Who is assumed to be the best Poet ever?

[JhKreisler]

Alright, maybe a "cliché-thread", but I didn't see it on the list,
so I'm asking, who is for you, the best poet ever lived?

[stlukesguild]

That would depend upon who is doing the assuming.

[Il Dante]

Dante.
La Divina Commedia is, IMVHO, a poem of unsurpassed scope, beauty, creativity, genius, and magnificence.
Take, for instance, the number three in this poem. It has three sections: Inferno, Purgatario, and Paradiso. Each section has 33 cantos plus one. Each canto has stanzas of three lines with a terza rima rhyme scheme of interlocking threes. All of this is related to the final several stanzas in which Dante sees the Trinity, the vision of three interfacing, coinhering circles. Also, hell, purgatory, and paradise each have nine tiers, nine being a multiple of three.
Since Dante, IMVO, wrote the greatest poem, if follows that he was the greatest poet.
But this is all just my personal feeling.

[stlukesguild]

The Comedia would also be my choice for the single greatest poem... the single greatest literary work known to me.

[mortalterror]

Homer, Vyasa, Firdawsi, Dante, or Shakespeare.

[BienvenuJDC]

But how can one answer such questions unless it can be defined what poetry is....

[Lokasenna]

The latest BBC poll placed T. S. Eliot in first position...

Personally, I'm not sure. Shakespeare is an obvious choice (assuming you can classify his plays as poetry), as are Milton, Chaucer, Keats, Dante and Goethe.

I suppose it is ultimately a personal choice...

[mal4mac]

The competition that Eliot won was 'best out of 30 British poets in a BBC poetry season'. Shakespeare was not included. I prefer Shakespeare to Dante. He has more beauty, scope, drama, variety, and fewer obscure Italians. So, if we can assume that he actually did write poetry , then he's my choice.

[blazeofglory]

we have read little of the east and there are great ancient Indian poets, Kalidas, Ved Vyasa are unbeatable by any standards and their poems got never got assessed properly. I have read both western and eastern poets or literature I find some of the great Sanskrit poets outshining the rest of western poets. It is not a biased ideas. Today many scholars or linguists have considered Sanskrit to be the most beautiful, sophisticated and scientific language and of course the poems written in this language dazzle any other.

The Mahabharata, for example is a beautiful epic or some considered it be the encyclopaedia that stores base repositories of knowledge.

I may seem at odd here with the many who are unfamiliar with the Sanskrit language and its great literary works. But since the question arisen here bears relevance to this I feel it proper to raise this question in the context.

[Il Dante]

I may seem at odd here with the many who are unfamiliar with the Sanskrit language and its great literary works. But since the question arisen here bears relevance to this I feel it proper to raise this question in the context.

You raise a relevant point: most westerners (myself included) tend to overlook Eastern poetry, and since this thread is about "greatest poet ever" it is only reasonable to consider eastern poets and poems. The world of literature is so overwhelmingly rich; it's like a vast universe that would take a million lifetimes to explore adequately.

And therein lies the problem with determining "the greatest poet ever": almost no one is qualified to really judge all the greatest poets from all the civilizations in the world, both eastern and western.

[desiresjab]

I am pretty sure Smith outdid 'em all.