154 articles
Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian (1941–2024) was an American poet and a founding figure of Language poetry, the experimental movement that emerged in the 1970s; her best-known work is the autobiography My Life.
Margaret Avison
Margaret Avison (1918–2007) was a Canadian poet whose Christian-inflected work won two Governor General's Awards and the 2003 Griffin Poetry Prize for Concrete and Wild Carrot.
Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) was an American modernist poet known for precisely observed, quotation-rich poems on animals and art, and for acting editor of The Dial from 1925 to 1929.
Mark Strand
Mark Strand (1934–2014) was a Canadian-born American poet who won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and served as US poet laureate from 1990 to 1991.
Mark Van Doren
Mark Van Doren (1894–1972), American poet, critic, and Columbia professor; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1940 for Collected Poems; pioneer of the General Honors great books course and teacher of Merton, Ginsberg, Berryman, and Trilling.
Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver (Mary Jane Oliver, 1935–2019), American poet of Provincetown, Massachusetts; Pulitzer 1984 for American Primitive, National Book Award 1992; author of Wild Geese and more than 25 poetry collections.
Mattie Stepanek
Mattie J.T. Stepanek (1990-2004), American poet and MDA National Goodwill Ambassador, wrote seven New York Times bestselling Heartsongs poetry volumes while living with dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy.
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou (Marguerite Annie Johnson, 1928–2014), American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist; author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and reader of "On the Pulse of Morning" at Clinton's 1993 inauguration, the second inaugural poet after Frost.
Meg Johnson
Meg Johnson, American poet and editor, author of Inappropriate Sleepover (2014), The Crimes of Clara Turlington (2015), and Without: Body, Name, Country (2020); NEOMFA MFA; distinct from the Utah motivational speaker of the same name.
Mercedes de Acosta
Mercedes de Acosta (1893–1968) was an American poet, playwright, and Hollywood scriptwriter remembered for her lesbian relationships with Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich as much as her writing.
Michael McClure
Michael McClure (1932–2020) was an American poet, playwright, and songwriter associated with the Beat Generation, known for reading at the 1955 Six Gallery event where Allen Ginsberg first read "Howl."
Nick Flynn
Nick Flynn (born 1960, Scituate, Massachusetts) is an American poet and memoirist, author of Some Ether and Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, adapted as the film Being Flynn; he teaches at the University of Houston.
Nikki Giovanni
Nikki Giovanni (Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Jr.), 1943–2024, American Black Arts Movement poet, author of Black Feeling, Black Talk and Nikki-Rosa, Virginia Tech professor, seven-time NAACP Image Award winner and 2025 posthumous Frost Medal recipient.
Objectivist poets
The Objectivist poets were a loose group of American and British modernist writers named by Louis Zukofsky, including Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen, and Basil Bunting.
Ocean Vuong
Ocean Vuong (born 1988, Saigon) is a Vietnamese American poet and novelist, author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds (T.S. Eliot Prize), On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Time Is a Mother, and The Emperor of Gladness.
Ofelia Zepeda
Ofelia Zepeda (born 1952) is a Tohono O'odham poet and linguist who wrote the first pedagogical grammar of the O'odham language and won a MacArthur Fellowship.
Ogden Nash
Ogden Nash (Frederic Ogden Nash, 1902 to 1971) was an American poet of whimsical, punning light verse whose work filled The New Yorker and included the Broadway hit One Touch of Venus.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894), American physician, anatomist, poet, and essayist; Harvard anatomy professor and dean; author of the Breakfast-Table essays and "Old Ironsides"; coined "anesthesia" and "Brahmin Caste of New England"; father of the Supreme Court justice.
P. K. Page
P. K. Page, born Patricia Kathleen Page, was a Canadian poet and visual artist who won the 1954 Governor General's Award for poetry for The Metal and the Flower.
Paige Lewis (writer)
Paige Lewis, American poet and novelist, author of Space Struck (Sarabande, 2019) and the epic debut novel Canon (Viking, 2026); co-editor of Another Last Call with Kaveh Akbar and curator of Ours Poetica.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) was an American poet and writer, best known for his Black dialect verse and becoming the first African American to achieve an international audience.
Paula Gunn Allen
Paula Gunn Allen, born Paula Marie Francis (1939–2008), was an American poet and scholar of Native American literature whose 1986 study The Sacred Hoop founded Indigenous feminist criticism.
Peter Orlovsky
Peter Anton Orlovsky (1933-2010), American Beat poet, longtime partner of Allen Ginsberg; author of Clean Asshole Poems and Smiling Vegetable Songs (1978); archive at the Ransom Center.
Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley (Phillis Wheatley Peters, c. 1753-1784), enslaved in Boston, published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (London, 1773), the first book of poetry by an African American; first published at 14, patronized by the Countess of Huntingdon.
Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Rachel Eliza Griffiths is an American poet, visual artist, and novelist based in New York City, the author of five poetry collections and the 2023 debut novel Promise.
Rachel Rabbit White
Rachel Rabbit White is an American poet and essayist whose work often explores erotic labor and desire. She is known for her debut collection, Porn Carnival (2019).
Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965), American poet, critic, novelist, and children's author; National Book Award winner for The Woman at the Washington Zoo; famed for "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" and midcentury poetry criticism.
Ray Young Bear
Ray Young Bear, born 1950, is a Meskwaki poet, novelist, and performer who writes in English and Meskwaki and lives on the Meskwaki Settlement near Tama, Iowa.
Rebecca Hazelton
Rebecca Hazelton, also publishing fiction as Rebecca Stafford, is an American poet and YA novelist, author of Fair Copy, Vow, Gloss, and Generic Husband, a Pushcart Prize winner teaching at North Central College.
Rhiannon McGavin
Rhiannon McGavin, also known as thegeekyblonde, is an American poet from Hollywood, Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles 2016, viral for "Somewhere in America", author of Branches and Grocery List Poems, and a 2023 Mitchell Scholar at Trinity College Dublin.