Famous Poets

• Alexie, Sherman

  The author of 'The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian'

• Auden, W. H.

  The Anglo-American poet who wrote "The Age of Anxiety"

• Baraka, Amiri

  Author of the 1964 play Dutchman

• Bishop, Elizabeth

  Poet Laureate of the United States, 1949-50

• Blake, William

  The mystic English poet who wrote "Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright"

• Bly, Robert

  The poet who wrote the man book Iron John

• Bradstreet, Anne

  America's first poet

• Brautigan, Richard

  Author of Trout Fishing in America

• Bronte, Emily

  The author of Wuthering Heights

• Brooks, Gwendolyn

  The first African American to win a Pulitzer for poetry

• Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

  Author of Aurora Leigh and wife of Robert Browning

• Browning, Robert

  Victorian poet and husband of Elizabeth Barrett

• Bukowski, Charles

  The guy who wrote the movie Barfly

• Burns, Robert

  Scotland's most famous poet

• Cohen, Leonard

  The writer of the haunting song "Hallelujah"

• Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

  The author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

• Crane, Hart

  Suicidal poet of The Bridge

• Cummings, E. E.

  The experimental poet who spelled his name without capitals

• Dante

  The author of The Divine Comedy

• Dickinson, Emily

  The poet called "The Belle of Amherst"

• Dove, Rita

  U.S. Poet Laureate, 1993-95

• Duffy, Carol Ann

  The first female poet laureate in British history

• Eliot, T.S.

  Author of The Waste Land

• Espada, Martín

  The Latino poet who wrote "Alabanza" and "Floaters"

• Ferlinghetti, Lawrence

  Beat poet/publisher and co-founder of City Lights Books

• Frost, Robert

  The poet who wrote "The Road Not Taken"

• Ginsberg, Allen

  The Beat-era poet who wrote Howl

• Giovanni, Nikki

  The poet who wrote "Ego-Tripping"

• Glück, Louise

  The Nobel Prize winning poet who wrote “Mock Orange”

• Gorman, Amanda

  The National Youth Poet Laureate who read at Joe Biden's inauguration

• Graves, Robert

  Author of I, Claudius

• Hall, Donald

  The New England poet who wrote Ox-Cart Man

• Homer

  The author of the Iliad and the Odyssey

• Howe, Julia Ward

  The abolitionist who wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic

• Hughes, Langston

  Author of The Weary Blues (1926)

• Hughes, Ted

  The English poet who was married to Sylvia Plath

• Johnson, Denis

  The author of 'Tree of Smoke' and 'Jesus' Son'

• Keats, John

  The Romantic poet who wrote "Ode to a Nightingale"

• Key, Francis Scott

  The attorney who wrote "The Star Spangled Banner"

• Khayyam, Omar

  The author of The Rubaiyat

• Kunitz, Stanley

  U.S. Poet Laureate, 2000-01

• Lazarus, Emma

  Author of the poem on the Statue of Liberty

• Lear, Edward

  The author of The Owl and the Pussycat

• Levertov, Denise

  The politically-active poet who wrote With Eyes at the Back of our Heads

• Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

  The American poet who wrote "Paul Revere's Ride"

• Lorca, Federico Garcia

  Spanish dramatist/poet who wrote Poet in New York

• Lowell, Robert

  The "confessional" poet with the collection Life Studies

• Mackay, Charles

  Author of 1841's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

• Merwin, W. S.

  The author of the collection The Carrier of Ladders

• Millay, Edna St. Vincent

  The poet of the 1920s who wrote "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver"

• Milton, John

  The author of the epic poem Paradise Lost

• Moore, Marianne

  Tricorn hat-wearing modernist poet

• Nash, Ogden

  Author of the funny poem "The Lama"

• Neruda, Pablo

  The Chilean poet who won the 1971 Nobel Prize

• Oliver, Mary

  The poet who wrote 'American Primitive'

• Ovid

  Roman author of Metamorphoses

• Owen, Wilfred

  English poet of World War I

• Parker, Dorothy

  The oft-quoted female wit of the Algonquin Round Table

• Paz, Octavio

  The Mexican poet who wrote 'Piedra de sol' ('Sun Stone')

• Plath, Sylvia

  Poet and author of The Bell Jar

• Pope, Alexander

  Author of 1733's Essay on Man

• Pound, Ezra

  The early-20th-century poet who wrote The Cantos

• Pushkin, Alexander

  The author of the verse novel 'Eugene Onegin'

• Rich, Adrienne

  The feminist-lesbian poet who wrote Diving Into the Wreck

• Roethke, Theodore

  The Michigan poet who wrote "Elegy for Jane"

• Rossetti, Dante Gabriel

  Romantic poet and painter of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

• Rumi, Jalal Al-Din

  Founder of the Whirling Dervishes

• Ryan, Kay

  The 16th Poet Laureate consultant to the Library of Congress

• Sandburg, Carl

  Author of the poem Chicago

• Sayers, Dorothy

  The creator of Lord Peter Wimsey

• Senghor, Leopold

  The French poet who was Senegal's first president

• Service, Robert W.

  The England-born, Scotland-raised poet who wrote "The Cremation of Sam McGee"

• Sexton, Anne

  Confessional American poet of the 1960s and '70s

• Shakespeare, William

  The famed author of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet

• Shelley, Percy Bysshe

  19th century romantic poet

• Silverstein, Shel

  Author of Where the Sidewalk Ends

• Sitwell, Edith

  The eccentric poet who wrote 1941's "Still Falls the Rain"

• Smith, Patti

  The poet-rocker who wrote the memoir 'Just Kids'

• Smith, Tracy K.

  U.S. Poet Laureate named in 2017

• Snyder, Gary

  Pulitzer-winning Beat poet who wrote Turtle Island

• Stafford, William

  The poet who wrote "Traveling Through the Dark"

• Stevens, Wallace

  The poet and insurance man who wrote "The Emperor of Ice Cream"

• Tanning, Dorothea

  The surrealist artist who did Birthday and was married to Max Ernst

• Tennsyon, Lord Alfred

   The Victorian poet who wrote "The Charge of the Light Brigade"

• Thomas, Dylan

  The Welsh poet who wrote "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Nght"

• Trethewey, Natasha

  The Pulitzer-winning poet who wrote Native Guard

• Virgil

  Author of the Aeneid

• Wheatley, Phillis

  The poet who was the first published black woman in America

• Whitman, Walt

  The poet who wrote Leaves of Grass

• Williams, William Carlos

  Author of the poetic epic Paterson

• Wordsworth, William

  The author of the poem "Tintern Abbey"

• Wright, Charles

  The U.S. Poet Laureate, 2014-2015

• Yeats, William Butler

  Irish poet and playwright

See: Index by Occupation