Here's a list from several years ago. Obviously the list would be different now:

May 11, 2001

Level I: Serious prolonged engagement over the course of many years. Sometimes significant publications about:

Claudio Rodríguez
José Angel Valente
Antonio Gamoneda
Pedro Salinas
Federico García Lorca
Jorge Guillén
Vicente Aleixandre
Luis Cernuda
Jaime Gil de Biedma
Felipe Benítez Reyes
María Victoria Atencia
Concha García
Lola Velasco

William Carlos Williams
Frank O?Hara
John Ashbery
Barbara Guest
Clark Coolidge
William Bronk
Robert Creeley
Jack Spicer
Kenneth Koch

Samuel Beckett


Level II: Some professional expertise, possibly a few publications about. Or some extensive/intensive reading at some point. Or at early stages in reading of work.

Garcilaso de la Vega

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Antonio Machado
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Francisco Brines
Leopoldo María Panero
Ana Rossetti
Blanca Andreu
Guillermo Carnero
Juan Lamillar
Jos María Alvarez
Pere Gimferrer

Isla Correyero
Amalia Iglesias
Ada Salas

Pablo Neruda
José Lezama Lima

W.B Yeats
Thomas Hardy
Emily Dickinson
T. S. Eliot
Wallace Stevens
James Schuyler
Joseph Ceravalo
Ted Berrigan
David Antin
Harry Mathews
Bernadette Mayer
James Tate
Charles Bernstein
Susan Howe
Ron Silliman
Lyn Hejinian
Leslie Scalapino

Pierre Reverdy
Raymond Roussel

Level III: Substantial knowledge of work, but less extensive and sustained (or more sporadic). Or without expert knowledge of original language, period. Might know about but dislike somewhat, etc?. Might own one or two books by?

Catullus
Horace
Paul Celan
Rilke
Fernando Pessoa

Luis de Góngora
Fray Luis de León
San Juan de la Cruz

William Shakespeare
Robert Herrick
William Wordsworth
Alexander Pope
William Blake
John Clare
W. H. Auden
Thom Gunn

Charles Baudelaire
Arthur Rimbaud
Stéphane Mallarmé
Guillame Apollinaire
André Breton

César Vallejo
Octavio Paz
Nicanor Parra

Walt Whitman
Gertrude Stein
H.D.
Ezra Pound
John Berryman
Robert Frost
Charles Olson
Denise Levertov
Robert Duncan
Jerome Rothenberg
Robert Lowell
Elizabeth Bishop
James Wright
Karl Shapiro
Gilbert Sorrentino
Sylvia Plath
Gary Snyder
Mark Strand
Louise Gluck
Fanny Howe
David Shapiro
Ron Padgett
Alice Notley
Juliana Spahr
John Koethe
Rae Armantrout
Michael Palmer
Barrett Watten
Robert Grenier

Rafael Alberti
Juan Larrea
Luis Rosales
Gerardo Diego
Manuel Altolaguirre
Blas de Otero
José Hierro
Carlos Bousoño
Ana María Moix
Angel González
Jaime Siles
Martínez Sarrión
Luisa Castro
José María Caballero Bonald
Julia Otxoa
Vicente Valero
Ildefonso Rodríguez
Luis García Montero

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Cavafy


Level IV: Minimal but definable knowledge. Or substantial acquaintance without much sustained interest, etc?

Petrarch
Philip Sidney
Thomas Campion
Virgil
Andrew Marvell

Basho

Geoffrey Chaucer
Wyatt and Surrey
John Skelton
Edmund Spenser
John Donne
John Milton
John Dryden
P.B. Shelley
ST Coleridge

Philip Larkin
Ted Hughes
Seamus Heaney

E.A. Robinson
Carl Sandburg
e.e. cummings
Edgar Lee Masters
Marianne Moore
Adrienne Rich
Kenneth Rexroth
Philip Whalen
Josephine Miles
W.S. Merwin
Robert Bly
Jorie Graham
Gustaf Sobin
Anselm Hollo
Cid Corman
Tony Towle
Mark Halliday

El Duque de Rivas

J.A. Goytisolo
Carlos Barral
Angel Crespo
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
Eladio Cabañero
Jorge Riechmann

Paul Verlaine
René Char
Aimé Césaire
Vladamir Mayakovsky
Eugenio Montale

Rubén Darío
Nicolás Guillén
Alejandra Pizarnik
Blanca Varela
María Auxiliadora Alvarez
Eugenio Montejo
Enrique Lihn

Level V: Identifiable name. Little direct reading of work.

Robert Kelly
Robin Blaser
Frank Lima

Pasternak
Joseph Brodsky

Gautier
Cendrars

Ungarretti
Trakl

Meléndez Valdés