you will know the score. Personally, I like Heaney but think the best thing he's done was his translation of Beowulf, not his own poetry. Walcott is good and he has a few short poems that work well, but I couldn't really get into his epic Omeros. As for Szymborska, I haven't really read her, but 250 poems in 60 years? Where did she find the time? Those poems had better be some serious Wasteland or Four Quartets type stuff. Adunis is pretty good, but I've only read one of his books, so I don't know how he stacks up overall. He might have written some really powerful stuff I just don't know about. Wilbur is overrated like John Ashbery and Anne Carson.

    I suspect there is someone out there I haven't even heard of who is really throwing it down like a Neruda, an Eliot, a Baudelaire, or even a Milton, or a Dante, but only time will tell. JBI follows the contemporary scene more than I do. Things just don't get sexy for me until they are about a thousand years old.
    I've been out of contemporary poetry for two, almost three years now - I read virtually no English last year, so I am totally rusty.

    As for greatest living though, probably just picking favorite poems out from individual poets, or perhaps looking into single collections, as the Anthology seems to be are dominant form of poetry.

    I have a strong suspicion though that the best poetics will be lost for another 50 years until it is sifted for us, which is the process which happens before we judge. That's why classics are so popular; the work has already been done well.

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    I haven't heard of any of these people. If I wanted a little survey of the "bs" contemporary poetry, are there any anthologies or collections of certain authors I should look into?

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    Bibliophile JBI's Avatar
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    Just look for any periodical that publishes poetry - that is the main avenue, then look for different presses. I cannot help you since my knowledge of current American poetry is limited.

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    There is Ferreira Gullar, brazilian poet that since 60's build a solid reputation also in Portugal, but to be honest, I do not fancy much his style. And sorry to not mention, but he is so old that we kill him by costume, but Manoel de Barros is quite very good.
    Last edited by JCamilo; 01-31-2012 at 12:18 AM.

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    Artist and Bibliophile stlukesguild's Avatar
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    Autobiography of Red sucked, The Triumph of Love sucked, The Shadow of Sirius sucked.

    But Mortal your opinions are rather useless are they not considering that you have made it clear on more than one occasion that you think pretty much the whole of modernism (Metallica excepted) sucked.
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