Commitment issues

Yesterday, Dan asked me to name my personal top five 20th-century American female poets. I started and restarted and revised and took folks on and off, never getting past #4. Admittedly, I was taking it way too seriously for a bar game.



While Dan is away on vacation in Vermont this week, I will try to come up with a list I can stick to.



Tom Hartman's list: Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Stevie Smith, and oh I can't remember the other one.



Dan didn't finish his own list either, but contenders included Sharon Olds, Alice Notley, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, H.D.



I'm not sure if I got those in the right order.



None of my incarnations had Olds, Plath, Notley, Stevie Smith, or HD.



#1 Gertrude Stein

#2 Elizabeth Bishop

#3 Marianne Moore

#4 Laura Riding

#5



Agonizing possibilities in no particular order: Adelaide Crapsey, Joan Murray--just one book, but what a book, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Louise Bogan, May Swenson, Anne Sexton, What to do with Susan Wheeler--can I save her for the 21st?



I invite you to confuse me further by remarking on all the grrls I have left out of this near dozen.