“John Ash could be the best English poet of his generation.” (Peter Campion, Poetry)
“The greatest living poet in the English language.” (Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian, on Geoffrey Hill)
“Tamar Yoseloff is emerging as one of the best poets of her generation.” (Thomas Lux)
“She is perhaps the most subtly skilful poet of her generation, the most profound, the most modest, the most moving.” (Kenneth Rexroth, New York Times, on Denise Levertov)
“[This chapbook collection] resembles, in its internationalism, nothing so much as T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, but with one significant difference: Hirschhorn is a physician, a healer.” (Jonathan Holden, Poet Laureate, Kansas, on Norbert Hirschhorn’s debut chapbook)
“The most original poet of his generation.” (Carol Ann Duffy, The Guardian, on Ian Duhig)
“Pinsky has given us one of the outstanding bodies of work in English-language poetry.” (Justin Quinn, The Boston Book Review, on Robert Pinsky)
All the poets discussed above are fine writers, but isn’t it about time “of his/her generation” became a banned phrase in reviews? And indeed any phrase suggesting that a contemporary poet is the greatest, or "one of" the greatest, or even "perhaps" the greatest, there has ever been?
