Ten Greatest Poets

TEN GREATEST POETS

Anytime you set out to list the ten greatest anything, you’re setting yourself up for a takedown. Because any ten greatest list is bound to be controversial, and there will always be mountains enough to dispute. Still, it’s worth undertaking the intellectual and aesthetic exercise for the sheer stimulation of it.

In putting together this list, I had to first decide on evaluative criteria. I settled on three:

1. Influence on world culture

2. Critical legacy

3. Female representation

The first criterion, influence on world culture, seeks to elevate judgment beyond individual, idiosyncratic taste. We all have our favorite poems, and if we considered them the greatest on this basis solely, they would hardly qualify as the greatest.

This criterion necessarily leads us to bypass many cultures of lesser influence, such as, for example, the rich cultures of the indigenous North American tribes. We would inevitably emphasize Western culture because of colonial and imperial history. By weight of sheer population numbers, Chinese and Indian cultures would be considered very influential. Not surprisingly, this criterion inevitably introduces selection bias.

The second criterion, critical legacy, is principally located in academic sources, not exclusively Western. There is something to be said for the value of academic evaluation—among others, it is intellectual, often rigorous, and peer-reviewed.

This criterion also introduces selection bias. However, bias does not by itself disqualify this criterion. After all, bias exists everywhere. In coming to judgment, it is necessary to recognize bias for what it is and how it applies in particular cases.

The third criterion has been introduced because males dominate the world literature canon. A list of the ten greatest poets tends to select males because society is historically patriarchal. In the interest of balance, I thought it important to include at least some females. Still, results end up favoring males, and there is only one female in the list.

In two instances, I sought to explain the basis for my selection, male or female, when equivalent choices of different genders presented themselves.

Minority representation, practically nonexistent in the traditional canon, Western or otherwise, is an important criterion. It should be included as a fourth criterion, but it isn’t.

Unfortunately, the world literature canon is occupied by high culture representatives of hegemonic societies. If we include minority poets in the list of the ten greatest, we would have to select them from recent or contemporary poets who exist outside the canon.

In the end, only one twentieth-century poet—and he is not a minority—made it to the list. For so short a list, the status quo, among others, works against minority representation.

To address the issue of lack of minority representation in the world literature canon, I have prepared another list, Numbers 11 to 20 Greatest Poets, which will appear later.

My list of ten greatest poets is organized chronologically, earliest to latest, approximately.

The ten greatest poets are—flourish, please:

1. David (c. 1,000 BCE)

2. Sappho (630-580 BCE)

3. Vyasa (c. 400 BCE)

4. Li Po (701-762)

5. Rumi or Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207-1273)

6. Dante Alighieri (c. 1265-1321)

7. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

8. Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694)

9. Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

10. Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

This next succession of blogs takes them up one by one.

David, Sweet Singer of Israel:

https://poetryofgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2018/06/ten-greatest-poets-david.html

The Unexpected Answer (1933) by Rene Magritte