60 Most Interesting Living Mostly American Poets (This is Obviously a Very Personal List and Off the Top O' My Head)

1. Mei-me Berssenbrugge
2. Rae Armantrout
3. Dorothea Lasky
4. Matthew Rohrer
5. Eileen Myles
6. Bernadette Mayer
7. Peter Gizzi
8. Jennifer Moxley
9. Chelsey Minnis
10. David Shapiro
11. Robert Kelly
12. Alice Notley
13. Clark Coolidge
14. Mary Ruefle
15. Kathleen Fraser
16. Sheila Murphy
17. John Giorno
18. Robert Grenier
19. Lyn Hejinian
20. Fanny Howe
21. Franz Wright
22. Joanne Kyger
23. Ron Padgett
24. Charles Bernstein
25. Dennis Cooper
26. Elaine Equi
27. Christopher Knowles
28. Yoko Ono
29. Douglas Messerli
30. Marjorie Welish
31. John Yau
32. Rosmarie Waldrop
33. Keith Waldrop
34. Russell Edson
35. Anne Carson
36. Harryette Mullen
37. Joe Wenderoth
38. Lisa Jarnot
39. Katherine Lederer
40. Joan Retallack
41. Elizabeth Willis
42. Robert Fitterman
43. Nada Gordon
44. Myung Mi Kim
45. Claire Needell
46. Cole Swensen
47. Juliana Spahr
48. C.D. Wright
49. Laura Moriarty
50. Janet Gray
51. John Taggart
52. Susan Stewart
53. Kendra Grant Malone
54. Jenny Holzer
55. Louise Gluck
56. Philip Nikolayev
57. Henri Cole
58. Norma Cole
59. Rachel Blau Duplessis
60. W.S. Merwin



N.B. This is off the top of my head and I probably forgot some authors I reread obsessively. I wanted the criterion to be authors whose works bring me back again and again. Mainly that. Okay, Anne Carson is Canadian. But she might as well be American. She's ubiquitous here in America.