154 articles
A. R. Ammons
A. R. Ammons (Archie Randolph Ammons, 1926–2001) was an American poet who wrote nearly thirty books of poetry, won the National Book Award twice, and taught at Cornell University.
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929–2012), American poet, essayist, and second-wave feminist born in Baltimore; won the Yale Younger Poets Award for A Change of World (1951) and the 1974 National Book Award for Diving into the Wreck; wrote "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" and The Dream of a Common Language.
Al Purdy
Al Purdy, born Alfred Wellington Purdy, was a Canadian poet known for rangy, colloquial free verse about Canada, its people, and its history; he published more than 30 books and won two Governor General's Awards.
Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), American Beat poet, author of "Howl" (1956) and "Kaddish"; obscenity trial, National Book Award, Naropa co-founder, Stanford archive, 2026 centennial.
Amado Nervo
Amado Nervo (1870-1919), born Amado Ruiz de Nervo Ordaz in Tepic, was a Mexican modernista poet, chronicler, and diplomat, author of Perlas negras, Místicas, and La amada inmóvil, who died as minister in Montevideo.
Amanda Gorman
Amanda Gorman (born 1998) is an American poet, first National Youth Poet Laureate, and youngest inaugural poet, who read "The Hill We Climb" at Biden's 2021 inauguration and wrote Call Us What We Carry.
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones, 1934–2014) was an American poet, playwright, and activist, founder of the Black Arts Movement and Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School, author of Dutchman and Blues People.
Anne Bradstreet
Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), born Anne Dudley, Puritan poet of Massachusetts Bay; first American book of poetry, The Tenth Muse (London, 1650), published without her knowledge; known for Contemplations and love poems.
Anne Carson
Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, and classicist, born in Toronto in 1950, who won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature for genre-blending works like Autobiography of Red.
Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton (Anne Gray Harvey, 1928–1974), American confessional poet of mental illness and family life; Pulitzer Prize 1967 for Live or Die; studied under Robert Lowell with Sylvia Plath at Boston University.
Anthony Hecht
Anthony Hecht (1923–2004) was an American poet and critic known for formal, allusive verse confronting atrocity, winning the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for The Hard Hours.
Arna Bontemps
Arna Bontemps (Arnaud Wendell Bontemps, 1902-1973), American Harlem Renaissance poet, novelist, and librarian; author of God Sends Sunday and Black Thunder, and head librarian at Fisk University who preserved African American literary archives.
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was a Black lesbian feminist poet, essayist, and activist from Harlem, author of Coal, The Black Unicorn, Zami, and Sister Outsider, co-founder of Kitchen Table press, and mentor of Afro-German women in Berlin.
Black Mountain poets
The Black Mountain poets were progressive American poets of the 1940s and 1950s tied to Black Mountain College, led by Charles Olson and his 1950 "projective verse" poetics.
Cale Young Rice
Cale Young Rice was an American poet and dramatist from Dixon, Kentucky, who wrote fifteen volumes of poems and ten poetic dramas, and was married to novelist Alice Hegan Rice.
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), American poet, journalist, folk song collector, and Lincoln biographer of the Chicago literary renaissance; author of Chicago Poems, The American Songbag, and the Pulitzer-winning Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.
Charles Bernstein
Charles Bernstein, born 1950, is an American poet and essayist who is a foundational member of Language poetry and co-editor of its namesake journal, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.
Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski (Henry Charles Bukowski Jr., 1920–1994), German-born American poet and novelist of Los Angeles lowlife, author of Post Office and Ham on Rye, creator of alter ego Henry Chinaski, published by Black Sparrow Press.
Charles Olson
Charles Olson (1910–1970) was an American poet and essayist, a leading figure of the Black Mountain poets, known for his 1950 manifesto "Projective Verse" and the epic The Maximus Poems.
Charles Simic
Charles Simic, born Dušan Simić, was a Serbian-American poet who won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and served as US Poet Laureate from 2007 to 2008.
Chrystos
Chrystos, born 1946, is a Menominee poet, two-spirited lesbian writer, and activist whose five poetry collections, including Not Vanishing (1988), address feminism, social justice, and Native rights.
Claude McKay
Claude McKay (Festus Claudius McKay, 1889–1948), Jamaican-born poet and novelist of the Harlem Renaissance; author of "If We Must Die," Harlem Shadows, and Home to Harlem; later Catholic convert who died in Chicago.
Death of Edgar Allan Poe
Death of Edgar Allan Poe: the writer's unsolved October 7, 1849 death in Baltimore at age 40, after being found delirious in another man's clothes at Gunner's Hall; no autopsy, no surviving death certificate, and competing alcohol, cooping, tuberculosis, and rabies theories.
Delmore Schwartz
Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) was an American poet, short story writer, and critic whose first book, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities (1938), made him one of the most celebrated young writers of his generation.
Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov (1923–1997) was a British-born American poet of the Black Mountain school whose more than three dozen books spanned nature lyrics, Vietnam-era protest poetry, and religious verse.
Diane di Prima
Diane di Prima (1934–2020) was an American poet associated with the Beat Generation, author of Revolutionary Letters and more than 40 books, and Poet Laureate of San Francisco from 2009.
Diane Glancy
Diane Glancy, born Helen Diane Hall in 1941 in Kansas City, Missouri, is an American poet and novelist of Cherokee descent known for experimental language and Native American themes.
Dionne Brand
Dionne Brand (born 1953) is a Trinidadian-Canadian poet, novelist, essayist, and filmmaker based in Toronto since 1970, whose work centers on diaspora, Black experience, and gender.
Donald Hall
Donald Hall (1928–2018) was an American poet and essayist who served as 14th US Poet Laureate in 2006–2007, writing from his family farm in Wilmot, New Hampshire.
Donald Justice
Donald Rodney Justice was an American poet and teacher of writing who won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Selected Poems and taught many noted writers.