Dante, the one-hit wonder

[George Thompson]

>From today's NYTimes:
In February Dean Rader, an English professor at the University of San Francisco, set out to discover history’s 10 best poets (much like Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times recently did for composers).  [his top poet i Pablo Neruda]  In second place was Shakespeare, whose name, according to Mr. Rader’s “shockingly unscientific measurements,” appeared most frequently in reader e-mails, followed by Dante, who Mr. Rader said was the most controversial pick, because “he’s only well known for one poem (‘The Divine Comedy’).” Western literary greats like Walt Whitman, John Donne, Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats and Wallace Stevens also appear on the list with the Eastern favorites Rumi and Li Po, whom Mr. Rader called “the great poet of drunkenness.”

So 6 of the top 10 write in English, and the list is rounded out by a Spanish, an Italian, a Persian and a Chinese poet; no poet who wrote in Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Hindi, German . . . . . measured up.

Did I mention that no Greek or Latin poet could make the cut?

I post this just to show you folks that Linguistics isn;t the only field of study beset by ninnies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/books/07arts-THE10BESTPOE_BRF.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=dante&st=cse

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.  Working on a new edition, though.

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