# 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.

*By YPB Team · Published October 13, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/top-14-american-poets-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Walt Whitman** — score 1000/1000
   Poet of Leaves of Grass and the father of American free verse.
2. **Allen Ginsberg** — score 801/1000
   Beat Generation poet whose Howl went on trial for obscenity in 1957.
3. **Robert Lowell** — score 648/1000
   Boston poet whose Life Studies launched confessional poetry.
4. **E. E. Cummings** — score 632/1000
   Modernist known for playful typography and lowercase lyric poems.
5. **Robert Frost** — score 548/1000
   Four-time Pulitzer winner behind The Road Not Taken and Stopping by Woods.
6. **Louise Glück** — score 548/1000
   Nobel laureate of 2020, author of The Wild Iris.
7. **Henry Wadsworth Longfellow** — score 548/1000
   The most popular American poet of the 19th century, author of Paul Revere's Ride.
8. **Langston Hughes** — score 449/1000
   Harlem Renaissance poet of The Negro Speaks of Rivers and Harlem.
9. **Edgar Allan Poe** — score 448/1000
   Author of The Raven and Annabel Lee, and the theorist behind The Philosophy of Composition.
10. **Wallace Stevens** — score 448/1000
   Insurance executive and poet of The Emperor of Ice-Cream.
11. **Elizabeth Bishop** — score 329/1000
   Precise, travelling poet of One Art and The Fish.
12. **Emily Dickinson** — score 329/1000
   Amherst poet whose nearly 1,800 compact poems were mostly published after her death.
13. **Gwendolyn Brooks** — score 329/1000
   Chicago poet and the first Black author to win a Pulitzer Prize.
14. **Maya Angelou** — score 0/1000
   Poet and memoirist of Still I Rise and On the Pulse of Morning.

Tags: usa, books, poetry, poets