WHAT TO LOOK FOR REGARDING A BOOK BY A SINGLE POET

1. Characterize the style of your poet. What are his or her characteristic poetic techniques?

2. Point to specifics; use examples (words, lines, images, form, etc.)

3. How do you respond personally to this book?

Here is your list of contemporary (more or less) poets from which to choose. You may look also in your poetry text from 291 and in your course texts for additional names.

SELECTED MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY  POETS (updated 2011)

Gary Snyder  
Nance Van Winckle
Robert Wrigley
Yusef Komunyakaa
Edward Hirsch
Mary Oliver
Richard Wilbur
David St. John
W.D. Snodgrass
Lewis Simpson
Ai
Mark Rudman
Karl Shapiro
Carolyn Kizer
Charles Wright
Joseph Brodsky
Jorie Graham
A.R. Ammons
John Ashberry
Adrienne Rich
Stephen Dunn
Amy Clampit
Mark Strand
Rachel Hadas
Jane Kenyon
James Merrill
Robert Pinsky
Linda Gregg
Charles Baxter
Thylias Moss
Robert Creeley
Brenda Hillman
Robert Hass
Elizabeth Spires
W.S. Merwin
Gerald Stern
James Tate
Adrienne Rich
Galway Kinnell
Jane Miller

John Ciardi
Nick Carbo
Robert Bly
Diane Raptosh
Mark Doty
James Dickey
Carolyn Forché
Robin Behn
Maxine Kumin
Charles Bukowski
Louise Glück
Allen Ginsberg
Marge Piercy
Dorainne Laux
Thomas Lux
Toi Derricotte
Eavan Boland
Tony Hoagland
Louise Glück
Billy Collins
Robert Wrigley
Denise Levertov
Denise Duhamel
Carolyn Kizer
Mary Jo Salter
Li-young Lee
Mary Oliver
Cathy Song
Donald Justice
Lucille Clifton
Kim Addonizio
Rita Dove
Pamela Alexander
A.R. Ammons
Gary Soto
Naomi Shihab Nye
Jane Kenyon
Stanley Kunitz
Sandra McPherson
Sherman Alexie
Natasha Tretheway
Gwendolyn Brooks
Richard Hugo
Greg Pape
Carl Phillips
Sharon Olds
Ruth Stone
James Tate
Stephen Dunn
Linda Gregg
Mark Halliday
David Wagoner
Tony Hoagland
Paul Muldoon
Linh Dinh
Gerald Stern
John Hollander
Tess Gallagher
Lucia Perillo
Linda Bierds
Campbell McGrath
Sylvia Plath
Anne Sexton
B. H. Fairchild
Henri Cole
Marilyn Hacker
Seamus Heaney
Langston Hughes
Andrew Hudgins
Alberto Rios
William Stafford
e.e. cummings
Robert Dana
Karen Swenson
Derek Walcott
Philip Levine
Heather McHugh
Sonia Sanchez
Donald Hall
Michael Dickman
Matthew Zapruder
David Bottoms
C.K. Williams
Graham Foust
Robert Lowell
Charles Olson
Rae Armantrout
Ellen Bryant Voigt
Rodney Jones
Lisel Mueller
Robert Frost
W.B. Yeats
Marvin Bell
W.C. Williams
Philip Larkin
John Crowe Ransom
Robert Penn Warren
Claudia Emerson
David Wojahn
Eric Pankey
Jill Valentine
James Wright
Robert Bly
Archibald MacLeish
Theodore Roethke
Elizabeth Bishop
Jack Gilbert
James Schuyler
Nick Flynn
Gregory Orr
William Pitt Root
Joe Bolton
Beth Ann Fennley
Randall Jarrell
Hayden Carruth
Fred Chappell
Albert Goldbarth
Anthony Hecht
Robert Hayden
Richard Howard
T.R. Hummer
Denis Johnson
Ted Kooser
William Meredith
Howard Nemerov
Frank O’Hara
Kenneth Koch
Gjertrud Schnackenberg
May Swenson
Mona Van Duyn
Maurice Manning
Jane Hirschfield
Robert Creeley
Sherod Santos
John Berryman|
Rita Dove 

Any U.S. Poet Laureate