"Greatest Living American Poet"

FUNNY THING. Here I have been thinking that Ashbery's career marked a kind of terminus to the idea of "greatest living American poet," seeing as how (1) he did nothing to embrace the role and (2) a great many people even within the restricted number of people who have an investment in poetry seem never to have thought about him (e.g., Garrison Keillor) and (3) he doesn't have a "Road Not Taken" or even a "Skunk Hour" that might nail down a spot in curriculum.

I have also been thinking that, all in all, saying goodbye to the idea of "greatest living American poet" was a good thing, given that thinking one is king of the cats probably does one's work no good at all, ordinarily (see Lowell or Ted Hughes).

Then, in Luc Sante's memorial piece on Ashbery in NYRB (Oct. 12, 2017), what does he do but declare that Ashbery "was considered, by general acclaim, the greatest living American poet."

Well. I mean, I suppose he was, if we need to designate someone. But part of the example and legacy of Ashbery is that poetry is too unmappable a territory to have a single greatest living practitioner. It bothers me that Sante hung the tag on him.

Does this mean we are going to have a new greatest living American poet? But consider the field. Let's consider Jorie Graham, Mary Oliver, and Alice Notley...see what I mean? Can one even make any comparison? Isn't Graham, Oliver, and Notley apples, oranges, and lemons? If you throw in Merwin, Silliman, and Billy Collins, we have whole new dimensions of incommensurability.