[New-Poetry] Influential Poets, The Five

[Bob Grumman]

>> > Why must there be "ranking"?
>> >
>> > - Jim
>>
>> Same reason there's ranking of food, say.  There's good food, so-so food,
>> bad food, poison, and so on.  But if you have time, go ahead--ignore
>> rankings and read every everything.
>>
>
> So how would you rank Whitman, Longfellow, Pound, Cummings, Williams
> in respect to each other?
>
> -- Jim

I wasn't ranking them, just mentioning them as, off the top of my head, the 
most influential.  That's not necessarily the same as the best.  Mediocre 
and bad poets can be influential, good poets uninfluential.  But I'd rank 
them Cummings, Pound, Williams, Whitman, Longfellow.  I'll leave it to you 
to figure out whether my list goes from best to worst or the other way.

(I consider both Stevens and Roethke equal to Cummings.)

--Bob