- BEN MAZER –Simply the best poet writing today. Keeping John Crowe Ransom and Landis Everson alive, too. “all is urgent, just because it gives, and in the mirror, life to life life gives.”
- CLAUDIA RANKINE–“How difficult is it for one body to see injustice wheeled at another?”
- ROBIN COSTE LEWIS–Winner of the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry with Voyage of the Sable Venus.
- BILLY COLLINS–There’s only one Billy Collins. You will know him by his bathrobe and slippers.
- SHARON OLDS–Plain-spoken poignancy.
- JOHN ASHBERY–Essentially French
- KENNETH GOLDSMITH–We don’t see how he can redeem himself.
- TERRANCE HAYES–Highbrow examination of prejudice.
- ALICE NOTLEY–2015 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
- SARAH HOWE–her debut book, Loop of Jade, wins 2016 T.S. Eliot Prize.
- CHUMKI SHARMA–“After every rain I leave the place for something called home.”
- SEAN O’BRIEN–“‘People’ tell us nowadays these views are terribly unfair,/But these forgiving ‘people’ aren’t the ‘people’ who were there.”
- MELISSA STEIN–because she wrote the poem, “never said.”
- MARY ANGELA DOUGLAS–“till the larks cry out/and not with music”
- DORIANNE LAUX–because she wrote the poem, “Facts About the Moon.”
- MAURA STANTON–“Who made me feel by feeling nothing”
- MOLLY BRODAK–“boundlessness secretly exists, I hear”
- TRACI BRIMHALL–“I broke a shell to keep it from crying out for the sea”
- CATE MARVIN–because she wrote the poem, “The Readership.”
- BETSY SHOLL–because she wrote the poem, “The Sea Itself.”
- SJOHNNA MCCRAY–2015 Walt Whitman Award winner for Rapture
- CHARLES HAYES–“her sweaty driver knows his load is fair”
- BRIAN BRODEUR–his blog is “How A Poem Happens”
- MELISSA GREEN–“They’ve mown the summer meadow”
- RICK BAROT–because he wrote the poem, “Reading Plato.”
- ALLEN PROWLE–Do we live in the Age of Plagiarism?
- VANESSA PLACE–What do you think, Vanessa?
- LORI JAKIELA–“In Pittsburgh, we have 2 dreams…go to Vegas to live…go to Florida to die”
- CONNIE VOISINE–“The oleanders are blooming and heavy with hummingbirds”
- SHARA LESSLEY–because she wrote the poem, “Advice From The Predecessor’s Wife.”
- ALFRED CORN–because he wrote “An Xmas Murder.”
- WILLIAM LOGAN–“The critic is a Diogenes in a world where everyone is Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” (Battersea Review) Are there poets on Sunnybrook Farm?
- MARJORIE PERLOFF–Are there so many poets, that reviewers and critics no longer exist?
- DAVID HUDDLE–because he wrote the poem, “Men’s Sauna.”
- TIM LIARDET–“Its windows look through us, as if we offer a view.”
- BOB HICOK–because he wrote the poem, “The Active Reader.”
- LOUISE GLÜCK–because she wrote the poem, “A Fantasy.”
- CHARLES SIMIC–because he wrote the poem, “So Early in the Morning”
- DANA GIOIA–because he wrote the poem, “The Angel with the Broken Wing”
- DONALD HALL–“To grow old is to lose everything.”
- LAURA KASISCHKE–because she wrote the poem, “For the Young Woman I Saw Hit by a Car While Riding Her Bike.”
- CODY WALKER–because he wrote the poem, “Trades I Would Make.”
- DERRICK MICHAEL HUDSON–Will he be remembered?
- DAVID LEHMAN–Editor of Best American Poetry series has a soft spot for Tin Pan Alley.
- CARL DENNIS–2002 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
- MARK JARMAN–narrative poet is a professor at Vanderbilt.
- KUSHAL PODDAR–Bold, intriguing, WC Williams-like poet in English from Bengal.
- VALERIE MACON–Briefly poet laureate from North Carolina
- GARRISON KEILLOR–Good for good poems.
- PHILIP NIKOLAYEV–Confounding the experts by drawing.
- JUAN FELIPE HERRERA–California laureate to U.S. Laureate.
- RON SILLIMAN–Hates Republicans.
- EILEEN MYLES–I Must Be Living Twice is her latest book.
- PATRICIA LOCKWOOD–Twitter poet with two books, a Best American Poetry regular, and a viral poem.
- TONY HOAGLAND–because he wrote the poem, “Lucky.”
- STEPHEN DUNN–2000 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
- STEPHEN BURT–Critic at Harvard with an eye on the new.
- W.S. MERWIN–“you know there was never a name for that color”
- RICHARD WILBUR–“not vague, not lonely, not governed by me only”
- JOE GREEN–Limerick Homer. Yes, this is for real. Homer translated into limericks.
- ROBERT HASS–“So the first dignity, it turns out, is to get the spelling right.”
- NAOMI SHIHAB NYE–“If you love Jesus you can’t love anyone else”
- RODNEY JONES–“I happily took myself into the darkness of the underground, where I was king”
- GERALD STERN–because he wrote the poem, “Waving Goodbye.”
- JORIE GRAHAM–“A rooster crows all day from mist outside the walls”
- DAVID KIRBY–because he wrote the poem, “Broken Promises.”
- BARBARA HAMBY–“carrying around a copy of Being and Nothingness so boys will think you have a fine mind.”
- LISA LEWIS–“I knew it was love when I didn’t want to close my eyes.”
- SUSAN WOOD–“The simple fact is very plain. They want the bitterness to remain.”
- BRENDA HILLMAN–“Talking flames get rid of hell.”
- LUCIA PERILLO–because she wrote the poem, “Early Cascade.”
- STEPHEN STURGEON–“City busses are crashing and I can’t hear Murray Perahia”
- JESSE BALL–because he wrote the poem, “Lester, Burma.”
- CHARLES BERNSTEIN–Attack of the Difficult Poems was published in 2011.
- GEORGE BILGERE–The new Billy Collins. Featured on Garrison Keillor’s show.
- LES MURRAY–“Everything except language knows the meaning of existence.”
- SURAZEUS SIMON SEAMOUNT–Epic poems of the ancient philosophers.
- ALAN CORDLE–Foetry.com founder. Scarriet was his idea as a reply to Blog Harriet.
- NATHANIEL MACKEY–Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University.
- AMY KING–received MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College and MA in Poetics from SUNY Buffalo.
- LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI–Presenter at mass S.F. protest (“Human Be-In”) in January, 1967, when LSD was banned in California in 1966.
- PETER GIZZI–“No isn’t it amazing, no none of that”
- DEBORAH LANDAU–“I don’t have a pill for that”
- SARAH ARVIO–In 2015 Best American Poetry
- MARK DOTY–His book Deep Lane was short-listed for 2016 T.S. Eliot Prize.
- MARY OLIVER–“You do not have to be good”
- DAN CHIASSON–because he writes for the New Yorker
- MARILYN HACKER–National Book Award for Poetry in 1975.
- A.E. STALLINGS–she rhymes.
- HAROLD BLOOM–does he still hate Poe?
- ANNE CARSON–“don’t keep saying you don’t hear it too“
- RITA DOVE–U.S. Poet Laureate 1993-95.
- DON SHARE–“A brown bust of a sad man”
- HELEN VENDLER–The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar: Essays on Poets and Poetry was published in April, 2015
- CATHY PARK HONG–Teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence.
- SIMON ARMITAGE–chosen to succeed Geoffrey Hill as Oxford Professor of Poetry
- VICTORIA CHANG–“The boss tells me of the billionaire who likes me”
- MARILYN CHIN–wins Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Hard Won Province, first time for a book of poetry.
- DAVID BIESPIEL–Writes for The Rumpus.
- KAY RYAN–doesn’t like being compared to Emily Dickinson; “would you like to be compared to God?” —Paris Review interview
