Modernist lyric poetry (for academics only)

Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot et al. -- not a fan. (Except for Eliot's cat poems, which were the basis of a successful Broadway play.)

Found this interesting re: Richard Blanco's poem for Obama's inaugural, from Jahan Ramazani, an editor of The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (already suspect to my mind):

“[It] was especially well suited to the occasion,” added Ramazani. “A more knotty or abstruse poem—even if it had a better chance of lasting or was more formally innovative, less conventional in its imagery or diction—would have missed the mark as an act of public address as well as poetry.”

Going back to ancient Greek literature, lyric poetry was not "knotty or abstruse" and was meant for "public" consumption.  (Lyric poetry should be "sincere and clear" (said Verlaine).)  The French even put their "literary" poems to music. (There's no disparity between the popular and the academic, as in English.)

I would also like to point to Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy," incorporated into Beethoven's 9th Symphony.