Oliver Wendell Holmes
poet, writer of "The Breakfast Table" which started as The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, member of the fireside poets (household poets), humorist, medical researcher, doctor, physician, pioneer in sterilization and washing hands before childbirth, polymath
Arthur Rimbaud
Poet, pioneer in surrealism, modern literature, transgressive surrealist themes
1854-1891 (37)
poets.org
Charles Bukowski
poet, writer, novelist
1920-1994 (74)
bukowski.net
Charles Williams
Poet, novelist, writer, playwright, theologian, literary critic, author of Descent into Hell, member of the Inklings
1886-1945 (59)
charleswilliamssociety.org.uk
Geoffrey Chaucer
Middle English story writer, father of English literature, considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages, author of The Canterbury Tales in 1400
-1400
poetryfoundation.org
Dante Alighieri
Poet, writer of Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, Paradiso, known for Dante's Inferno about the torture of the Knights Templars in 1308
Dylan Thomas
poet, writer, poems, his granddaughter Hannah Ellis runs his website
discoverdylanthomas.com
Edmund Spenser
Tudor dynasty poet, author of The Faerie Queene (1590), Amoretti (1595), Epithalamion (1595), Prothalmion, Britomart
Edward Thomas
poet, essayist, novelist
1878-1917 (39)
poetryfoundation.org
Elizabeth Bishop
Poet, short-story writer, consultant for the Library of Congress in 1949-1950
1911-1979 (68)
Friedrich Schiller
German literary, poet, writer of dramas; The Robbers, Maria Stuart, Wallenstein
1759-1805 (46)
plato.stanford.edu
George Herbert
Poet, aristocrat, orator, lyricist, priest at the Church of England, author of The Temple in 1633
1593-1633 (40)
poets.org
Gérard Louis-Dreyfus
Billionaire, businessman, chairman of Louis Dreyfus Energy Services, great grandson of the LDC founder Léopold Louis-Dreyfus, poet, chairman of the Poetry Society of America from 1998-2008, his daughter is Seinfeld actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus
1932-2016 (84)
Guy Boulianne living
Poet, writer of The Fanciful Prince
1962- (62)
guyboulianne.com
Hermann Hesse
Poet, writer, novelist, author of Demian in 1919, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, painter
1877-1962 (85)
Hesiod
Poet, didactic poetry, philosopher on the origins of Greek gods, author of Theogony in 700 BC, Works and Days
750 BC-650 BC
britannica.com
Homer
Greek Hellenistic poet, Homeric epics are poems such as the Iliad (aka the Eliad, Iliás), The Odyssey, philosopher in the Bronze Ages
800 BCE-701 BCE
worldhistory.org
John Donne
Poet, scholar, educator, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral
britannica.com
John Lehmann
Poet, writer, journalist, owner of John Lehmann Limited, owner of New Writing and The London Magazine
1907-1987 (80)
John Milton
Poet, writer about Satan, author, civil servant, pioneer in Areopagitica poetry, poem by the name of Paradise Lost in 1645-1667
1608-1674 (66)
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Poet, romantic writer, long poems such as Don Juan
1788-1824 (36)
Ovid
Greco Roman poet who was exiled from the Roman empire, didactic poetry writer of Metamorphoses, "Ars Amatoria" (Art of Love) in 2 AD, Amores, Heroides
43 BCE-17 AD
poetryfoundation.org
Paul Verlaine
Poet in the Symbolist movement, writer, pioneer in symbolism
1844-1896 (52)
poetryfoundation.org
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Poet, The Masque of Anarchy
knarf.english.upenn.edu
Francesco Petrarch
poet, historian, scholar, author of De Sui Ipsius et Multorum Ignorantia in 1367
Phocylides living
Renée Vivien
Poet, author of Faustina and Other Stories with her lover Hélène van Zuylen
Robert Bly
poet, essayist, political activist, pioneer of the mythopoetic men's movement
1926-2021 (95)
robertbly.com
Rudyard Kipling
Victorian poet, short stories, poems, novelist of Jungle Book, journalist, short-story writer, author of The Man Who Would Be King, fascist of the Running Cross
1865-1936 (71)
poetryfoundation.org
Rūmī
Sufi mystic, poet, theologian
1207-1273 (66)
rumi.org.uk
Snorri Sturluson
Historian, poet, author of the Prose Edda and the Heimskringla, wrote about Ragnarok
1179-1241 (62)
britannica.com
Steinn Steinarr
Poet
1908-1958 (50)
steinnsteinarr.is
T.S. Eliot
poet of apathy and despair, playwright, essayist, postmodernist writer, literary critic, editor, publisher, author of The Hollow Men (1925)
1888-1965 (77)
Victor Hugo
Poet, writer, novelist
1802-1885 (83)
britannica.com
Virgil
Poet in the iron age and golden age, author of The Aeneid (annuit cœptis) in 19 BCE, Virgil's Fourth Eclogue (Eclogue 4) in 40 BCE where he coined the phrase "novus ordo seclorum" (that's on the US dollar bill)
70 BC-19 BC
Vladimir Nabokov
Entomologist, novelist, writer, poet, author, translator
1899-1977 (78)
britannica.com
William Ellery Channing
Poet, transcendentalist, universalist, unitarian, theologian
William Jones
Linguist, poet aka Orientalist Jones, lawyer, attorney
1746-1794 (48)
Ze'ev Jabotinsky
1880-1940 (60)
jewishvirtuallibrary.org