Favorite contemporary poet?

Most of my experience with poetry stems from university classes where we studies the "classics": Donne, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Sexton, Plath etc etc. I want to expand and delve into contemporary poetry, but I'm at a loss as to where to start, and the local library is teeny tiny. I can't find any collections of poetry there.

So, for a contemporary poetry noob like me, who are some of your favorite poets that you would recommend?

Robert Penn Warren was America's first Poet Laureate. He is the only person to receive the Pulitzer in fiction and in poetry.

i probably have at least a few decades on you, agewise, and much of my collection reflects those who've come and gone . . . and, to be honest, those who have already lived a long long time. one or two poets who dont fit in those categories who i've enjoyed, then: Sandra Cisneros and Li-Young Li. Both are not your standard anglo saxon poet, you might enjoy one or both of them.
Another way to find new interesting poets is to reach out to colleges and see who they have coming to read, then, if one name sparks your interest, look for a few of their poems online. there's still great poets being born and i know you'll find treasures. good luck!

Easy one: Robert Bly

Billy Collins is a former laureate, who I did because he has a sense of humor and publishes poems as videos, like I do.

Not literarlly contemporary (suicide puts and end to that status) but a good antidote to what school hits you with is Stephen Jesse Bernstein. His books or his albums of spoken word on SubPop. Here's a guy who was mentored by William Burroughs AND performed on state with Pearl Jam

Probably the best place to start is looking through an anthology series like The Best American Poetry. They’re fairly mainstream, but as far as places to start that's not a bad idea. And they do vary from year to year, depending on who the guest editor is. The Best American Poetry 2004 for example was edited by Lyn Hejinian, and probably has the most “experimental” poetry to date. Best of all, most libraries will have a couple of copies, or should at least be able to get hold of them for you. Read them, see if any of the poets grab your interest, then start looking for their own collections.

Welcome to poetry!

How about the 1960 "New American Poetry" edited by Donald Hall? Contained Ashberry, Olson, O'Hara...

I love Anne Carson, but I'm not sure she's the place to start. I find Fanny Howe both deep and approachable.

I agree, anthologies are very useful. These days there are also a bizillion online resources. Recently I started following The Academy of American Poets, The Poetry Foundation and Words Without Borders on Facebook. They post a lot poetry, much of it contemporary.

There are a lot of great contemporary poets. I like Mark Strand and Sharon Olds very much. Wislawa Szymborska is brilliant and accessible at the same time. Robert Bly and W.S.Merwin are excellent translators and have done great anthologies.

Les Murray, Billy Collins, David Clewell, Michael Ondaatje, and Donald Hall. Hall's late wife Jane Kenyon also was terrific. Murray's verse novel Freddy Neptune is amazing. Killing the Black Dog is a shorter book including a lecture and a selection of thematic poems and offers great insights into his work. Collins is funny and very approachable. He has a Selected Poems available. Clewell's long poem Jacky Ruby's America is well worth hunting for and Blessings in Disguise is loaded with quirky, interesting poems. Ondaatje wrote The English Patient. His verse novel Collected Works of Billy the Kid is great and his selected poems, The Cinnamon Peeler, is loaded with great poems. Donald Hall wrote a sad and beautiful set of poems on the death of his wife. Kenyon and Strand both have Selected Poems.

If you want to read contemporary poetry I can recommend visits to Poetry Magazine. It's a prestigious printed journal but they allow you to read heaps of the latest poetry for free on their website.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/

Hard to pick, but here are a few:

Lucille Clifton: I recommend her collections Blessing the Boats and good woman

Denise Duhamel: Her collection of Barbie-inspired poems, Kinky, is a lot of fun; her work can be personal or political

Maurice Manning: I enjoyed his first collection, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions, most (it helps if you've ready Berryman's Dream Songs), but his later collections also take on some interesting viewpoints...

Matthew Dickman: It seems like his brother's getting more of the attention right now, but All-American Poem made me smile -- and think

William Stafford: there's true beauty in his body of work

I could go on ...