List of poets from the United States

This is a list of poets from the United States, or American poets, that have written important poetry or famous poetry.

Poets that are alive, are at the bottom of the list.

Phillis Wheatley (d. 1784)

Jupiter Hammon (d. c. 1806)

Francis Scott Key (d.1843), a poem of his became the national anthem of the United States

Edgar Allan Poe (d. 1849)
John Pierpont (d. 1866)

Nathaniel Parker Willis (d. 1867)

Phoebe Cary (d. 1871)

Ralph Waldo Emerson (d. 1882)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (d. 1882)

Emily Dickinson (d. 1886)

Emma Lazarus (d.1887)

William Clark Falkner (d. 1889)

Herman Melville (d. 1890)
James Russell Lowell (d. 1891)

Walt Whitman (d. 1892)
John Greenleaf Whittier (d. 1892)

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (d. 1894)

Stephen Crane (d. 1900)

Julia Ward Howe (d. 1910)

Richard Howard (d. 1922)

Elinor Wylie (d. 1928)

Hart Crane (d. 1932)

Sara Teasdale (d. 1933)

James Weldon Johnson (d. 1938)

Gertrude Stein (d. 1946)

Edna St. Vincent Millay (d. 1950)

Julia de Burgos (d. 1953)

Wallace Stevens (d. 1955)

Richard Wright (d. 1960)

Jessie Redmon Fauset (d. 1961)

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (d. 1961)

E. E. Cummings (d. 1962)

Robinson Jeffers (d. 1962)

Robert Frost (d. 1963)

Sylvia Plath (d. 1963)

Theodore Roethke (d. 1963)

William Carlos Williams (d. 1963)

T. S. Eliot (d. 1965); The Waste Land is [one of] his most important poems.https://snl.no/T._S._Eliot. Store Norske Leksikon. Retrieved 2023-12-01 

Jack Spicer (d. 1965)

Frank O'Hara (d. 1966)

Langston Hughes (d. 1967)

Dorothy Parker (d. 1967)

Carl Sandburg (d. 1967)

Mercedes de Acosta (d. 1968)

Thomas Merton (d. 1968)

Lorine Niedecker (d. 1970)
Charles Olson (d. 1970)

Jim Morrison (d. 1971)

Ogden Nash (d. 1971)

John Berryman (d. 1972)

Marianne Moore (d. 1972)

Ezra Pound (d. 1972)

John Crowe Ransom (d. 1974)

Anne Sexton (d. 1974)

Charles Reznikoff (d. 1976)

Robert Lowell (d. 1977)

Louis Zukofsky (d. 1978)

Elizabeth Bishop (d. 1979)

Allen Tate (d. 1979)

Muriel Rukeyser (d. 1980)

Richard Hugo (d. 1982)

Archibald MacLeish (d. 1982)

Kenneth Rexroth (d. 1982)

Ted Berrigan (d. 1983)

Raymond Roseliep (d. 1983)

George Oppen (d. 1984)

Raymond Carver (d. 1988)

Robert Penn Warren (d. 1989)

Etheridge Knight (d. 1991)

James Schuyler (d. 1991)

Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) (d. 1991)

Audre Lorde (d. 1992)

Charles Bukowski (d. 1994)

James Merrill (d. 1995)

Joseph Brodsky (d. 1996)

James Dickey (d. 1997)

Allen Ginsberg (d. 1997)

Denise Levertov (d. 1997)

Shel Silverstein (d. 1999)

Besmilr Brigham (d. 2000)

Gwendolyn Brooks (d. 2000)

Beah Richards (d. 2000)

Karl Shapiro (d. 2000)

Jack Buck (d. 2002)

Kenneth Koch (d. 2002)

Philip Whalen (d. 2002)

Cid Corman (d. 2004)

Anthony Hecht (d. 2004)

Donald Justice (d. 2004)

Mona Van Duyn (d. 2004)

Robert Creeley (d. 2005)

Nipsey Russell (d. 2005)

Barbara Guest (d. 2006)

Stanley Kunitz (d. 2006)

Diane Middlebrook (d. 2007)

Hayden Carruth (d. 2008)

John Updike (d. 2009)

W. D. Snodgrass (d. 2009)

Roberts Blossom (d. 2011)

Galway Kinnell (d. 2014)

Carolyn Kizer (d. 2014)

Adrienne Rich (d. 2012)

Lou Reed (d. 2013)

Maya Angelou (d. 2014)

Amiri Baraka (a.k.a. Leroi Jones) (d. 2014)

Claudia Emerson (d. 2014)

Mark Strand (d. 2014), Canadian-American)

Philip Levine (poet) (d. 2015)

Rod McKuen (d. 2015)

William Jay Smith (d. 2015)

James Tate (writer) (d. 2015)

C. K. Williams (d. 2015)

Bill Berkson (d. 2016)

John Ashbery (d. 2017)

Kathryn Stripling Byer (d. 2017)

Jim Harrison (d. 2017)

Denis Johnson (d. 2017)

Joanne Kyger (d. 2017)

Harry Mathews (d. 2017)

Richard Wilbur (d. 2017)

Donald Hall (d. 2018)

Ntozake Shange (d. 2018)

David Berman (musician) (d. 2019)

Steve Dalachinsky (d. 2019)

W. S. Merwin (d. 2019)

Mary Oliver (d. 2019) 

Kim Bridgford (d. 2020)

Lewis MacAdams (d. 2020)

Michael McClure (d. 2020)

Lisel Mueller (d. 2020)

Anne Stevenson (d. 2020), American-British

Robert Bly (d. 2021)

Stephen Dunn (d. 2021)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (d. 2021)

Jack Hirschman (d. 2021)

Bernadette Mayer (d.  2022)

Gerald Stern (d. 2022)

Louise Glück (d. 2023)

Charles Simic (d. 2023)

Amy Uyematsu (d. 2023), Japanese American

Gary Snyder (born 1930)

Wendell Berry (born 1934)

Charles Wright (poet) (born 1935)
Roald Hoffmann (born 1937)
Frank Bidart (born 1939)

Billy Collins (born 1941)

Bob Dylan (born 1941)

Rolland Smith (born 1941)
Ron Padgett (born 1942)
Nikki Giovanni (born 1943)

Rita Mae Brown (born 1944)

Alice Walker (born 1944)

Alice Notley (born 1945)

Anne Waldman (born 1945)

Patti Smith; Poetry collections from her were published as early as 1972 and as late as 2005: Seventh Heaven and Auguries of Innocence; born 1946

Rae Armantrout (born 1947)

Alamgir Hashmi (born 1951)

Rita Dove (born 1952)

Giannina Braschi (born 1953)

Ana Castillo (born 1953)

Sandra Cisneros (born 1954)

Viggo Mortensen (born 1958)

Henry Rollins (born 1961)

Claudia Rankine (born 1963)

Natasha Trethewey (born 1966)

Seth Abramson (born 1976)

Carson Cistulli (born 1979)

Amber Tamblyn (born 1983)

Masiela Lusha (born 1985)

Amanda Gorman (born 1998), first to become National Youth Poet Laureate

Suzanne Cleary (fl. 21st century)

Related pages
Bob Dylan (born 1941), winner of Nobel Prize
List of poets from North America

Sources

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poets