Top 14 American Poets of All Time

Nineteenth-century rhymers sit beside Beat-era rebels and modern Nobel laureates. Pick the voice that stays in your head.

1. 1
   Walt Whitman

   Poet of Leaves of Grass and the father of American free verse.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Allen Ginsberg

   Beat Generation poet whose Howl went on trial for obscenity in 1957.
   801pts
3. 3
   Robert Lowell

   Boston poet whose Life Studies launched confessional poetry.
   648pts
4. 4
   E. E. Cummings

   Modernist known for playful typography and lowercase lyric poems.
   632pts
5. 5
   Robert Frost

   Four-time Pulitzer winner behind The Road Not Taken and Stopping by Woods.
   548pts
6. 6
   Louise Glück

   Nobel laureate of 2020, author of The Wild Iris.
   548pts
7. 7
   Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

   The most popular American poet of the 19th century, author of Paul Revere's Ride.
   548pts
8. 8
   Langston Hughes

   Harlem Renaissance poet of The Negro Speaks of Rivers and Harlem.
   449pts
9. 9
   Edgar Allan Poe

   Author of The Raven and Annabel Lee, and the theorist behind The Philosophy of Composition.
   448pts
10. 10
    Wallace Stevens

    Insurance executive and poet of The Emperor of Ice-Cream.
    448pts
11. 11
    Elizabeth Bishop

    Precise, travelling poet of One Art and The Fish.
    329pts
12. 12
    Emily Dickinson

    Amherst poet whose nearly 1,800 compact poems were mostly published after her death.
    329pts
13. 13
    Gwendolyn Brooks

    Chicago poet and the first Black author to win a Pulitzer Prize.
    329pts
14. 14
    Maya Angelou

    Poet and memoirist of Still I Rise and On the Pulse of Morning.
    0pts

Comments 1