Top 10 American poets

[desiresjab]

I am new here, and you folks have probably discussed this one before.There is a lot of disagreemnt still, I am sure.

For instance, what criterion does one use to answer the question? We could go by talent, historical influence, personal impact, critical consensus...or an intuitive combination.

People will vote primarily by how much they like a certain poet, by how much emotional impact that poet has had on them personally. But there are other considerations that can be weighed.

I think Whitman was the greatest American poet, but not the best. He was often boring and long winded, he was not a great craftsman but a man of passion, a mighty spirit with a pen. He is our poetic spokesman for America's period of legendary fame, and cannot be toppled. Frost and Stevens were better craftsmen, as well as many others.

My own list is based on the core strength of a small number of the best poems of each author IMO, but also on things like longevity and body of work, influence, craftsmanship, etc.

But it is also based upon the ignorance of certain areas and certain poets. If a poet is not on this list it may mean they never managed to hook me with Frost's immortal wound. Maybe I just do not like them. I have tried most. Hart Crane, for instance, could never make it onto my list. He has no rhythm that I could ever find.

Is this a safe list, or pretty ragged, and why?

1 Whitman
2 Roethke
3 Stevens
4 Frost
5 Dickinson
6 Poe
7 R. Lowell
8 Snodgrass
9 Pound
10 Sandburg

[MorpheusSandman]

I'll make two lists: one based on "objective" qualities like influence, originality, and longevity, and another expressing my own personal favorites:

"Objective:"

1. Dickinson
2. Whitman
3. Stevens
4. Poe
5. Frost
6. Ashbery
7. Pound
8. Bishop
9. Merrill
10. Lowell

"Personal:"

1. Merrill
2. Stevens
3. Ashbery
4. Crane
5. Frost
6. Whitman
7. Lowell
8. Merwin
9. Wilbur
10. Berryman

As for yours, I think any "objective" American list has to have Whitman and Dickinson 1 and 2, with their reputations and influence being so close I don't think the order matters. Whitman's influence was more immediate, but Dickinson's persists strongly today. In fact, I might venture as far as to say that no poet has had a greater impact on the form/methods of modern poetry than Dickinson. In contrast, Whitman's emotionalism seems quite a product of its time. Dickinson initiated what Stephen Burt called the "elliptical style" of poetry. Ashbery should certainly be on your list as well as no poet has influenced poetry of the last 50 years more than he has, for better or worse. I think Roethke being in the top 10 is defensible, but putting him 2 is not. Roethke's influence/reputation has really fluctuated, and while he his beloved by some he's ignored by just as many. Snodgrass would be tough for a top 20, much less 10. Sandburg is also defensible, but not, IMO, over poets like Bishop or Merrill. Bishop is probably the 20th Century's Dickinson, while Merrill (and Auden) set the standard for all formalist poetry in this century, and he wrote what I think most would agree to be the century's greatest "epic" in The Changing Light at Sandover (not that he has a lot of competition). It also doesn't feel right excluding WC Williams and Plath given their influence; they'd probably be my 11 and 12.

An interesting question is how we should consider Auden and Eliot: Eliot was born in the US and moved to England; Auden was the reverse. If you consider either American then they'd be quite high on the list. Eliot would have to be #1, and Auden definitely in the top 5.

[desiresjab]

I forgot Berryman. That was an oversight. Merwin, Merrill and Ashbury are overrated IMO, and vastly so.

Dickinson had some greatness, but it is all one dish served over and over. Poe also had great power, which did not come out very often as a poet, but when it did was spectaular.

If you can show me instances of great power in the works of Merrill, Merwin and Ashbury, rather than just the exercises of some stable professors in cerebrealism, I would be pleased to change my mind. Show me one short poem from any of them as pure and rhythmic as William Simpson's Early in the Morning, and maybe I will start to see things your way. Show me anything half as good as Stevens' Table Talk.

On Snodgrass and Sandburg I am not that firm, but Roethke in the top five is a must, as I see it. His poetry takes on a new dimension when read aloud, while most poets lose a dimension with the exposure.

Elliot is one of the greatest poets of all time, but he is an internationalist, as is Auden. Pound I included on the list, though he has no home either, and was a far greater critic than poet.

[MorpheusSandman]

You said it yourself: they're "overrated, IN YOUR OPINION." If we're talking personal opinion than we're free to pick a top 10 list purely based on that, as my second one is. However, if we're basing it on more objective factors that you listed in your OP, such as "longevity, influence, and craftsmanship" then our opinions shouldn't enter into the discussion. Like I said, Ashbery has had a profound influence on the last 50 years of poetry; Dickinson's influence is all over 20th century poetry and permeates to this day. It's hard to read any short, aphoristic, elliptical poem without thinking of Dickinson. I don't know how anyone couldn't recognize this regardless of personal tastes. Meanwhile, Asbhery seems to personify postmodernism in poetry, for better or worse.

I'm not terribly interested in showing you instances of "great power" in these poets, especially if you're limiting it to a "short" poem. One thing all three have in common is that they're best in their longer works, whether it's the "medium long" pieces like Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror or Merrill's Lost in Translation, or the book-length works like Merrill's Sandover, Merwin's Folding Cliffs, or Ashbery's Girls on the Run. Really, I feel much the same is true of Stevens, whose real greatness and lasting reputation rests more on his long poems than it does on his much more popular short poems. Anyway, you did list "craftsmanship" as one criteria, and two greatest craftsmen of the century were Auden and Merrill; no poets had a greater grasp on or facility with meter and verse forms. Stable professors in cerebralism? If anything, there's been precious little critical/academic attention given to any of these poets; most of the appreciation for them comes from OTHER poets.

Plus, of all of Stevens' poems to use as an example, why in the world Table Talk? I find nothing remarkable about that poem; I'd be much more likely to use Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour. Anyway, I find Merrill's Lost in Translation superior to either. You're free to disagree, of course. We're also free to disagree about Roethke. I like him alright, but I don't see a great deal of influence, longevity, craftsmanship, etc. He seems to me to be a solid poet with some influence more than a truly great one.

[Lykren]

Can influence really be measured objectively though? I for one would put Plath above Lowell, but that may be due not only to my personal preference, but to my lack of extensive knowledge of American poetry (or poetry in general). That is, if you are going by influence alone I may be missing some factors that place Lowell above Plath - although exactly what factors those could be I have no idea.

Perhaps this also explains my wonderment at your high placement of Poe. He doesn't seem like a very impressive or engaging poet to me, but then, you may be judging by different, more objective criteria.

It's interesting, Morpheus, that you slipped in the word craftsmanship while remarking on Roethke's stature. Craftsmanship seems to me to be an entirely subjective matter. We can't measure it the way we would measure the craftsmanship of a chair, by subjecting it to x amount of use and then seeing how long it takes before it falls apart. Or rather, we do do something similar with poems, but for the best poems it takes many centuries, and even then you can't be sure a poem won't surface and re-gain popularity after being 'dormant' for a while. Essentially I'm saying that I am having a difficult time understanding the concept of objectivity as it applies to poetry.

Finally, that's a great poem you've linked to. Thanks for sharing.

Here's my (purely personal) list of American poets:

1. Dickinson
2. Stevens
3. Ashbery
4. Eliot
5. Whitman
6. W.C. Williams
7. Plath
8. Gluck
9. Pound
10. Crane

[desiresjab]

My quick reply did not post. I don't feel like rewriting it right now. Thanks for the replies. We have much to debate.

[desiresjab]

What would have been interesting is a thread on American poets since 1900, using as the criterion suspected longevity.

[desiresjab]

It is interesting, Morph, that you will not deign to show ten lines of great power from any of your trio of genius professors. Surely you can find something that most would agree is a hell of a stanza worthy of such touting.

Ashbery, Gluck, Crane and Williams make it onto a top ten list, and Frost and Roethke do not? Wow. All I can say is some poets touch you and some do not.

[stlukesguild]

I'm going to have to agree with Morpheus in placing Whitman and Dickinson at the top of the heap... although I would probably add Eliot and Stevens to make up the four Tetrarchs of American poetry. Close upon their heels must be Crane and Frost... and perhaps Pound. I agree that Ashbery's influence has been immense... yet I've never really taken to him much... let alone Lowell. Poe? I think he's overrated and underrated. I agree with Baudelaire and Borges who found much more of poetic interest in his prose tales. Of more contemporary poets I quite admire Wilbur... and Anthony Hecht... but I'm not sure as to their lasting influence. What of some earlier writers? I might suggest Frederick Tuckerman and Herman Melville as well as Emerson... and perhaps Longfellow.

[desiresjab]

I spent the day reading Richard Wilbur. I do not deny he is a good poet, in fact better than the vast majority He has some real moments, such as the eyes open to a cry of pulleys. Being a professor poet, he unfortunatley wants to stock almost every poem with tired classical allusions.

He has fine image making skills. Most of his brilliant images are followed by the facile observations of a man trying not (not very successfully) to sound like Auden making an observation, is the feeling I kept getting. He tries to reach the grand climax, the great conclusion, and usually fails, but not always. We have to give him credit for isolated perfection here and there, usually when he drops the classical allusions and gets real and forgets he is a professor looking for something to write about, as in the charming miniature Barred Owl, wherein Mr. Wilbur even makes a beautiful observation on the power of the word.

I often like poems that are a veiled discussion of poetics and/or the power of language, and it stands to reason that Mr. Wilbur, being a professor needing something to write about, would have this trait.

I liken Mr. Wilbur to an expert boxer with a light to medium punch, who once in a while nevertheless can connect with a haymaker that puts his opponent in the third row. But most of his fights go to a boring decision after an early promise of much action. I like good boxers, but the man with one punch knockout power is what we all want to see.

[desiresjab]

Whitman has such immense stature that sometimes I think he should be set aside while the others fight it out. I feel the big fight is between Frost and Stevens. But remember, I am not counting Elliot or Auden as American poets, and I have decided to take Pound off my list as an American poet, as well. Like the injun halfbreeds in American westerns, they have no nation, except the nation of poets.

If we exclude those three, and leave Whitman out of it, a great many people would feel the big fight was between Stevens and Dickinson. I feel Stevens and Frost both trump Emily, though not by too much. She fixed one of the best isolation stews in the business, but never learned to cook anything else. In her withdrawn way, she still managed to pull a huge amount of universality from her bonnet. An unquestionably great poet. I think it is unquestionable.

Maybe I should not seem so immovable. However, the sheer number of times she managed to hit homeruns qualifies her, I believe, in spite of her shortcomings, and the length of time now that she has stood up. One thing about all true greats, they each have a unique voice, and she sounds like no other.

I believe Frost and Stevens will do well over the long haul, too, their critical reputations waxing and waning down the ages, as they should. Both are unquestionable greats, Stevens a flamboyant inventor, the Tesla of American poetry, Frost the unwilling inheritor of the American bucolic crown, with one of the best ears ever, stubbornly melding the traditional and the modern, the beautiful and the macabre.

I think Stevens is our greatest poetic virtuoso. Sometimes virtuosity is all that is keeping him going, but he is so good at it. Forget his philosophy of poetic paradise, which was a hoax, but never stop enjoying the language...our reddest lord, peer of the populace of the heart.

Stevens' atheistic, aesthetic paradise where poetry was supreme fiction was a mere elaborate posturing from the maestro, the attempt of an insurance executive to find something immortal to write about which he believed in. So Stevens wrote a lot about poetry itself. Eventually he tried to construct his own world view and paradise based on poetry, as Yeats had done. But it was a hoax after all, part of the grand play. In his last days Stevens converted to catholicism with characteristic flippancy...I had better hurry up and get in the fold.

In two hundred years no one will care. The best of Stevens will have been sorted out, all the chaff fallen by the wayside. After the erosion of time, many buttes will still remain.

[Lykren]

It is interesting, Morph, that you will not deign to show ten lines of great power from any of your trio of genius professors. Surely you can find something that most would agree is a hell of a stanza worthy of such touting.

Ashbery, Gluck, Crane and Williams make it onto a top ten list, and Frost and Roethke do not? Wow. All I can say is some poets touch you and some do not.

Frost and Roethke seem like tired poets to me. Their poems never amaze, no matter how carefully crafted they appear to me. With Frost it feels substanceless, idea-less, and with Roethke I am reminded of a person who is convinced he feels deeply, but does not. For example, this line from his famous "In a Dark Time":

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

reminds me of your comment on Wilbur, that he "He tries to reach the grand climax, the great conclusion, and usually fails, but not always." Roethke's conclusion to "In a Dark Time" seems to me limp and cliched, and not even particularly well-formed.

I prefer Wilbur, who is technically more perfect, if not especially more interesting in an emotional sense.

You've mentioned rhythm a few times as though it were of primary importance in judging a poem.

Show me one short poem from any of them as pure and rhythmic as...

and on Crane:

He has no rhythm that I could ever find.

Why do you think that rhythm is a deciding factor in a poem's worth? It is of course a factor, but not the only one. And what precisely do you mean by "pure"? It's an ambiguous term, not really suited to close analysis.

I also feel your judgement of Steven's later work is rather facile;

his philosophy of poetic paradise, which was a hoax.

Why should not a belief in the primacy of aesthetics be a worldview as conducive to genuine emotion and spiritual resonance as any other you could care to describe?

Regarding Dickinson your assessment of her as a poet who could only write about isolation is absurd. Obviously it was a major focus for her, but if we set it in the context of such texts as the master letters:

A love so big it scares
her, rushing among her small
heart- pushing aside the
blood- and leaving her
(all) faint and white in the
gust' arm-
Daisy- who never flinched
thro' that awful parting-
but held her life so tight
he should not see the
wound-

it becomes clear that her poetry blends isolation with fragrances of the passion that begat isolation - and of course it is this awful tension and paradox that forms the main interest of her poetry.

[MorpheusSandman]

Can influence really be measured objectively though? I for one would put Plath above Lowell, but that may be due not only to my personal preference...

I'd say influence is relatively objective; even if we can't put a precise number on it, we can certainly see evidence of influence in statements made by poets about who influenced them as well as in the writing itself and how it borrows techniques/styles from past poets. I mean, I don't think many would doubt that TS Eliot was more influential than Edward Lear, even if we can't measure precisely how much. At least it's more objective than just picking what poets appeal to us.

As for Lowell VS Plath, I think there are two major factors: one is that Lowell came first, two is that he was far more prolific. Both worked in the "confessional" mode, but that was a mode Lowell very much pioneered on Life Studies and For the Union Dead; both of which came out before Plath's Ariel, by far her most important/influential work.

It's interesting, Morpheus, that you slipped in the word craftsmanship while remarking on Roethke's stature. Craftsmanship seems to me to be an entirely subjective matter.

Again, I think craftsmanship is relatively objective, but much less so than influence. We tend to infer craftsmanship by knowing something about the craft ourselves and how much time/effort it takes to achieve certain things. I mostly associate it with a facility with form, because without form there are as many standards as there are authors and each may have their own peculiar kind of craft that we aren't aware of. But when I see how Merrill and Auden work in every form or level of diction, I know the kind of effort that requires. With so much modern poetry one is compelled to ask what's the difference between it and lineated prose.

Finally, that's a great poem you've linked to. Thanks for sharing.

You're welcome; it's a favorite. The remarkable thing there are four (IIRC) others of similar length and just as good in the same volume, Divine Comedies. Of those I was able to find Yannina and McKane's Falls online.

Frost and Roethke seem like tired poets to me. Their poems never amaze, no matter how carefully crafted they appear to me. With Frost it feels substanceless, idea-less, and with Roethke I am reminded of a person who is convinced he feels deeply, but does not.

I mostly agree with this, though I might state it slightly less emphatically, especially for Frost. My problem with Frost is that his range of diction, subject, form and tone was incredibly limited that it becomes monotonous after the while. I can't agree with them being entirely substanceless, but his focus on the "ulteriority" of poetry can often seem to be little more than a game of subtle wits, with common symbols standing in for obviously ambiguous signifeds (like the famous Stopping by the Woods... or The Road Less Traveled). Yet I do think Frost had some genuine thematic concerns, especially his frustrated relationship with Darwin and the nature of design/purpose VS evolution/meaningless. I like Frost best when that sense of anxiety and frustration cracks through the surface, like in his poem Design. I also think he could occasionally craft some poems that were quite provocative, such as The Witch of Coos and Maple, the latter of which may be the best riff ever on Shakespeare's "a rose by any other name" theme. He also had a talent for writing quite memorable lines: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," "good fences make good neighbors," "the best way out is always through," "the woods are lovely, dark and deep," "nature's first green is gold," "We would not see the secret if we could now: we are not looking for it any more," and the list goes on. Only Yeats and Auden had a roughly equal ability for lodging lines in one's head.

I'm less inclined to defend Roethke, though, and more or less agree with your assessment.

[MorpheusSandman]

I'm going to have to agree with Morpheus in placing Whitman and Dickinson at the top of the heap... although I would probably add Eliot and Stevens to make up the four Tetrarchs of American poetry.

I think we decided Eliot should be considered international rather than American. If we consider him American then I'd agree with your Tetrarch.

Of more contemporary poets I quite admire Wilbur... and Anthony Hecht... but I'm not sure as to their lasting influence. What of some earlier writers? I might suggest Frederick Tuckerman and Herman Melville as well as Emerson... and perhaps Longfellow.

I quite like Wilbur, but I haven't read Hecht. I enjoy most Emerson and Longfellow I've read, but they do seem rather dated now in a way Whitman and Dickinson don't to the same degree. Any opinion on Merrill or Merwin?

[MorpheusSandman]

If we exclude those three, and leave Whitman out of it, a great many people would feel the big fight was between Stevens and Dickinson. I feel Stevens and Frost both trump Emily, though not by too much.

Well, like I asked in my last post: what are the standards? Stevens, Frost, and Dickinson were all quite limited in their own ways. All were more of what you'd call "poetic hedgehogs" as opposed to "foxes." Dickinson had her aphoristic, parable-like ellipticism; Frost had his naturalistic dialogue and idiomatic blank verse; Stevens had his dense imagery, symbols, and theories. If we're talking influence, I see more of Dickinson's "aphoristic ellipticism" in modern poetry than I see of the others. Frost's influence was mostly on formalists concerned with writing in form without appearing archaic, but just as many 20th century formalists look either farther or nearer backwards for influence than to Frost (Auden with Hardy, eg). Not many have really imitated Stevens's voice or his thematic concerns, though some have been influenced by his sensuous imagery and obliqueness.

Personally I'd take Stevens, then Frost, then Dickinson; but, objectively, I don't think I can find an argument to put either Frost or Stevens ahead of Dickinson, as much as I agree with your assessment of her limitations.

I think Stevens is our greatest poetic virtuoso. Sometimes virtuosity is all that is keeping him going, but he is so good at it. Forget his philosophy of poetic paradise, which was a hoax, but never stop enjoying the language...

The only thing virtuosic about Stevens was his imagistic and linguistic density, that he actually pared down greatly as his career went on. His densest works, The Comedian of the Letter C and Owl's Clover, were both amongst his early collections. My one skepticism with Stevens was his usage of form; does it really matter whether he used couplets or tercets or quatrains or anything else? I never could tell he gave much though to form behind the need for having some consistency.

I really don't know what you mean by his "poetic paradise" as a "hoax." Stevens' life-long poetic theme was the relationship of reality and the imagination, and how they shaped/altered each other. He never, AFAICT, wrote about a "paradise," so much as he wrote about men's attempts to create imaginary paradises and how these always, ultimately failed. The Man With the Blue Guitar is very much about how one embodies the ideal within an art that must falsify. Towards the end of his career, Stevens became much more concerned with the "bareness" of reality, of what was left after one removed all traces of imaginative figuration. It's the bareness he's describing in The Plain Sense of Things and, in his last long work, An Ordinary Evening at New Haven. Meanwhile, Credences of Summer is about the inability to sustain imaginary paradises, and The Auroras of Autumn is about their dissolution.

I think you completely misunderstood the purpose of Stevens' "supreme fiction." In fact, Stevens never laid out what the "supreme fiction" was, but rather provided "notes towards" creating it, stating that it must be abstract, must change, and it must give pleasure. However, he never stated that supreme fiction must be poetry at all (in fact, he took much of his ideas from art critics and philosophers; not other poets). Stevens did, however, think of religion as a "supreme fiction" of the past that embodied all the ideals of its cultures, something he saw lacking in the modern world of science, materialism, naturalism, etc. Given that science had debunked so many of our imaginative ideals, Stevens obsessed over what role the imagination had to play in a reality that was being laid bare and shown to be even antagonistic towards our imagination. Like I said, though, towards the end he seemed as much interested in reality sans imagination, similar to what Yeats described in Meru:

Civilisation is hooped together, brought
Under a rule, under the semblance of peace
By manifold illusion; but man's life is thought,
And he, despite his terror, cannot cease
Ravening through century after century,
Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come
Into the desolation of reality:

That "desolation of reality" very well describes the late Stevens.

It is interesting, Morph, that you will not deign to show ten lines of great power from any of your trio of genius professors. Surely you can find something that most would agree is a hell of a stanza worthy of such touting.

Why do you insist on calling them "genius professors?" Anyway, one problem is that the majority of their poetry is not easily available online, and most of the poems I would choose I'd have to copy out by hand after looking them up in my LOA/Collected volumes, and there's no easy way to do that without fetching some weights to hold down the pages while I type, so it's a bit of a hassle. Like I said, I consider the primary strength of those poets to reside in their long works anyway, not in their ability to create a "hell of a stanza" that embodies their greatness. Ashbery annoys and intrigues me in equal degree, but in his long works I find myself absorbed in a way that I rarely am in his short poems; much the same is true of Merwin. The greatness of Merrill's Lost in Translation is in its structural effects, how the puzzle as central subject slowly becomes a metaphor for everything touched on in the poem, from the poet's craft, to his personal history, to national history, to the mind itself. Such things can't be contained within a few lines. I do think Merrill is better in his short poems than Ashbery or Merwin, but most of his best I can't find online. Here's one I really like from his last collection:

B O D Y

Look closely at the letters. Can you see,
entering (stage right), then floating full,
then heading off—so soon—
how like a little kohl-rimmed moon
o plots her course from b to d

—as y, unanswered, knocks at the stage door?
Looked at too long, words fail,
phase out. Ask, now that body shines
no longer, by what light you learn these lines
and what the b and d stood for.