Select a characteristic and click "search"
Poets of the 20th Century
Distinguished poets, from 1900 to the turn of the millennium.
-
Bertolt Brecht (born 1898, died 1956)
German playwright and poet.
- Wrote The Threepenny Opera
-
Carl Sandburg (born 1878, died 1967)
American poet and biographer.
-
Edward Estlin Cummings (e. e. cummings) (born 1894, died 1962)
American poet.
- Wrote Tulips and Chimneys
-
Edgar Lee Masters (born 1869, died 1950)
American poet.
- Wrote Spoon River Anthology
-
Edwin Arlington Robinson (born 1869, died 1935)
American poet.
- Wrote ''''Richard Cory''''
-
Eugenio Montale (born 1896, died 1981)
Italian poet.
- Wrote Ossi di seppia (''''Cuttlefish Bones'''')
-
Gabriele D'Annunzio (born 1863, died 1938)
Italian poet.
- Wrote The Child of Pleasure
-
Hart Crane (born 1899, died 1932)
American poet.
-
Jaroslav Seifert (born 1901, died 1986)
Czech poet.
- Wrote The Casting of Bells
-
John Masefield (born 1878, died 1967)
English poet.
-
John Berryman (born 1914, died 1972)
American poet.
-
Joyce Kilmer (born 1886, died 1918)
American poet.
-
Langston Hughes (born 1902, died 1967)
American poet.
-
Ogden Nash (born 1902, died 1971)
American comic poet.
-
Osip Mandelstam (born 1891, died 1938)
Russian poet.
-
Paul Valéry (born 1871, died 1945)
French poet and essayist.
- Wrote An Evening with Monsieur Teste
-
Rabindranath Tagore (born 1861, died 1941)
Bengali poet, essayist and novelist.
-
Rainer Maria Rilke (born 1875, died 1926)
German poet.
-
Robert Frost (born 1874, died 1963)
American poet.
-
Robert Lowell (born 1917, died 1977)
American poet.
- Wrote For Lizzie and Harriet
-
Robert Graves (born 1895, died 1985)
English poet, novelist and critic.
-
Robinson Jeffers (born 1887, died 1962)
American poet.
-
Shelby ''Shel'' Silverstein (born 1932)
American children's writer.
- Wrote A Light in the Attic
-
Stephen Vincent Benet (born 1898, died 1943)
American poet and novelist.
- Wrote The Devil and Daniel Webster
-
Theodore Roethke (born 1908, died 1963)
American poet.
-
Vicente Aleixandre (born 1898, died 1984)
Spanish poet.
- Wrote La destrucción o el amor
-
Vladimir Mayakovsky (born 1893, died 1930)
Russian poet.
- Wrote ''''The Cloud in Trousers''''
-
Wallace Stevens (born 1879, died 1955)
American poet.
-
William Carlos Williams (born 1883, died 1963)
American poet, short-story writer, novelist, essayist, and physician.
-
Alfred Edward ''A.E.'' Housman (born 1859, died 1936)
English classical scholar and poet.
-
Rupert Brooke (born 1887, died 1915)
English poet.
- Wrote ''''The Soldier''''
-
Edward Thomas (born 1878, died 1917)
English poet.
-
Ivor Gurney (born 1890, died 1937)
English poet.
- Wrote ''''To His Love''''
-
Isaac Rosenberg (born 1890, died 1918)
English poet.
- Wrote ''''Louse Hunting''''
-
Wilfred Owen (born 1893, died 1918)
English poet.
- Wrote ''''Anthem for Doomed Youth''''
-
David Jones (born 1895, died 1974)
Welsh poet.
-
William Butler Yeats (born 1865, died 1939)
Irish poet and playwright.
- Wrote ''''Sailing to Byzantium''''
-
Thomas Stearns ''T.S.'' Eliot (born 1888, died 1965)
American poet and critic.
-
Hugh MacDiarmid (born 1892, died 1978)
Pseudonym of Scottish poet Christopher Murray Grieve.
- Wrote ''''The Watergaw''''
-
Wystan Hugh ''W.H.'' Auden (born 1907, died 1973)
English poet.
- Wrote In Memory of W.B. Yeats
-
Louis MacNeice (born 1907, died 1963)
Irish poet.
-
Dylan Thomas (born 1914, died 1953)
Welsh poet.
- Wrote ''''Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night''''
-
Henry Reed (born 1914, died 1986)
English poet.
- Wrote ''''Lessons of the War''''
-
Alun Lewis (born 1915, died 1944)
Welsh poet.
- Wrote ''''All Day It Has Rained''''
-
Keith Douglas (born 1920, died 1944)
English poet.
- Wrote ''''Aristocrats''''
-
Charles Causley (born 1917)
English poet.
- Wrote ''''Armistice Day''''
-
Philip Larkin (born 1922, died 1985)
English poet.
- Wrote ''''Church Going''''
-
Thom Gunn (born 1929)
English poet.
-
Ted Hughes (born 1930)
English poet.
-
Derek Walcott (born 1930)
Caribbean poet.
- Wrote ''''A Far Cry from Africa''''
-
Geoffrey Hill (born 1932)
English poet.
- Wrote ''''September Song''''
-
Tony Harrison (born 1937)
English poet.
-
Craig Raine (born 1945)
English poet.
- Wrote ''''A Martian Sends a Postcard Home''''
-
James Fenton (born 1949)
British poet.
- Wrote ''''A German Requiem''''
-
Pablo Neruda (born 1904, died 1973)
Chilean poet. Original name: Neftali Ricardo Reyes.
- Wrote The Heights of Macchu Picchu
-
Ezra Pound (born 1885, died 1972)
American poet, translator and critic.
-
Vachel Lindsay (born 1879, died 1931)
American poet.
-
Ahmad Shawqi (born 1868, died 1932)
Egyptian poet and playwright.
- Sometimes called the amir ash-shu''ara (''''prince of poets'''')
-
Leopold Sedar Senghor (born 1906)
Senegalese politician.
- Senegalese poet, founding member of the Negritude movement, and author of Chants d''Ombre, 1945
-
Albert Chinua Achebe (born 1930)
Nigerian poet and novelist.
- Nigerian poet, winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, 1972, for Beware, Soul Brother
-
Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor (born 1935)
Ghanaian writer.
- Winner of the 1989 African Regional Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Until the Morning After: Selected Poems
-
Rubén Darío (born 1867, died 1916)
Nicaraguan poet, journalist and diplomat.
- Led the Latin American Modernist movement; wrote Azul
Poets of the 20th Century
Distinguished poets, from 1900 to the turn of the millennium.
-
Amy Lowell (born 1874, died 1925)
American imagist poet and literary critic.
- Wrote A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass
-
Edna St. Vincent Millay (born 1892, died 1950)
American poet.
- Wrote A Few Figs from Thistles
-
Gabriela Mistral (born 1889, died 1957)
Pen-name of Chilean poet Lucila Godoy de Alcayaga.
-
Gwendolyn Brooks (born 1917, died 2000)
American poet.
-
Maya Angelou (born 1928)
American poet, essayist and autobiographer. Original name: Marguerite Johnson.
- Wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
-
Rita Dove (born 1952)
American poet.
- Wrote The Yellow House on the Corner
-
Sara Teasdale (born 1884, died 1933)
American poet.
-
Sylvia Plath (born 1932, died 1963)
American poet who committed suicide one month after the publication of her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar.
-
May Wedderburn Cannan (born 1893, died 1973)
English poet.
-
Edith Sitwell (born 1887, died 1964)
English poet.
- Wrote ''''Elegy on Dead Fashion''''
-
Stevie Smith (born 1902, died 1971)
English poet.
- Wrote ''''Not Waving but Drowning''''
-
Fleur Adcock (born 1934)
New Zealand poet.
- Wrote ''''The Soho Hospital for Women''''
-
Charlotte Mew (born 1869, died 1928)
English poet.
- Wrote The Farmer''s Bride
-
Lizette Woodworth Reese (born 1856, died 1935)
American poet.
-
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (born 1860, died 1935)
American writer and feminist.
- Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper
-
Anna Hempstead Branch (born 1875, died 1937)
American poet.
- Wrote ''''The Road ''Twixt Heaven and Hell''''
-
Adelaide Crapsey (born 1878, died 1914)
American poet.
- Developed the cinquain verse form
-
Lola Ridge (born 1883, died 1941)
American poet.
-
Elinor Wylie (born 1885, died 1928)
American poet.
- Wrote Angels and Earthly Creatures
-
Genevieve Taggard (born 1894, died 1948)
American poet.
-
Babette Deutsch (born 1895)
Amerian poet and literary critic.
- Wrote Honey Out of the Rock
-
Marianne Moore (born 1887, died 1972)
American poet.
- Wrote ''''The Octopus''''
-
Muriel Rukeyser (born 1913, died 1980)
American poet.
-
Irina Ratushinskaya (born 1954)
Russian poet.
- Wrote Grey Is the Color of Hope
-
Ama Ata Aidoo (born 1942)
Ghanaian writer
- Ghanaian poet, 1987 winner of the Nelson Mandela Prize for Poetry for An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems
