I think Pandatronic was referring to classic and famous contemporary poets; I wouldn't want to play favorites in choosing someone from here.  That being said, I like Frost, Poe, Dickinson, cummings, Longfellow, Keats, Angelou, Carroll and (Shel) Silverstein.  I don't like poets whose poems are too long to read in one sitting, like Whitman and his Leaves of Grass or Homer.  I can't understand some of the poets earlier than Shakespeare, so it is very frustrating to read them.  Also Plath's work is a little too depressing for my taste.  The rest I've of the (classic) poets I've never read or never head of, so I can't pass a fair judgment.
~Davidf

Panda,

It's the eternal question, right?

It's the sort of ongoing dialogue that poets have about justifying one's place in the "canon" -- surely a dirty word if ever there were such a thing.

I tend to say that I like poems more than poets. There are plenty of poems I love, and those have, on more than one occasion, been written by poets whom I have little to no admiration for.

I love Wendell Berry, and I think if I were taken to task for "emulating" someone's voice, it might be his. My voice isn't quite as earthy or pastoral, and I'm certainly more inclined toward rhythm and the importance of how my poems "sing" than he is --  but there is something in him that resonates with me. It probably has something to do with a sense of shared heritage.

As to more traditional verse -- I do love Frost, and most of Yeats; although, as I grow older I become more and more disenchanted with Yeats propensity to overwrite and be wholly and unnecessarily sentimental about things that I regard with relative disdain or am wholly unconcerned with.

I would be hardpressed to offer any love to the Beats -- Ginsberg and company just don't pass muster for me.

I do love the vast majority of what I've read of Auden. But he's vast, and it's hard to spend lots of time with him because he says things that knock loudly against my own very well secured doors -- it makes me uneasy at time.

I do enjoy modernism to some degree, though sometimes it is pushed too far. For example, though they are "shining lights" of modern poetry, I don't have a great deal of love for poets like Nikki Giovanni, John Ashberry, or even Donald Hall (though I do absolutely love a handful of Hall's poems -- and would defend them with my dying breath).

If we're talking closer to home, there are a handful of poets I've met via the forums I've written at and moderated over the years that I will ALWAYS read:

Melinda (Serenem) is one, Renee (our own Duetsdove) is another. Norm and Eric both fall in that category. Eric and I are kindred of a sort, and we share an understanding of one another that runs deeper, I think, than the superficiality that poses as real understsanding via the internet sometimes.

There are others, but I've since lost contact with many of them -- Tara and Gene from Poem Online, and Portia from the same site. And though it will elicit snarls and perhaps induce vomiting from some -- Engprof, Michael Bennet, from the same site -- a man who still elicits responses of either wonderous exuberant joy or distinct disdain JUST by the mention of his name.

But I love poems more than poets...

The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter
In Memory of W.B. Yeats
When You Are Old
The Mornings News
One Art
Ars Poetica

Just to name a paltry few...

Shane