Here's the method of classification I tend to find most useful for contemporary poetry (apologies for the way your browser may screw this up; it's supposed to be a classic squared + sign):


                                             Maximalist
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Funny——————————————————————————————————Serious
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                                             Minimalist

Obviously this purely spatial model omits the question of history and lineage. But I sometimes wonder if we're all not a little too obsessed with history and lineage—why am I always grubbing around looking for parents (or better, grandparents)? Why my Anxiety to Proclaim My Influences? This little axis is a much better representation of the way in which I tend to "place" a given poet when reading their work. The historicism/lineage approach tends to come into play prior to this, when I choose a given magazine or book to read because it bears the traces of a history which I'm already interested in. But when I'm actually reading, somewhere inside my brain that poet gets assigned a point (a single poet may hit multiple marks of course, especially across a career). Michael Palmer scores +x, -y; a book like Gary's How to Proceed in the Arts is a -x, -y; hardcore langpos like Ron or Barrett Watten score very high in the x, y zone; Jarnot's Black Dog Songs is -y but highly motile along the x axis; and so on.

Not sure how much analysis this structure will bear, but it's a fairly accurate representation of my most visceral subjective judgments.