The poet in question is Allen Ginsberg, a leader of the Beats. His most famous work, “Howl,” is an epic poem about minority identities, war, consumerism, sex, and repressive society.

This is Gwendolyn Brooks, author of works such as We Real Cool, Street in Bronzeville, Primer for Blacks, and “Speech to the Young.” Her writing portrays life in inner-city Chicago and encompasses various styles and sensibilities, including jazz influences as well as more formalist verses. She won the Pulitzer in 1950 for her collection titled Annie Allen and was inaugurated as the Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968.

This is Langston Hughes, author of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “Montage of a Dream Deferred.” Hughes gained acclaim as a poet as well as a social justice advocate, and he was known for writing novels and plays as well as poetry. He helped inaugurate the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s, which brought black and urban perspectives to the forefront of music, art, theater, and writing.

The Imagists were known for their emphasis on precision and clarity of diction and images. This movement is linked with the rise of Modernism and includes such founders as Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell, and Carl Sandburg. The British poet Conrad Aiken, on the other hand, was vocally opposed to various aspects of Imagism.

Of these writers, only Hart Crane was not alive during the Vietnam War. He died in 1932, and the other poets on the list all protested the war in various ways. Some did so through membership in the American Writers Against the Vietnam War (of which Bly was a founder).

The author of the poems in question is Sylvia Plath. She was married to British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes from 1956 until 1963, when she committed suicide. Her work is known for its preoccupation with mental illness and the mundane details of daily life.

By process of elimination, we can rule out all the poets with experimental aspects to their work. William Carlos Williams embraced innovated forms, e e cummings eschewed traditional orthography, Gertrude Stein focused on sonic pattern to the near-exclusion of semantic meaningfulness, and John Ashbery employed avant-garde forms and syntax. This leaves Hart Crane, who embraced some aspects of Modernist poetry but typically followed the older tradition of lyric verse in his work.

This is Maya Angelou, the famous author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She read “On the Pulse of Morning” at Clinton’s 1993 inauguration ceremony.

The only poet on this list who has not been the national Poet Laureate is Bukowski. Levine was Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2012, Trethewey was Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014, Dove was Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995, and Brodsky was Poet Laureate from 1991 to 1992.

Of these five, only Ginsberg does not write work that is routinely and overtly concerned with the natural world, environment, and ecology.