The 10 Greatest Poets Project: The Postmortem

As surprised I was by the overwhelming response to my call for lists of the 10 greatest poets, I was even more taken by the lack of . . . furor . . .over my final list! Even The New York Times seemed at peace with my rankings.

That's great, I suppose, but I expected a little more pushback about Neruda in the top spot. And I certainly was prepared for an onslaught of negative email about dissing Keats and Rilke.

But, not one word about either.

So far, the names (or absence thereof) drawing the most ire have been T. S. Eliot and Rainier Maria Rilke (the latter I myself lamented excluding). But, a staggering number of Facebook posts and emails have suggested something I never expected to see in an online forum like this: relative contentment.

I did receive some good questions about my final rankings. Since one of my scholarly areas is American Indian studies, there were a couple of queries about where Native writers might appear on the list. That's an excellent question, and it is connected to another question: why no living poets?

I decided not to put any living poets on the list for two reasons. One, their reputations and contributions are still actively in process of making themselves. It seems too premature to include someone on such a list who is still writing. Also, I know and am friends with many very good poets. So, I thought it best to make my list comprised solely of poets who cannot Facebook me. Though, if I get friended by a cranky Wordsworth or a giddy Rumi, I'll let you know.

The most talented, most prolific, and most influential American Indian poets, are, thankfully, still writing great stuff. It will be exciting to see how the work of writers like Sherman Alexie, Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz, Linda Hogan and others becomes part of the tapestry of American literary culture.

One of the things the project made me think about is the notion of literary greatness--what makes the canon, what makes immortality, what makes a poet teachable. In fact, my department chair has proposed I teach a class on this project in the fall, which I may do. Students like questioning the canon as much as they like studying it.

Reading your letters and lists also made me think about poetry in relation to other literary forms, like fiction and nonfiction, as well as the other arts like painting (10 greatest painters?), and of course, music. Though poetry is shorter and older, many readers don't think it has the currency or immediacy of fiction or nonfiction. While it's true that lyric poetry tends to be less narrative that novels, it does share a great deal with nonfiction, most notably in the desire of the writer to make the personal public and to do so in an artful way.

And, as modes of communication get shorter and shorter, poetry's compression, its ability to say a lot in a little, may evolve into the medium of choice. A fantastic new online literary zine called Bat Terrier, won't publish anything longer than 99 words. "Brevity," editor Joe Ahearn asserts, "is a form of compassion."

Poetry too is about compassion, as is the discourse about it. I thank you for your participation in this project, and I'll keep you up to speed on further developments. To read all of the posts related to the project and some of the other stories about it go here. A short, explanation-free version of the list is below:

10. Rumi
9. William Butler Yeats
8. Li Po
7. Emily Dickinson
6. John Donne
5. Wallace Stevens
4. Walt Whitman
3. Dante Alighieri
2. William Shakespeare
1. Pablo Neruda