Poetry, is a very special form of art, which is not only expressed by forms, interpretations or expressions through musical rhythms, vivid images, but also used as metaphors and strong inner meanings.
Throughout history, there has been many great male poets who have contributed to this kind of art, including familiar names such as: Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Edgar Allan Poe or Ezra Pound… All of them have had a great influence on human literature. Many poetic works have broaden and varied in themes such as love, friendship, culture, war and society.
Poets and their poetic works have the capability to offer the readers different emotions and take them to other worlds they have never imagined. Poems are often the soul, a part of the poet’s world carved into the interior. The greatest male poets of all time connect emotions through each line of verse, allowing readers to have a multidimensional and objective view of the world.
1. Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) American poet who bridged the Transcendentalist poets with the more realistic style of the Twentieth Century. Whitman magnus opus was Leaves of Grass, a ground breaking new style of poetry. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sensuality. Whitman’s own life came under scrutiny for his presumed homosexuality.
To Read: Song Of Myself, XXV | I Sing The Body Electric | Had I The Choice
2. Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, and playwright whose African-American themes made him a primary contributor to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that “the Negro was in vogue”, which was later paraphrased as “when Harlem was in vogue.”
To Read: Mother To Son | Dreams | The Weary Blues
3. Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) is one of the most widely celebrated of American poets. During his lifetime he received four Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry, and his works are still widely anthologized in collections of American poetry and school literature textbooks.
To Read: Acquainted With The Night | The Gift Outright | Home Burial
4. Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of mystery and horror initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction. His The Raven (1845) numbers among the bestknown poems in national literature.
To Read: The City In The Sea | Eldorado | The Haunted Palace
5. John Milton
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual who served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell.
To Read: Lycidas | L’Allegro | Il Penseroso
6. Shel Silverstein
Sheldon Allan Silverstein (September 25, 1930 – May 10, 1999) was an American writer, poet, cartoonist, songwriter and playwright. Shel Silverstein is most famous for the best-selling children’s books that he wrote and illustrated: The Giving Tree, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and A Light in the Attic. But Silverstein’s imaginative talent also stretched into songwriting, and he played an important role in Outlaw-era music making.
To Read: Invitation | Runny’s Heading Rabits | Gumeye Ball
7. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society. He was a prolific essayist and speaker. He gave over 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
To Read: The Snow-Storm | The Lords Of Life | Wealth
8. Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) the son of a US soldier and German woman. His family immigrated to the United States in 1922 and settled in Los Angeles, where Bukowski spent most of his life. His father was in and out of work during the Depression years and was a reputed tyrant, verbally and physically abusing his son throughout his childhood. It was perhaps to numb himself from his father’s abuse that Bukowski began drinking at the age of 13, initiating his life-long affair with alcohol.
To Read: A Smile To Remember | Bluebird | Alone With Everybody
9. Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (/ˈɡɪnzbɜːrɡ/; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. The second son of Louis and Naomi Ginsberg. His father was an English teacher, a poet, and a socialist; his mother was a communist and an active member in the Party; both were children of Russian-Jewish immigrants.
To Read: Cezanne’s Ports | The Lion For Real | Footnote To Howl
10. William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (bapt. 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s greatest dramatist. He wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets.
To Read: The Phoenix And The Turtle | Sonnet I | Sonnet XX
11. Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (/ˈrʌdjərd/ RUD-yərd; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was born in India, which inspired much of his work. His parents had moved to India from England and were British citizens. They hoped to start a new life in India, which was then a colony of the British Empire. As a young child he played with local children and learned the language spoken in that area of India.
To Read: If— | The White Man’s Burden | The Female Of The Species
12. William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. Yeats received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Between the Celtic dreams of THE WANDERINGS OF OISIN (1889) and the intellectual, often obscure poetry of the 1930s, Yeats produceda tremendous amount of works.
To Read: Leda And The Swan | The Second Coming | Death
13. John Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet prominent in the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. John Keats devoted his short life to the perfection of poetry marked by vivid imagery, great sensuous appeal and an attempt to express a philosophy through classical legend.
To Read: Ode On Melancholy | Fancy | A Party Of Lovers
14. Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was the Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and critic, was born in Dublin on October 16th, 1854. At that time Ireland belonged to, and was ruled by, Britain. Wilde’s parents were part of the Protestant ruling class in Ireland, rather than the mostly Catholic ‘native’ Irish people.
To Read: Requiescat | The Burden Of Itys | The Garden Of Eros
15. Pablo Neruda
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (/nəˈruːdə/; Spanish: [ˈpaβlo neˈɾuða]), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
To Read: Here I Love You | In You The Earth | Your Hands
16. Homer
Homer (/ˈhoʊmər/; Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος [hómɛːros], Hómēros) was the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two epic poems that are the foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Through his epic poems, Homer has played a hugely influential role in Western Literature.
To Read: The Odyssey | The Odyssey: Book 1 | The Iliad: Book 10
17. Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri (Italian: [ˈdante aliˈɡjɛːri]), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to simply as Dante (/ˈdɑːnteɪ, ˈdænteɪ, ˈdænti/, also US: /ˈdɑːnti/; c. 1265 – 1321), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher.
To Read: Inferno (Italian) | Inferno Canto 01 | Inferno Canto 02
18. William Morris
William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement.
To Read: A Death Song | A Good Knight In Prison | Autumn
19. Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (/ˈkɛruæk/; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist of French Canadian ancestry, who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
To Read: On Tears | Nebraska | One Flower
20. Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “And death shall have no dominion”; the “play for voices” Under Milk Wood; and stories and radio broadcasts such as A Child’s Christmas in Wales and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.
To Read: Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines | And Death Shall Have No Dominion | A Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London
21. Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (/ˈtʃɔːsər/; c. 1340s – 25 October 1400) was an English poet and author. Widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages, he is best known for The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer’s family was of the bourgeois class, descended from an affluent family who made their money in the London wine trade.
To Read: The House Of Fame | Troilus And Criseyde: Book 01 | The Canterbury Tales; The Milleres Tale
22. T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. Considered one of the 20th century’s major poets, he is a central figure in English-language Modernist poetry.
To Read: Morning at the Window | The Naming of Cats | The Hippopotamus
23. W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden (/ˈwɪstən ˈhjuː ˈɔːdən/; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was an Anglo-American poet. Auden is a British poet, author and playwright best known as a leading literary character in the 20th century for his poetry. Auden’s poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content.
To Read: Lullaby | Night Mail | September 1, 1939
24. Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore FRAS (/rəˈbɪndrənɑːt tæˈɡɔːr/ (About this soundlisten); born Robindronath Thakur, 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941; sobriquet Gurudev, Kobiguru, Bishokobi) was a Bengali polymath – poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter.
To Read: Journey Home | Let Me Not Forget | Little Of Me
25. Robert Burns
Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, the National Bard, Bard of Ayrshire, the Ploughman Poet and various other names and epithets, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide.
To Read: John Anderson My Jo | Bonie Doon | Holy Willie’s Prayer
26. Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote abundantly in an exceptional variety of genres: lyrics, satires, epics, philosophical poems, epigrams, novels, history, critical essays, political speeches, funeral orations, diaries, letters public and private, as well as dramas in verse and prose.
To Read: Après La Bataille | La tombe dit à la rose | Sea Song Of The Exiles
27. James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century.
To Read: A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man | From ‘Ulysses’ | Simples
28. Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire, in full Charles-Pierre Baudelaire, (born April 9, 1821, Paris, France—died August 31, 1867, Paris) was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century.
To Read: The Death Of Lovers | Epilogue | Be Drunk
29. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (born August 28, 1749, Frankfurt am Main [Germany]—died March 22, 1832, Weimar, Saxe-Weimar), was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature and aesthetic criticism, and treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour.
To Read: First Loss | Alexis And Dora | Restless Love
30. Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges, (born August 24, 1899, Buenos Aires, Argentina—died June 14, 1986, Geneva, Switzerland), Argentine poet, essayist, and short-story writer whose works became classics of 20th-century world literature. In addition to founding three literary journals, Borges authored several volumes of poems, essays and a biography.
To Read: Adam Cast Forth | Browning Decides to Be a Poet | Elegy
31. Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for his evergreen works Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
To Read: The Moon | My Shadow | Bed In Summer
32. J. R. R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien, in full John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, (born January 3, 1892, Bloemfontein, South Africa—died September 2, 1973, Bournemouth, Hampshire, England) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
To Read: The Bath Song | Cold Be Hand and Heart and Bone | The Riddle of Strider
33. William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. He was American poet who succeeded in making the ordinary appear extraordinary through the clarity and discreteness of his imagery.
To Read: Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus | Portrait of a Lady | Smell
34. Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg, (born Jan. 6, 1878, Galesburg, Ill., U.S.—died July 22, 1967, Flat Rock, N.C.), American poet, historian, novelist, and folklorist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln.
To Read: A Father To His Son | Who Am I? | Theme In Yellow
35. Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley (/bɪʃ/ (About this soundlisten) BISH; 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. American literary critic Harold Bloom describes him as “a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival, and surely one of the most advanced sceptical intellects ever to write a poem.
To Read: Time Long Past | To The Moon | Chorus From Hellas
36. Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, FRS (Greek: Λόρδος Βύρωνας; 22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English peer who was a poet and politician.
To Read: Don Juan: Canto The Seventh | Lachin Y Gair | I Saw Thee Weep
37. Walter de La Mare
Walter de la Mare, in full Walter John de la Mare, (born April 25, 1873, Charlton, Kent, England—died June 22, 1956, Twickenham, Middlesex), was an English poet, short story writer, and novelist.
To Read: A Song of Enchantment | Alexander | Alone
38. Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963), English novelist and critic gifted with an acute and far-ranging intelligence whose works are notable for their wit and pessimistic satire. He remains best known for one novel, Brave New World (1932), a model for much dystopian science fiction that followed.
To Read: Anniversaries | The Elms | Minoan Porcelain
39. William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth, (born April 7, 1770, Cockermouth, Cumberland, England—died April 23, 1850, Rydal Mount, Westmorland), was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).
To Read: Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 | I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud (Daffodils) | A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
40. Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier. He also is significant for his technical experiments in assonance, which were particularly influential in the 1930s.
To Read: Futility | Strange Meeting | Anthem for Doomed Youth
41. Seamus Heaney
Seamus Justin Heaney MRIA (/ˈʃeɪməs ˈhiːni/; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. Irish poet whose work is notable for its evocation of Irish rural life and events in Irish history as well as for its allusions to Irish myth. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.
To Read: The Early Purges | The Grauballe Man | Personal Helicon
42. Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson FRS (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was the most renowned poet of the Victorian era. His work includes ‘In Memoriam,’ ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ and ‘Idylls of the King.’
To Read: The Lotos-Eaters | Ulysses | Morte d’Arthur
43. Rupert Brooke
Rupert Chawner Brooke (3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915) was English poet, a wellborn, gifted, handsome youth whose early death in World War I contributed to his idealized image in the interwar period. His best-known work is the sonnet sequence 1914.
To Read: 1914 V: The Soldier | 1914 IV: The Dead | The Dead
44. Edward Thomas
Edward Thomas, in full Philip Edward Thomas, (born March 3, 1878, Lambeth, London, Eng.—died April 9, 1917, Arras, France), was a British poet, essayist, and novelist. He is considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences, and his career in poetry only came after he had already been a successful writer and literary critic.
To Read: Thaw | Aspens | A Cat
45. John Donne
John Donne (/dʌn/ DUN; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was leading English poet of the Metaphysical school and dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London (1621–31). Donne is often considered the greatest love poet in the English language. He is also noted for his religious verse and treatises and for his sermons, which rank among the best of the 17th century.
To Read: The Flea | The Canonization | Phryne
46. Robert Browning
Robert Browning, (born May 7, 1812, London—died Dec. 12, 1889, Venice), was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. His verse was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax.
To Read: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came | Home Thoughts, from Abroad | My Last Duchess
47. Richard Wilbur
Richard Wilbur, in full Richard Purdy Wilbur, (born March 1, 1921, New York, New York, U.S.—died October 14, 2017, Belmont, Massachusetts), American poet associated with the New Formalist movement. One of the foremost poets of his generation, Wilbur’s work, composed primarily in traditional forms, was marked by its wit, charm, and gentlemanly elegance.
To Read: A Fable | A Fire-Truck | A Hole In The Floor
48. Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke, original name René Maria Rilke, (born Dec. 4, 1875, Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now in Czech Republic]—died Dec. 29, 1926, Valmont, Switz.), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He is “widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets”. He wrote both verse and highly lyrical prose.
To Read: A Walk | Adam | Again And Again
49. John Dryden
John Dryden, (born August 9 [August 19, New Style], 1631, Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, England—died May 1 [May 12], 1700, London), was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was appointed England’s first Poet Laureate in 1668.
To Read: Tarquin And Tullia | Te Deum | One Happy Moment
50. Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope, (born May 21, 1688, London, England—died May 30, 1744, Twickenham, near London), was a poet and satirist of the Augustan period and one of its greatest artistic exponents.
To Read: Lines On Curll | Farewell To London | Chorus Of Youths And Virgins
51. Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (see name pronunciation; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862), American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher renowned for having lived the doctrines of Transcendentalism as recorded in his masterwork, Walden (1854), and for having been a vigorous advocate of civil liberties, as evidenced in the essay “Civil Disobedience” (1849).
To Read: The Summer Rain | Epitaph On The World | Prayer
52. Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his 800-page epic poem, The Cantos (c. 1917–1962).
To Read: The Return | The Garden | The Tree
53. Henrik Johan Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen (/ˈɪbsən/; Norwegian: [ˈhɛ̀nrɪk ˈɪ̀psn̩]; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as “the father of realism” and one of the most influential playwrights of his time.
To Read: In the Picture Gallery | Mountain Life | A Brother In Need
54. Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan, original name Robert Allen Zimmerman, (born May 24, 1941, Duluth, Minnesota, U.S.), is an American singer-songwriter, author and visual artist.
To Read: On The Road Again | Desolation Row | Subterranean Homesick Blues
55. Tulsidas
Tulsidas (Hindi pronunciation: [t̪ʊls̪iːd̪aːs̪]; 1532–1623), also known as Goswami Tulsidas, was a Ramanandi Vaishnava saint and poet, renowned for his devotion to the deity Rama.
To Read: Doha 1 | Doha 5 | Doha 2
56. Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet FRSE FSAScot (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish historical novelist, poet, playwright, and historian.
To Read: Answer | Hunting Song | Border Ballad
56. Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo, original name Aurobindo Ghose, Aurobindo also spelled Aravinda, Sri also spelled Shri, (born August 15, 1872, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India—died December 5, 1950, Pondicherry [now Puducherry]), was an Indian philosopher, yogi, maharishi, poet, and Indian nationalist. He was also a journalist, editing newspapers like Bande Mataram.
To Read: The Inner Fields | The Unseen Infinite | Krishna
57. Tupac Shakur
Tupac Shakur, in full Tupac Amaru Shakur, original name Lesane Parish Crooks, bynames 2Pac and Makaveli, (born June 16, 1971, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died September 13, 1996, Las Vegas, Nevada), better known by his stage name 2Pac and by his alias Makaveli, was an American rapper, songwriter, and actor.
To Read: In The Event Of My Demise | When Ure Hero Falls | In The Depths Of Solitude
58. Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
Aleksandr Pushkin, in full Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, (born May 26 [June 6, New Style], 1799, Moscow, Russia—died January 29 [February 10], 1837, St. Petersburg), was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era.
To Read: Amidst the Noisy Ball | The Cloister on Kazbek | The Demon
59. Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold, (born December 24, 1822, Laleham, Middlesex, England—died April 15, 1888, Liverpool) was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools.
To Read: Consolation | Shakespeare | Austerity Of Poetry
60. Howard Phillips Lovecraft
H.P. Lovecraft, in full Howard Phillips Lovecraft, (born August 20, 1890, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.—died March 15, 1937, Providence), was an American writer of weird, science, fantasy, and horror fiction.
To Read: Christmas Snows | Festival | Good Saint Nick
61. Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser, (born 1552/53, London, England—died January 13, 1599, London) was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I.
To Read: An Hymn In Honour Of Beauty | Iambicum Trimetrum | Sonnet I
62. F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald, in full Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, (born September 24, 1896, St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.—died December 21, 1940, Hollywood, California), was an American novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and short story writer.
To Read: Marching Streets | The Staying Up All Night | On A Play Twice Seen
63. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (born October 21, 1772, Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, England—died July 25, 1834, Highgate, near London) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets.
To Read: Youth And Age | The Eolian Harp | To Nature
64. Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen, in full Leonard Norman Cohen, (born September 21, 1934, Montreal, Quebec, Canada—died November 7, 2016, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist. His work explored religion, politics, isolation, depression, sexuality, loss, death and romantic relationships.
To Read: Waiting For The Miracle | Suzanne | Bird On The Wire
65. Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, (born June 2, 1840, Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England—died January 11, 1928, Dorchester, Dorset), was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth.
To Read: During Wind And Rain | The Going | The Oxen
66. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, (born February 27, 1807, Portland, Massachusetts [now in Maine], U.S.—died March 24, 1882, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American poet and educator whose works include “Paul Revere’s Ride”, The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline.
To Read: Nature | Haunted Houses | The Cross of Snow
67. E. E. Cummings
E.E. Cummings, in full Edward Estlin Cummings, (born October 14, 1894, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.—died September 3, 1962, North Conway, New Hampshire), often styled as e e cummings, as he is attributed in many of his published works,[1] was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright.
To Read: Next To Of Course God America I | I Sing Of Olaf Glad And Big | May I Feel Said He
68. Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon, (born Sept. 8, 1886, Brenchley, Kent, Eng.—died Sept. 1, 1967, Heytesbury, Wiltshire), was an English poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War.
To Read: The Poet As Hero | Memory | The Last Meeting
69. Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, original name Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, (born May 12, 1828, London, England—died April 9, 1882, Birchington-on-Sea, Kent), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (/rəˈzɛti/), was an English poet, illustrator, painter, and translator, and member of the Rossetti family.
To Read: Song And Music | Love’s Nocturn | The Sonnet
70. Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin, in full Philip Arthur Larkin, (born August 9, 1922, Coventry, Warwickshire, England—died December 2, 1985, Kingston upon Hull), was an English poet, novelist, and librarian.
To Read: The Whitsun Weddings | To My Wife | Water
71. Robert Graves
Robert Graves, in full Robert von Ranke Graves, (born July 24, 1895, London, England—died December 7, 1985, Deyá, Majorca, Spain) was a British poet, historical novelist, critic, and classicist.
To Read: Lost Love | Corporal Stare | In Broken Images
72. Rumi
Rūmī, in full Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, also called by the honorific Mawlānā, (born c. September 30, 1207, Balkh [now in Afghanistan]—died December 17, 1273, Konya [now in Turkey]), was a 13th-century Persian poet, Hanafi faqih, Islamic scholar, Maturidi theologian, and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran.
To Read: Any Lifetime | Be Lost In The Call | A Stone I Died
73. A. A. Milne
A.A. Milne, in full Alan Alexander Milne, (born January 18, 1882, London, England—died January 31, 1956, Hartfield, Sussex), was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various poems.
To Read: Wind On The Hill | Vespers | Teddy Bear
74. Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe, (baptized Feb. 26, 1564, Canterbury, Kent, Eng.—died May 30, 1593, Deptford, near London), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era.
To Read: I Must Have Wanton Poets | Fragment | Hero And Leander
75. Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson, byname Dr. Johnson, (born September 18, 1709, Lichfield, Staffordshire, England—died December 13, 1784, London), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.
To Read: The City Of God | The Winter’s Walk | Summer
76. Kabir
Kabir, (Arabic: “Great”) (born 1440, Varanasi, Jaunpur, India—died 1518, Maghar), was a 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint, whose writings influenced Hinduism’s Bhakti movement and his verses are found in Sikhism’s scripture Guru Granth Sahib.
To Read: Lamps Burn In Every House | Tell Me Brother | How Humble Is God
77. Virgil
Virgil, also spelled Vergil, Latin in full Publius Vergilius Maro, (born October 15, 70 BCE, Andes, near Mantua [Italy]—died September 21, 19 BCE, Brundisium), was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid.
To Read: Eclogue VIII | Eclogue VII | Eclogue VI
78. Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht, original name Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, (born February 10, 1898, Augsburg, Germany—died August 14, 1956, East Berlin), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet.
To Read: Fragen | The Burning Of The Books | United Front Song
79. Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889), English poet and Jesuit priest, one of the most individual of Victorian writers. His work was not published in collected form until 1918, but it influenced many leading 20th-century poets.
To Read: Love Preparing To Fly | Henry Purcell | May Magnificat
80. Thomas Wyatt
Sir Thomas Wyatt, Wyatt also spelled Wyat, (born 1503, Allington, near Maidstone, Kent, Eng.—died Oct. 6, 1542, Sherborne, Dorset), was a 16th-century English politician, ambassador, and lyric poet credited with introducing the sonnet to English literature.
To Read: A Revocation | In Spain | Mine Own John Poynz
81. Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (/ˈlʌtwɪdʒ ˈdɒdʒsən/; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer of children’s fiction, notably Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass.
To Read: The Voice Of The Lobster | Lays Of Sorrow | Rules And Regulations
82. Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, “Dean Swift”.
To Read: The Windsor Prophecy | Twelve Articles | On The Gallows
83. Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Spanish: [miˈɣel de θeɾˈβantes saaˈβeðɾa]; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 NS), Spanish novelist, playwright, and poet, the creator of Don Quixote (1605, 1615) and the most important and celebrated figure in Spanish literature.
To Read: Ovillejos | Bailan Las Gitanas | Sonnet
84. Aeschylus
Aeschylus, (born 525/524 BC—died 456/455 BC, Gela, Sicily), the first of classical Athens’ great dramatists, who raised the emerging art of tragedy to great heights of poetry and theatrical power.
To Read: A Prayer For Artemis | The Defiance Of Eteocles | The Appointed Time
85. Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse, (born July 2, 1877, Calw, Germany—died August 9, 1962, Montagnola, Switzerland), was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter.
To Read: Stages | In Secret We Thirst | Across The Fields
86. Harivansh Rai Bachchan
Harivansh Rai Bachchan (27 November 1907 – 18 January 2003) was an Indian poet of the Nayi Kavita literary movement (romantic upsurge) of early 20th century Hindi literature. He was also a poet of the Hindi Kavi Sammelan.
To Read: कहते हैं तारे गाते हैं | यात्रा और यात्री | जीवन की आपाधापी में
87. Philip Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney, (born November 30, 1554, Penshurst, Kent, England—died October 17, 1586, Arnhem, Netherlands) was an English poet, courtier, scholar and soldier who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age.
To Read: The Bargain | Thou Blind Man’s Mark | To The Sad Moon
88. Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith, (born Nov. 10, 1728, Kilkenny West, County Westmeath, Ire.—died April 4, 1774, London), was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright and poet, who is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770), and his plays The Good-Natur’d Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771, first performed in 1773).
To Read: The Village Schoolmaster | The Taking Of Quebec | The Poet Laberius
89. Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (Latin: [ˈpuːblɪ.ʊs ɔˈwɪd̪ɪ.ʊs ˈnaːsoː]; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), Roman poet noted especially for his Ars amatoria and Metamorphoses. His verse had immense influence both by its imaginative interpretations of Classical myth and as an example of supreme technical accomplishment.
To Read: Pygmalion And The Statue | Seeing Thou Art Fair | To His Mistress
90. Francesco Petrarch
Petrarch, Italian in full Francesco Petrarca, (born July 20, 1304, Arezzo, Tuscany [Italy]—died July 18/19, 1374, Arquà, near Padua, Carrara), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (/ˈpiːtrɑːrk, ˈpɛt-/), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists.
To Read: It Was On That Day When The Sun’s Ray | Little Wandering Bird That Goes Singing | Canzone XVI
91. Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud, in full Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud, (born October 20, 1854, Charleville, France—died November 10, 1891, Marseille), was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes, and his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism.
To Read: Time Without End | Mystic | Romance
92. Mirza Ghalib
Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan (Urdu: مرزا اسد اللٌٰه بیگ خان; 27 December 1797 – 15 February 1869), the preeminent Indian poet of his time writing in Persian, equally renowned for poems, letters, and prose pieces in Urdu.
To Read: In Her Every Indication | These Divine Verses | Tum Apne Shikve Ki Baatein
93. John Clare
John Clare, (born July 13, 1793, Helpston, near Peterborough, Northamptonshire, England—died May 20, 1864, Northampton, Northamptonshire), was an English poet. The son of a farm labourer, he became known for his celebrations of the English countryside and sorrows at its disruption.
To Read: The Landrail | Bantry Bay | Gipsies
94. Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray, (born Dec. 26, 1716, London—died July 30, 1771, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.) was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751.
To Read: The Progress Of Poesy | The Curse Upon Edward | If I Should Die
95. A. E. Housman
A.E. Housman, in full Alfred Edward Housman, (born March 26, 1859, Fockbury, Worcestershire, Eng.—died April 30, 1936, Cambridge), was an English classical scholar and poet. His cycle of poems, A Shropshire Lad wistfully evoke the dooms and disappointments of youth in the English countryside.
To Read: Stars | The Day Of Battle | The Lent Lily
96. Horace
Horace, Latin in full Quintus Horatius Flaccus, (born December 65 BC, Venusia, Italy—died Nov. 27, 8 BC, Rome), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (/ˈhɒrɪs/), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian).
To Read: Bkiv: XII Spring | Bkiv:VIII Poetry | Bkiii: X Cruel One
97. Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau, (born July 5, 1889, Maisons-Laffitte, near Paris, France—died October 11, 1963, Milly-la-Forêt, near Paris), was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic.
To Read: Soft Caramel | Toreador | Awakening
98. Alfred Douglas
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945) was a British poet and journalist, best known as the lover of Oscar Wilde. While studying at Oxford, he edited an undergraduate journal, The Spirit Lamp, which carried a homoerotic subtext, and met Wilde, with whom he started a close but stormy relationship.
To Read: Plainte Eternelle | Ode To Autumn | A Song
99. Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson, byname of Benjamin Jonson, (born June 11?, 1572, London, England—died August 6, 1637, London), was an English playwright and poet. Jonson’s artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy.
To Read: To My Book | Inviting A Friend To Supper | A Pindaric Ode
100. Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell, (born March 31, 1621, Winestead, Yorkshire, England—died August 18, 1678, London), was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678.
To Read: The Fair Singer | First Anniversary | Young Love
111. Sophocles
Sophocles (/ˈsɒfəkliːz/; Ancient Greek: Σοφοκλῆς, pronounced [so.pʰo.klɛ̂ːs]; c. 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC) is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those of Aeschylus; and earlier than, or contemporary with, those of Euripides.
To Read: A Fair Eubœan Shore | Power Of Love (From “Antigone”) | Strange That The Godless Prosper
112. Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller, in full Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, (born Nov. 10, 1759, Marbach, Württemberg [Germany]—died May 9, 1805, Weimar, Saxe-Weimar) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher.
To Read: The Artists | The Eleusinian Festival | Amalia
113. Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini, (born March 5, 1922, Bologna, Italy—died Nov. 2, 1975, Ostia, near Rome), was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. He also distinguished himself as an actor, journalist, novelist, playwright, and political figure.
To Read: Ode to a Flower in Casarsa | The Fan | Flesh and Sky
114. George Santayana
George Santayana, original name Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz De Santayana, (born December 16, 1863, Madrid, Spain—died September 26, 1952, Rome, Italy), was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist.
To Read: Sonnet III | Sonnet XXV | Sonnet V
Some Other Famous Male Poets
- Claude McKay
- Ogden Nash
- John Ashbery
- Jim Morrison
- Hans Christian Andersen
- Tennessee Williams
- Allama Muhammad Iqbal
- James Baldwin
- Federico García Lorca
→ Read more: America’s Greatest Male Poets or Best Poets of the 21st Century.
You May Also Like:
- 13 Best Poets of the 21st Century! – How Many Do You Know?
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- Famous American Poets – 50 America’s Greatest Male & Female Poets
- 12 Famous Female Poets of the 21st Century! Art Inspiration For You
- America’s Greatest Male Poets – 39 Famous American Male Poets
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