Scarriet’s Hot 100 has been going on for over 10 years. It’s now a fixture on the poetry scene.
Those toiling in the poetry trenches struggling to be read don’t look up.
Those who do make this list (most aren’t read much, either) are afraid to look down. (Ask Don Share or Michael Dickman)
Therefore no one else really bothers to do what Scarriet does here, taking a long vertical look to judge harshly and succinctly poets in the moment.
I don’t know if the Hot 100 is fruitful—or merely feeds resentment and idle curiosity.
I don’t like to summarize poets’ subjective lives (who cares, really?)—their travels, their membership in hipster guilds, their predictable neo-liberal politics, their fragile creds, their backroom alliances—frankly it bores me to tears.
I do this as an obligation. I just feel—damn— someone ought to do it.
I guess a secondary reason might be that I seek poetic or critical genius, or signs of it, at least. We need the haystack to find the needle.
A final point is that Scarriet putting poets on the list makes them hot. My own subjectivity is involved in the process.
Let’s look back at the previous names, reputable or controversial, who made the list as number one. See if you know them all:
Amanda Gorman 2021
Laura Foley 2019
Jennifer Barber 2019
Anders Carlson-Wee 2018
Garrison Keillor 2018
Sushmita Gupta 2017
Bob Dylan 2017
Matthew Zapruder 2016
Ben Mazer 2016
Vanessa Place 2015
Yi-Fen Chou 2015
Kenneth Goldsmith 2015
Claudia Rankine 2014
Valerie Macon 2014
John Ashbery 2014
Mark Edmundson 2013
Natasha Tretheway 2012
Rita Dove 2011
Billy Collins 2010
John Barr 2010
Harold Bloom 2010
And now, the current list!
1. Kent Johnson —this well-known avant hoaxster asked for reviews to be anonymous 10 years ago. The best minds in poetry said, “great idea!” It hasn’t happened.
2. William Logan —in an era of “too many poems” (Marjorie Perloff) there’s always criticism and reviews—Logan’s the great guilty pleasure, still the most mentioned.
3. Ben Mazer —Randall Jarrell’s living example: the Romantic Modern. Auden (who read Byron) was loud. Mazer has a quieter beauty. Also an editor, Mazer is bringing out The Collected Poems (with never published material) of Delmore Schwartz. Ben Mazer and the New Romanticism (2021) is a critical study of Mazer’s work from Spuyten Duyvil press.
4. Barbara Epler —Editor, New Directions. ND launched Delmore Schwartz when Delmore and founder James Laughlin were companions in their twenties.
5. Don Share —the last poetry editor of the now defunct Partisan Review, a position Delmore Schwartz once held. Share was recently forced out of his position at Poetry.
6. Su Cho —took over Poetry magazine editorship duties after Share was forced to quit. In general, the too-much-white-space poetry of Poetry still sucks.
7. Michael Wiegers —Editor in Chief, Copper Canyon Press.
8. Kevin Young —New Yorker poetry editor. Studied with Seamus Heaney at Harvard along with Ben Mazer.
9. Jonathan Galassi —FSG poetry editor who will publish Mazer’s Delmore Schwartz, much of it seen for the first time.
10. Marilyn Chin —Jury Chair for the 2021 Pulitzer. I knew her when she was a shy poet/translator at Iowa when we both worked for Paul and Hualing Engle’s International Writing Program.
11. Donald Futers —Penguin poetry editor.
12. Fiona McCrae —director and publisher, Graywolf
13. Eric Lorberer —Rain Taxi editor
14. Cal Bedient —with David Lau, edits Lana Turner
15. Robert Baird —reviewed William Logan’s Dickinson’s Nerves, Frost’s Woods in the NY Times, claiming Logan was attempting to play nice (to balance out his literary reputation) with a book of over-fastidious literary research.
16. John Beer —his parody poem, “The Waste Land” is a real achievement.
17. Michael Robbins —influenced by James Schuyler. In an interview, he strongly objected to “deforestation.”
18. Bill Freind —edited book of essays on the poetry of Araki Yasusada—a poet thought by many to be Kent Johnson’s creation.
19. Matthew Zapruder —Wave Books editor
20. Jill Bialosky —Norton poetry editor. Accused of plagiarism by William Logan.
21. Natalie Diaz —2021 Pulitzer prize winner.
22. Angie Mlinko —Nation poetry editor
23. Jericho Brown —Won the Pulitzer in 2020.
24. Frank Bidart —recently recognized with major awards. You can read his “Ellen West” online.
25. Laura Newbern —Arts and Letters editor.
26. Ira Sadoff —poet and critic, who once said he is “trying to resist the return to formalism.”
27. David Orr —poet and poetry critic for the NY Times, he once defended Alan Cordle of Foetry.
28. Johannes Goransson —his 2020 book of criticism is Poetry Against All.
29. Joe Amato —he has published a novel on poetics.
30. Jos Charles —she is the founding-editor of THEM.
31. Arthur Sze —won the 2021 Shelley Memorial Award and the 2019 National Book Award.
32. Desiree Bailey —short-listed for 2021 National Book Award.
33. Daniel Slager —publisher of Milkweed editions.
34. Barry Schwabsky —poet and art critic of the Nation.
35. Michael Theune —Structure and Suprise is the name of his textbook on poetry.
36. A.E. Stallings —this New Formalist almost won the Pulitzer in 2018.
37. Adam Kirsch —Jury Chair for the Pulitzer in 2020.
38. Al Filreis —MOOCS and PennSound
39. Dorianne Laux—best known for “The Pipe Fitter’s Wife,” recent runner-up for a major prize.
40. Joy Harjo —current U.S. poet laureate—in her third term.
41. Natasha Trethewey —pulitzer prize winner and latest jury member for that prize.
42. Dale Smith —his Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent After 1960 came out in 2012 from U Alabama Press.
43. Glyn Maxwell —probably the best living British poet.
44. Robert Archambeau —protested the poet laureatship of Billy Collins.
45. Victoria Chang —shook things up when she said “fuck the white avant-garde.”
46. Mei-mei Berssenbrugge —finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer.
47. Blake Campbell —young, gifted formalist poet who currently lives in Salem, MA.
48. Maureen McLane —in 2019 her Selected Poems published by Penguin.
49. Martin Espada —on the short-list for this year’s National Book Award.
50. Annie Finch —featured in the Penguin Book of the Sonnet. I met her on the old Blog Harriet Comments. I was a feisty comment writer, then, having sharpened my teeth as “Monday Love” on Foetry.com with visitors like Robert Creeley. Later, “Thomas Brady” would tangle with Franz Wright on Scarriet.
51. Charles Bernstein —stung by Scarriet. In a 1984 Alabama conference (Annie Finch pointed me to the transcript, with an unforgettable performance by panelist Denise Levertov) Gerald Stern demanded Bernstein name the “policemen-poets” of “Official Verse Culture.” Harold Bloom attacked Poe in a monster hit piece in the October 11 NY Review at the same moment. Defining point in history for poetry. “Alabama” will bring it up in a Scarriet site search.
52. Forrest Gander —Pulitzer prize winner, friends with Kent Johnson.
53. Marjorie Perloff —avant titan. One of the greatest conversations I ever witnessed was her and Philip Nikolayev debating the worth of Concrete Poetry in the Hong Kong restaurant in Harvard Square. Philip won (but it was his turf).
54. Mark Wallace —was a student assistant for Bernstein at Buffalo.
55. Robin Coste Lewis —is it really that long ago she won the National Book Award? (2015).
56. Philip Nikolayev —met Mazer at Harvard. Fulcrum editor has just published book of Pushkin translations.
57. Rupi Kaur —someone needs to publish a big important anthology which includes poets from all walks of life and mediums and points in history, taking an honest and serious look at all the selections, with popularity one criterion, and critical judgment the other. Poetry cannot keep going on like this. A reckoning is needed.
58. Billy Collins —hated by other prose poets. Because he sells. Kill Robert Frost. Poetry as mobsters fighting for turf. So anyway, how many poets can fill an arena these days? Is Collins the last famous poet living? Are famous poets necessary?
59. Helen Vendler —she must remember Alabama, too.
60. Jorie Graham —in a pretense to be non-pretentious, she lost her gift. Got in trouble with Foetry.com. But survived.
61. John Latta —works at the University Michigan library.
62. Ron Silliman —not sure what’s going on with his blog.
63. Fanny Howe —won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2009.
64. Julie Carr —Omnidawn published her in 2018.
65. Mary Angela Douglas —a poet of beauty and childhood.
66. Don Mee Choi —National Book Award 2020.
67. Rita Dove —her Penguin anthology produced controversy. She was too dignified to exploit it.
68. Daniel Borzutzky —won the National Book Award in 2016.
69. Sharon Olds —she won the Pulitzer with a book about divorcing her husband. She has written some extraordinary poems.
70. Mary Ruefle —destined for major prize greatness.
71. Peter Gizzi —was the lyric hope for a while.
72. Layli Long Soldier —her first volume of poetry was published in 2017 by Graywolf.
73. Dan Sociu —one of the best Romanian poets; had a chance to meet him (and the late David Berman) in Romania when Mazer and I visited.
74. Ocean Vuong —one of the strategies of contemporary poetry is the trope of tactile feeling. Winner of the 2017 T.S. Eliot prize.
75. Lawrence Rosenwald —editor of War No More: Three Centuries of American Antiwar & Peace Writing, 2016
76. Carlos Lara —Subconscious Colossus is his latest book.
77. Rachel Kaufman —Many To Remember is her new book of poems.
78. Billie Chernicoff —high praise from Kent Johnson.
79. Carolyn Forche —more poets! Bring them in, by the thousands, by the millions! Poets! Poets!
80. Michael Dickman —if a poem is cancelled because of something unkind in the poem (and yet not a reflection of the poet’s own views) is our complicity in this the death of poetry itself? Have the narrow dreams of Plato won?
81. Luke Kennard —from the Guardian (Sun 24 Oct 2021) : has won the Forward Prize for best collection for his “anarchic” response to Shakespeare’s sonnets, a work judges are predicting could “transform” students’ relationship with the Bard.
82. Louise Gluck —from the NY Times (Oct 26 2021) : Consisting of just 15 poems, “Winter Recipes from the Collective” extends the Nobel Laureate’s interest in silence and the void…
83. Murat Nemet-Nejat —a poet and editor of an anthology of contemporaryTurkish poetry.
84. Tom Orange —conceptual poet who has written on Clark Coolidge.
85. John Bradley —the editor of Eating the Pure Light: Homage to Thomas McGrath (Backwaters Press) which appeared in 2009.
86. Richard Owens —Damn the Caesars is his literary journal and Those Unknown his punk band.
87. Toi Derricote —The 2021 Wallace Stevens Award winner. She was a judge for the Wallace Stevens Award for many years, beginning in 2012. The stipend is $100,000.
88. Mark Halliday —a critic called his poetry “ultra-talk.”
89. Ben Lerner —poet, novelist, MacArthur genius grant recipient.
90. Seth Abramson —this lawyer, prof and poet went from Poetry MFA advocate to rabid political tweeter. Seems a throw-back, somehow, to the rough-and-tumble literary times of Poe. Fisticuffs and odes.
91. David Lehman —His BAP (Best American Poetry) began in 1988 with John Ashbery as guest editor. In the latest volume (2021) introduction he brags about the number of guest editors who have won Pulitzer prizes. Well, sure.
92. Jim Behrle —annually pokes fun of BAP.
93. Tracy K. Smith —Pulitzer prize winner and 2021 guest editor of BAP. Whitman-type poems of near-endless listing appears to be the latest trend.
94. Dana Gioia —2018 BAP guest editor. His essay decrying American poetry has a dying, sell-out industry is about 30 years old now reflects feelings which were not new at the time, and will never go away. All we can do is forget everything else and keep our eyes focused on that Nobel.
95. Terrence Hayes —in the 2021 BAP.
96. Jonny Diamond —editor-in-chief of the always interesting Literary Hub.
97. Daisy Fried —nominated for a Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.
98. Desiree Bailey —2021 National Book Award winner.
99. Atticus —so much depends on “An open window in Paris/is all the world I need.” (poem from his “best-selling” book)
100. Stephen Cole— just some poet who puts his poems on Facebook (he’s really good).