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. 
 
*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