[New-Poetry] Most popular poets

[David Graham]

I don't know if I would bother to define "establishment," either, but  
surely The Academy of American Poets is, well, fairly established.   
And they have quite helpfully posted two lists of the most popular  
poets, contemporary and historical, as measured by the traffic  
counters at their web site over the past year.

I have no idea what, if anything, such lists mean, whether they  
translate at all into book readership, sales, etc.  I am sure they do  
not translate into Quality, whatever that is, at least not directly.   
In any case, perhaps it will prove interesting to have a look at the  
two lists, pasted below.  The only surprise for me was Jack  
Prelutsky, who apparently writes poetry for children.  The surprise  
would not be that children's poetry shows up on such a list, really,  
but that he's the only such author.

I'm also a bit puzzled by Gary Soto's appearance on the list,  
especially since he's apparently more popular than, say, Robert Bly,  
Mary Oliver, Seamus Heaney, John Ashbery, and Sharon Olds, for  
instance.  Surely that can't be right?  I am reasonably sure he  
doesn't out-sell Oliver, for one. . . .

Most Popular Contemporary Poets


2008

1. Billy Collins

2. Charles Simic

3. Nikki Giovanni

4. Gary Soto

5. Rita Dove

6. Adrienne Rich

7. Kay Ryan

8. Naomi Shihab Nye

9. Mary Oliver

10. Jack Prelutsky

11. John Ashbery

12. Donald Hall

13. Louise Glück

14. Lucille Clifton

15. Sharon Olds

16. Sonia Sanchez

17. Yusef Komunyakaa

18. Sandra Cisneros

19. Amiri Baraka

20. Mark Strand

21. Robert Hass

22. W. S. Merwin

23. Seamus Heaney

24. Li-Young Lee

25. Robert Bly



Most Popular Historical Poets


2008

1. Langston Hughes

2. Emily Dickinson

3. Walt Whitman

4. Robert Frost

5. E. E. Cummings

6. Edgar Allan Poe

7. William Carlos Williams

8. Sylvia Plath

9. William Blake

10. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

11. Pablo Neruda

12. W. H. Auden

13. William Shakespeare

14. T. S. Eliot

15. Dylan Thomas



14. T. S. Eliot



15. Dylan Thomas

(Popularity based on Poets.org traffic data.)
Academy of American Poets
http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/58



========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz

Poetry Library:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
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