ANNA AKHMATOVA (1889–1966): Russian lyric poet whose work includes Evening, Rosary, and White Flock. She achieved great popular success in Russia for her work.
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER (1962– ): Her collections of poems include Antebellum Dream Book and Body of Life. She has taught in many universities in the United States.
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE (1880–1918): He settled in Paris in 1898 where he worked as a journalist, playwright, and poet.
ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911–1979): Highly regarded American poet who won every major poetry award in the United States including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, she served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1966 until 1979.
STERLING A. BROWN (1901–1989): An influential American poet, he taught at Howard University. His first collection was Southern Road.
LUCILLE CLIFTON (1936– ): Mentored by Sterling Brown at Howard University, she worked as an actor while writing poetry. She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 and won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2001 for Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988–2000.
JOHNNY COLEY (1950– ): He was born in Alexander City, Alabama, and has published three chapbooks of poetry, Good Luck, No, and Peasant Attitudes towards Art.
BILLY COLLINS (1941– ): According to the New York Times, Collins is currently the “most popular poet in America.” He is currently the Poet Laureate of the United States.
STEPHEN CRANE (1871–1900): Best known for his novel The Red Badge of Courage, he published one volume of poetry. He died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-nine.
CAROLYN CREEDON (1969– ): Creedon's poems have been included in the Best American Poetry series. She currently works as a waitress in San Francisco.
EMILY DICKINSON (1830–1886): One of the nineteenth century's greatest poets, Dickinson lived quietly at home in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her lawyer father. Only seven of her approximately one thousand poems were published during her lifetime.
GREGORY DJANIKIAN (1949– ): Originally from Alexandria, Egypt, he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. His latest collection of poetry is called Years Later.
MARK DOTY (1953– ): Contemporary American poet, he has won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize. His most recent collection is Source. He lives in New York City.
SHAWN M. DURRETT (1974– ): Born and raised in the hills of western Massachusetts, Durrett received her MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan. Her poem “Lures,” included here, won an Academy of American Poets Prize in 1998.
RICHARD EBERHART (1904– ): Minnesota-born poet, he has received the Bollingen Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award. He has taught at many universities in the United States.
DEBORAH GARRISON (1965– ): Garrison published A Working Girl Can't Win and Other Poems in 1998. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey.
DAVID GEWANTER is the author of In the Belly (U. Chicago Press, 1997), The Sleep of Reason (U. Chicago Press, 2003), and coeditor with Frank Bidart of The Collected Poems of Robert Lowell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003).
LOUISE GLüUK (1943– ): American poet whose collections have won both the Pulitzer Prize (1992) and the National Book Critics Circle Award (1985).
ROBERT GRAVES (1895–1985): British poet, novelist, and essayist, he was professor of poetry at Oxford from 1961 until 1966.
LOLA HASKINS (1943– ): She has published six books of poetry. Her most recent work is The Rim-Benders.
ROBERT HAYDEN (1913–1980): His first volume of poems was Heart-Shape in the Dust; his last collection was American Journal (1978). He taught at Fisk University and the University of Michigan.
ROBERT HERRICK (1591–1674): Considered to be one of the finest English lyric poets, he lived in London and Dean Prior, Devonshire.
SADIE LISK HIGHSMITH (1998– ): Sadie currently attends ArtsTogether, a preschool in Raleigh, North Carolina.
JANE HIRSHFIELD (1953– ): American poet who studied at the San Francisco Zen Center for eight years, she has translated several collections of Japanese poetry. Her works include The October Palace, The Lives of the Heart, and Given Sugar, Given Salt.
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS (1844–1889): Although his poetry did not garner critical acclaim during his lifetime, he is now considered a major British poet.
LANGSTON HUGHES (1902–1967): The most important writer of the Harlem Renaissance, he published ten books of poetry, including Montage of a Dream Deferred. He lived in New York City.
JANE KENYON (1947–1995): She published four volumes of poetry, including Constance (1993). She lived at Eagle Pond Farm in New Hampshire until she died of leukemia in 1995.
GALWAY KINNELL (1927– ): Kinnell has won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
ETHERIDGE KNIGHT (1931–1991): Knight began writing poetry while he was incarcerated at Indiana State Prison. His book Poems from Prison received great critical acclaim in the United States.
KIM KONOPKA lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she writes and teaches poetry. Her work has won several awards and been extensively published.
PHILIP LARKIN (1922–1985): He was a highly influential British poet whose collections of poetry included The Less Deceived and High Window.
LYN LIFSHIN: Author of more than one hundred books, she has been Poet in Residence at the University of Rochester, Antioch, and Colorado Mountain College. Her most recent collection is Before It's Light.
ANDREW MARVELL (1621–1678): Known primarily as a satirist during his lifetime, he came to be considered a great poet only after his death.
CLAUDE MCKAY (1890–1948): His books include Songs of Jamaica and Harlem Shadows. He emigrated from Jamaica to the United States in 1912 and lived in New York City.
LYNNE MCMAHON (1951– ): McMahon has published one collection of poetry, The House of Entertaining Science. She teaches at the University of Missouri.
JOHN MILTON (1608–1674): He was a scholar and theologian. Paradise Lost is considered one of the greatest works in the English language.
PABLO NERUDA (1904–1973): Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet, he received the Lenin Peace Prize in 1953.
JOYCE CAROL OATES (1938– ): Her most recent collection of poems is The Time Traveler. A prolific novelist, she currently teaches in the creative writing program at Princeton University.
FRANK O'HARA (1926–1966): O'Hara worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for most of his life. He published his first volume of poems, A City in Winter and Other Poems, in 1952, and over the course of his life, he published five more collections.
SHARON OLDS (1942– ): Often described as a confessional poet, Olds won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Dead and the Living in 1983.
HANS OSTROM (1954– ): Ostrom is the author of A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia. A widely published poet, he teaches at the University of Puget Sound.
GRACE PALEY (1922– ): Paley is best known as a short story writer, particularly for her collection Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. She lives in New York City and Vermont.
DOROTHY PARKER (1893–1967): She was a journalist, humorist, and a founding member of the famous Algonquin Round Table. Her collections of poetry include Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, and Death and Taxes.
LINDA PASTAN (1932– ): Her collection PM/AM: New and Selected Poems was nominated for an American Book Award in 1983. She lives and works in Potomac, Maryland.
MARGE PIERCY (1936– ): Novelist and poet, Piercy has published eleven collections of poetry. She lives on Cape Cod.
MARIEPONSOT (1921– ): Author of several collections of poetry, her recent work includes The Bird Catcher, for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. Her latest collection of poems is Springing: New and Selected Poems. She teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616): Believed by many to be the greatest writer in the English language, he acted, lived, and wrote in London and Stratford-upon-Avon.
WALLACE Stevens (1879–1955): He was a poet and insurance executive in Hartford, Connecticut. His collections of poetry include Harmonium and Collected Poems.
ANNA SWIRSZCZYNSKA (1909–1984): Swir, as she is known in English publications, was a Polish poet and playwright. She lived in Kraków until her death in 1984.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA (1923– ): Nobel prize-winning Polish poet, she lives in Kraków. Her work includes Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems.
ELIZABETH ASHVéLEZ (1945– ): Journalist and writer, Vélez teaches at Georgetown University.
LARRY VéLEZ (1945– ): Writer and poet, he currently lives and works in Washington, D.C.
VIRGIL (70 B.C.–19 B.C.): Hailed as the greatest Roman poet, Virgil is best known for his epic The Aeneid.
DEREK WALCOTT (1930– ): He is a Saint Lucian poet and playwright who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992. His collections of poems include Sea Grapes and In a Green Night.
WANG WEI (699–759): Chinese poet, painter, and musician, he was the founder of southern Chinese landscape art. His poems were translated in 1959 by Chang Yin-nan and L. C. Walmsley.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883–1963): Winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Williams practiced medicine in Rutherford, New Jersey. His collections include Journey to Love and The Broken Span.
JAMES WRIGHT (1927–1980): He was a highly regarded American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966. His work includes To a Blossoming Pear Tree and This Journey.
WILLIAM BUTLER Yeats (1865–1939): Considered the greatest of Irish poets, he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923.