Poetree

In the new issue of The Writer's Chronicle, poet Rita Dove characterizes 20th-century poets based on the topography their works evoke:

The jungles of the Beats and Confessionals, a cityscape intersected by the neatly parallel thoroughfares of Pound Boulevard....Stevens gets a solitary Great Oak and Hart Crane's doomed Dutch Elm stands of course for his grand opus 'The Bridge,' which had a profound effect, though it's rarely read nowadays. Twin rows of poplars for Bishop's geometric elegance, which we all pass through but cannot seem to touch. William Carlos Williams earns a patch of sycamores....Langston Hughes is an American maple dropping its colorful leaves. And so on.

And so on indeed. If your favorite poet were a tree, what tree would he or she be? Rita Dove loves ballroom dancing and named a poetry collection American Smooth, so she can be the American beech, a smooth-barked tree with leaves that dance in the breeze.