Chris, you are no doubt right. My point is one of the importance of the 
US influence, rather than to deny the talents of individual UK poets.



On Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:01:08 -0400, cris cheek 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>well let's grab this monkey and run a bit
>
>i'd argue for the following (at least) being significant figures in
>their fields of poetic practice in and beyond their time
>
>that does NOT mean that there are not many many many others who 
are
>read and considered and of import
>
>in fact  . . . there are many many
>
>
>
>
>agree with Jamie and then but only for starters:
>
>Gerard Manley Hopkins
>
>Thomas Hardy
>
>
>
>Basil Bunting (significant figure)
>
>TS Eliott (significant figure) is in Keith Tuma's OUP Anthology of
>20th Century British & Irish Poetry
>
>Yeats (significant figure) (yes the issue of nationality is more than
>merely moot)
>
>Mina Loy (significant figure)
>
>W H Auden (significant figure)
>
>Ian Hamilton Finlay, dsh, Bob Cobbing (significant figures)
>
>Jeremy Prynne (significant figure)
>
>Tom Raworth (significant figure)
>
>Tom Leonard (significant figure)
>
>Bill Griffiths (significant figure)
>
>Linton Kwesi Johnson (significant figure)
>
>Maggie O'Sullivan (significant figure)
>
>Caroline Bergvall (significant figure)
>
>
>fill in the blanks . . .
>
>
>
>i could get off into a long long list of names considered significant
>in different ways
>a whole load of whom are still probably sipping their whiskey and
>reading this list
>
>
>
>xx
>
>
>
>cris
>
>
>
>
>On Aug 25, 2009, at 1:49 PM, Jeffrey Side wrote:
>
>> I don't know if Whitman's admiring Tennyson necessarily supports 
the
>> idea that in some way Whitman's poetry, is Tennysonian, and,
>> therefore, particularly British influenced. To me it does not
>> appear to
>> be. It seems to be more akin to folk-song and rural story-telling
>> traditions.
>>
>> Poe's poems may be better in French but his acuity in recognizing
>> French poetry's value is more important in terms of the American
>> development of what we call High Modernism.
>>
>> And Yeat's, of course, was influenced, also, by the French 
Symbolists.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:11:12 -0700, David Latane
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> I think the reports of British poetry's demise have been greatly
>> exaggerated; there's a reason Whitman referred to Tennyson as "The
>> Boss." Poe is notoriously better in French translation; to place him
>> above Yeats strikes me as ridiculous.
>>> I've encountered various manifestations of the "westering" motif--
we
>> Americans love it of course, but there's something abject in it
>> appearing
>> so frequently among the British, when the poetic achievement of so
>> many 20th and 21st-century British poets is so high.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> David Latane
>>> http://www.standmagazine.org (Stand Magazine, Leeds)
>>>
>>> --- On Tue, 8/25/09, Jeffrey Side <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> From: Jeffrey Side <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Subject: "Has British Poetry had any significance since 
Wordsworth?"
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Date: Tuesday, August 25, 2009, 6:30 AM
>>>
>>> New blog post:
>>
>>
>> "Has British Poetry had any significance since Wordsworth?"
>>
>> This may seem an outlandish question, but I think it has some force
>> behind it. Of course, the influence of Wordsworth on contemporary
>> British mainstream poetry need hardly be stressed, and I have 
written
>> extensively about this elsewhere. It is because of this influence that
>> most of the celebrated British poetry of the Twentieth Century 
tended
>> towards mediocrity when compared to American poetry of the same
>> period.....
>>
>>
>> http://jeffrey-side.blogspot.com/