Famous Poets a to z

James Agee was a film critic for TIME magazine, penned the screenplay for The African Queen, and won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for his novel A Death in the Family.

Amos Bronson Alcott, teacher, mystic, writer and the father of Louisa May Alcott, became an itinerant teacher before settling in Boston to found his own school.

Nicaraguan writer Claribel Alegria, a major voice in contemporary Central American literature, was known for her volume of poetry, Flowers from the Volcano.

The theme of being caught between two cultures is covered in writer Julia Alvarez's poetry and fiction, including How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.

Rodolfo Anaya is a Mexican-American writer best known for his Chicano-themed books such as Bless Me, Ultima, Heart of Aztlán and Tortuga.

Maya Angelou is a poet and prize-winning memoirist. She is the author of the critically acclaimed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Antonin Artaud was a French actor, costume designer and writer who revolutionized drama with his idea of a Theater of Cruelty.

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian award-winning writer best known for her poetry, short-stories and novels such as The Circle Game, The Handmaid’s Tale, Snowbird and The Tent.

W.H. Auden was a literary chameleon known for his poetry but who also wrote librettos, essays and verse dramas.

Imamu Amiri Baraka is an African-American poet and scholar. He has served as professor emeritus of Africana Studies at the State Unversity of New York at Stony Brook.

A professor and a poet, Katharine Lee Bates wrote the poem "America the Beautiful." Her poem became the lyrics to the popular American ballad still enjoyed today.

Charles Baudelaire was a French poet best known for his controversial volume of poems, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil).

English Restoration author, playwright and poet Aphra Behn wrote the short work of fiction Oroonoko, a love story about an African slave in Surinam.

Wendell Berry’s nature poetry, novels of America's rural past and essays on ecological responsibility grew from his experiences as a farmer.

William Blake was a 19th century writer and artist who is regarded as a seminal figure of the Romantic Age. His writings have influenced countless writers and artists through the ages, and he has been deemed both a major poet and an original thinker.

Richard Blanco is the fifth inaugural poet of the United States, the first Latino and openly gay-identified person to hold the position.

American poet and activist Robert Bly is best known for writing Iron John: A Book About Men which is credited for starting the Mythopoetic men's movement.

Arna Bontemps was an African-American author best known for his novels, children’s books and poems written during the 1930s-1970s.

American fantasy and horror author Ray Bradbury is best known for his novels Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles.

Anne Bradstreet was a 17th century writer who is credited as being one of the first English poets in the colonies.

André Breton was a French writer, editor and critic who was a key figure in the Dada and Surrealist art movements.

Russian-born American poet Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 for his important lyric and elegiac poems.

Anne Brontë, sister of fellow writers Emily and Charlotte, penned the classic 19th century novels Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Charlotte Brontë was an English 19th century writer whose novel Jane Eyre is considered a classic of Western literature.

Gwendolyn Brooks was a postwar poet best known as the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her 1949 book Annie Allen.

Christy Brown was a writer with cerebral palsy who penned the autobiography My Left Foot, which was adapted into a film starring Daniel Day-Lewis.

African-American poet Sterling Brown is best known for writing poetry distinctly rooted in folklore and authentic black dialect. His works, including Southern Road (1932), have been widely praised for their authenticity and phonetic spelling.

Dennis Brutus was a poet whose works center on his sufferings and those of his fellow blacks in South Africa.

Author and poet Charles Bukowski wrote the gritty poetry book Love is a Dog from Hell, and the novels Barfly and Factotum, both of which were made into films.

Anthony Burgess was an English novelist and composer best known for his novel A Clockwork Orange, which became a popular 1971 Stanley Kubrik film.

Poet Robert Burns is considered one of the most famous characters of Scotland's cultural history. He is best known as a pioneer of the Romantic movement.

Lord Byron is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and is best known for his amorous lifestyle and his brilliant use of the English language.

Willa Cather was a writer of poetry and novels known for such works as O Pioneers! and My Antonia.

English poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the unfinished work, The Canterbury Tales. It is considered one of the greatest poetic works in English.

Lucille Clifton is a poet whose works generally examine family life, racism and gender issues.

Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen is known for his poetic lyrics and baritone voice. He's received acclaim for such songs as "Hallelujah" and "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet of the Romantic Movement, best known for his allegorical sea-faring poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

Billy Corgan is an American musician best known as the lead vocalist and guitarist in the alternative rock band Smashing Pumpkins.

Aimé Césaire was a cofounder (with Léopold Sédar Senghor) of Negritude, an influential movement to restore the cultural identity of black Africans.

Poet, writer, political thinker. Dante was a Medieval Italian poet and philosopher whose poetic trilogy, The Divine Comedy, made an indelible impression on both literature and theology.

Rubén Darío was an acclaimed Nicaraguan poet, essayist and journalist who introduced the style known as modernism to Spanish literature.

Some people believe it was Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who really wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare.

Ruby Dee is an American actress, playwright, screenwriter, activist, poet and journalist, perhaps best known for starring in the 1961 film A Raisin in the Sun. She's also known for her civic work with husband Ossie Davis.

James Dickey was a Poet Laureate and novelist best known for his 1970 book Deliverance.

While never popular in her lifetime, Emily Dickinson has become one of the most widely known, most revered poets in history.

John Donne, leading English poet of the Metaphysical school, is often considered the greatest loved poet in the English language.

Hilda Doolittle (or H.D.) was a poet of the avant-garde Imagist movement and was openly bisexual.

African American poet Rita Dove is the youngest person and the first African American to be appointed Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress.

African-American author Paul Laurence Dunbar is best known for his verse and short stories, many of which are written in black dialect.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American Transcendentalist poet, philosopher and essayist during the 19th century. One of his best-known essays is "Self-Reliance.”

Jessie Fauset was a teacher and writer who worked as editor for The Crisis magazine, and penned the novels Comedy: American Style and Plum Bun.

A four-time Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry, American Robert Frost depicted realistic New England life through language and situations familiar to the common man.

Playwright Christopher Fry wrote a series of major plays in free verse, with undertones of religion and mysticism, including A Phoenix Too Frequent (1946).

Federico García Lorca is considered one of Spain's greatest poets and dramatists. One of his most successful poetry collections was The Gypsy Ballads.

Philosophical essayist, novelist, poet and artist Khalil Gibran wrote The Prophet, a book of poetic essays that achieved cult status among American youth.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, writer and lecturer, best known for her semi-autobiographical short story The Yellow Wallpaper.

Allen Ginsberg is one of the 20th century's most influential poets, regarded as a founding father of the Beat Movement and known for works like "Howl."

The poems of Nikki Giovanni helped to define the African American voice of the 1960s, '70s and beyond. She was also a major force in the Black Arts movement.

Louise Glück is a poet whose work has been described as technically precise, sensitive, insightful and gripping.

British poet Robert Graves is best known for writing his first volumes of poetry, primarily about war, while serving at the Western Front during World War I.

Thom Gunn was an award-winning poet known for works that included Fighting Terms, Touch and The Man With Night Sweats.

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet who set his work--including The Return of the Native and Far from the Madding Crowd--in the semi-fictionalized county of Wessex.

Robert Hayden was an African-American poet and professor who is best known as the author of poems, including “Those Winter Sundays” and “The Middle Passage.”

Seamus Henry is a renowned Irish poet and professor who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

English poet George Herbert was an ordained priest. His book, The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, was published posthumously.

Although very little is known about the life of Greek poet Homer, credited with being the first to write down the epic stories of The Iliad and The Odyssey, the impact of his tales continue to reverberate through Western culture.