A tier list of poets in the Spanish and English languages

This is not necessarily a serious entry: I created it for a friend who became interested in poetry and asked for recommendations. Even assuming that the reader agrees with my categorization, I would not recommend that he reads first (let alone only) the authors which we deem superior, nor that he excludes those which we belittle. Quite the contrary: there is almost as much to be learnt from the poor exercise of a craft as from examples of its mastery.

Tier 0: Why do people read these guys?

• Charles Bukowski: The only appeal of this writer is the entirely adolescent idea that there is something transgressive in using bad words and writing about prostitutes, sex, alcohol abuse, and misanthropy. From a formal perspective he is unmemorable; from a semantic one, he is simply bad.

• Dámaso Alonso: Not only a pedantic writer but a tasteless one. Among his crimes we may count the following obscenity:

That stanza is sufficient argument.

• Cortázar: His stories are excellent, his poetry is really, really bad.

• Luis Cernuda: He's not as bad as his predecessors, but his fame is to me unwarranted.

• Luis de Góngora: He shares a distasteful characteristic with Bukowski: not only was he the practiser of a bad style, but the founder of one, in the sense that many followed in his footsteps. Gongorism is perhaps the least agreeable current in the whole tradition of Spanish poetry.

• Baltasar Gracián: This poet, though celebrated and famous, is so bad that Borges wrote a famous poem about him. The poem begins in satyric tone and ends in a mystically tragic one.

Tier 1: Acceptable or good

• García Lorca: Yes, Borges was right: he was a minor poet. Still, Poeta en Nueva York (his best book) has some powerful poems. The rest of his work is okay at best, hand-wavy at worst.

• Rafael Alberti: Decent poet with some good books.

• Pablo Neruda: His epic work Canto General is a marvelous piece which must be read. The rest of his work is okay with some bad works (like Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada).

• Alfonsina Storni: Good writer with some very nice poems.

• Juana de Ibarbourou: His book Lenguas de diamante is very good, but did not leave such a definite impression in my memory.

• Juan Ramón Jiménez: Curiously, he won a Nobel prize for his worst work, namely Platero y yo. Some of his poems are quite decent.

• Vicente Aleixandre: This author perhaps deserved to be in the next tier. He is very good from a semantic as well as from a formal perspective.

• Juan Gelman: Some of his work is interesting, never fascinated me though.

• William Longfellow: This author has some very good poems and many forgettable ones.

• Ezequiel Martínez Estrada: This is an interesting one. He is not known outside of Argentina. In a formal sense, he used uncommon resources---e.g. wide use of dodecasyllable verses and original rhythms---; from a semantic perspective, he has some really memorable poems. For instance, the ending of a poem dedicated to nature ends with the following exquisite stanza:

He is not in the next tier because, though counting some extraordinary poems, he has many forgettable ones as well.

• Thomas Hardy: Another author which perhaps deserved the following tier, but falls to the same sin as his predecessor: among the few unforgettable poems there are countless forgettable ones. His poem Ah, are you digging on my grave? threads in an exquisite line between dark humour and plain obscurity. His poem Afterwards is one of the most exquisite examples of English literature. After the last breath is another very fine poem. He has many other very good poems.

• Christina Rossetti: She is okay.

• Emily Dickinson: Dickinson was a very fine writer very much worth reading. Yet, she did not impress me as strongly as she did other people. This may be a limitation on my end.

• Pedro Salinas: A very fine poet.

• The Argensola brothers: These are two writers but I group them into one. They wrote some fine verses.

• Fray Luis de León: He has very good poems, and his translation of El cantar de los cantares is an exquisite reading.

• José Pedroni: Good poems.

• Rubén Darío: Good poems, though modernism always feels old fashioned.

• Francisco de Quevedo: Too baroque for a superior tier, but certainly a very good writer.

• Oliverio Girondo: Decent.

Tier 2: Excellent

• César Vallejo: An original and exquisite writer.

• William Wordsworth:

• Coleridge:

• Walt Whitman:

• José Martí:

• Kipling:

• Garcilaso de la Vega: His sonnets are very commendable.

• Angelus Silesius: He conveys god.

• Roberto Juaroz: Sadly he is not that read today.

• Robert Frost: Semantically, one of the very best.

• William Blake: Pure and unlimited originality, superlative quality.

• Dylan Thomas: My introduction to poetry in the English language and an exquisite writer. Do not go gentle into that good night is a diamond, as well as some of his lesser known poems (see, for instance, the masterpiece Before I knocked).

Tier 3: Divine

• Borges: Needless to explain why.

• Miguel Hernández: This may surprise some people. However, his posthumous work Cancionero y romancero de ausencias is incredibly good, with some of its poems (e.g. Sigo en la sombra, lleno de luz) showing exquisite intuition, perfect technique, and ineffable depth. His previous works are also very good, except his first. His poems are sang by an almost totally unknown Spanish singer who does them an extraordinary rendition. His work is very much tied to his biography, so it makes sense to study his life as well is one is interested in his poems.