Over at Jeannine's blog, there's a game going called Poetry Heroes. Your list of contemporary poetry heroes can't include friends, dead poets, poet mentors (something like that, I forget the exact rules), but basically anyone with whom you're in contact. I love this idea, as I woke up this morning thinking about who are my contemporary favorites, and this is a partial list of what came to mind:
1. Alice Oswald
2. Seamus Heaney
3. Mary Oliver
4. Kate Light
5. Pattiann Rogers
6. Sharon Olds
7. Jane Hirshfield
8. Joy Harjo
9. Alice Fulton
10. Billy Collins
11. Naomi Shihab Nye (even if I do know her, I can't leave her off the list -- I read her almost every week)
And who made up the silly rule about not including contemporary poets you know? Wouldn't you try to get to know living poets you admire? Duh ...
So who's on your list? I'm tagging you.