Who are the best poets

October 22, 2022 7:13 PM

If I was an active participant in the poetry scene, who would (or should) I respect, enjoy, be inspired by, feel challenged by?

I feel like for films I could read film comment or whatnot and pretty quickly learn who are regarded as especially interesting, exciting, compelling, well respected, or controversial filmmakers both contemporary and from the last 50 years, and why.

I also know where to find this information for novelists: like listening to various literary podcasts, reading various literary reviews, etc, you can get a sense of what novelists other novelists read, who has made an impact on the form or toiled outside of it - earning respect for their unique vision etc.

How do I do this for poets? Or can you give me the Cliffs Notes?

Like, if I were to take a poetry survey class at a good university, who would I read?

Interested in international and US poets lets say from the last 50 or 70 years.

posted by latkes to Education (8 answers total)

Like, if I were to take a poetry survey class at a good university, who would I read?

I don't really keep up, but by coincidence (and based on the strength of this review), I read Signe Gjessing's brief Tractatus Philosophico-Poeticus this morning, and I thought it was pretty neat. If I were trying to keep up, I'd probably sample actual syllabuses at universities that publish reading lists, e.g. at Brown University you can find lists of texts like this one for "Graduate Poetry." I thought The White Review's roundup of books from 2021 had a lot of things that sounded good, and like BOMB, Jacket2, The Brooklyn Rail, and Granta, it's a source where I've occasionally found things of interest. LitHub also had some articles framed as syllabuses recently; e.g. "Ekphrastic Poetry with Victoria Chang" and "Hybrid Poetry with Ocean Vuong" both have some recent work mixed in.
posted by Wobbuffet at 7:41 PM on October 22, 2022

This online course from UPenn offers a decent survey though not exactly deep cuts in most cases.
posted by derrinyet at 7:55 PM on October 22, 2022

The Poems for the Millennium series (5 volumes that I know of, but possibly there are more?) gives a good overview and contextualizing of the various discrete styles of poetry. It's not going to be up to the minute current as the first volume was published in the mid 90s, but I have the first two volumes & would highly recommend those at least.
Volume 1: From Fin-de-Siècle to Negritude
Volume 2: Modern and Postmodern Poetry, From Postwar to Millennium
Volume 3: Romantic & Postromantic Poetry
Volume 4: North African Literature
Volume 5: Barbaric Vast & Wild: An Assemblage of Outside & Subterranean Poetry from Origins to Present
posted by juv3nal at 9:51 PM on October 22, 2022

I know a bunch of that stuff is gonna be more than 70 years old, but frequently contemporary poets are writing in the tradition of poets from longer ago than that and those that aren't are often writing in reaction to their contemporaries that are, so, the context is important I feel.
posted by juv3nal at 10:00 PM on October 22, 2022

Poetry anthologies are a great introduction, although the caveat is that they tend to feature more old guard, less diverse and younger authors.
For a lot of authors that might be covered in a university survey course, check out the Norton Anthology of Poetry, edited by Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy.
For contemporary international poets, I like "The Poetry of Our World," edited by Jeffrey Paine and "The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry," edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris.
For contemporary American poets, "Contemporary American Poetry," edited by A. Poulin Jr and Michael Waters and "The Vintage Book of Contemporary and American Poetry," by JD McClatchy, is pretty good. For 21st c. poets, the authors list in "Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century," edited by Cate Marvin and Michael Dumanis, though I haven't actually paged through a copy.
My top rec for a poetry anthology that really hooks you (especially if you are someone who's not already a big poetry reader) and gives a sense of the depth and breadth of contemporary poetry, though, isn't a survey of the greats. It's "Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times," edited by Neil Astley, and I keep returning to it in every season of life.
posted by xoiok at 12:30 AM on October 23, 2022

I’ll echo xoiok’s recommendation - I love my copy of Staying Alive.

While not within your time frame or a specific list, I often read the Poetry Foundation poem of the day because it introduces me to poets I’m not already familiar with.
posted by hilaryjade at 6:15 AM on October 23, 2022

The London Review of Books does a good job of keeping up with British poetry, and manages a nod across the Atlantic every once in a while as well.

And when they talk about a poet, they always seem to include enough of the work to to get a sense of it.
posted by jamjam at 1:26 PM on October 23, 2022

You can subscribe to a poetry journal - I subscribe to both Poetry Magazine from the US on a monthly basis and Poetry Review from the UK on a quarterly basis.

For podcasts, both journal's parent organizations (Poetry Foundation and Poetry Society) put out regular podcasts. I also like the New Yorker's poetry podcast and the Poetry Exchange, a podcast where the hosts interview a guest (not usually a poet or someone in the poetry world themselves) about "a poem that has been a friend to them." They read the poem and then they all discuss. It sounds cheesy but it's really lovely.

Edit: I also like the the Pome newsletter, run by Matthew Ogle, which sends you a poem every day. It's on hiatus now but will probably come back sometime next year.
posted by airplant at 3:28 PM on October 23, 2022