I was thinking about what my American Lit teacher said about Ernest Hemingway. He argued that Hemingway had such a powerful effect that anybody who writes short stories or novels in English either tries to write like him (possbily badly) or tries not to write like him (ditto) _even if they have hardly heard of him and never read his work._ In the fantasy genre, J.R.R. Tolkien has the same legacy. I gather that Bukowski did the same in free verse from some people's point of view. So is there somebody, possibly fallen into obscurity, who has influenced all or most modern English folksingers to that extent?

J.