Timeline of POETS (AND OTHER INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS)
Contemporary (published most recently in time, living writers) / Modern (published recently in history):
Dan Beachy-Quick (b. 1973) - American poet, writer and critic.
Kevin Young (b. 1970)
Sherman Alexie (b. 1966) - Native American poet, novelist, short story writer, screenwriter and director.
Carol Ann Duffy (b. 1955) - Scottish poet and playwright.
Kimiko Hahn (b. 1955)
Luci Tapahonso (b. 1953) - Navajo poet and the Navajo Nation's first Poet Laurette.
Mark Doty (b. 1953)
Mark Irwin (b. 1953)
Gary Soto (b. 1952)
Jimmy Santiago Baca (b. 1952)
Rita Dove (b. 1952)
Alberto Álvaro Ríos (b. 1952) - Arizona's current inaugural poet laureate. (Listen to "Multilingual Poetry of the Southwest: Alberto Ríos.")
Andrew Hudgins (b. 1951)
Anne Carson (b. 1950) - Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics.
Jorie Graham (b. 1950)
Carolyn Forché (b. 1950) - American poet, editor, translator, and human rights advocate.
Juan Felipe Herrera (b. 1948)
Ai (1947-2010)
Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947)
Leslie Scalapino (1944-2010) - Sometimes grouped with the Language poets, she felt closed tied to the Beat poets.
Louise Glück (b. 1943)
Sharon Olds (b. 1942)
Michael Palmer (b. 1942) - American poet and translator.
Billy Collins (b. 1941) - American poet, Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001-2003.
Robert Hass (b. 1941) - American poet, Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995-1997.
Jack Prelutsky (b. 1940)
Judy Grahn (b. 1940)
Robert Pinsky (b. 1940)
Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) - Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist.
Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)
Marvin Bell (b. 1937)
Mary Oliver (b. 1935)
Richard Brautigan (1935-1984)
Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
Fleur Adcock (b. 1934)
Leonard Cohen (b. 1934)
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) - Caribbean-American writer and civil rights activist.
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) - American poet, novelist, and short story writer.
Peter Everwine (b. 1930)
Shel Silverstein (1930-1999)
Ted Hughes (1930-1998) - English poet and children's writer, married to Sylvia Plath.
Adrienne Rich (b. 1929-2012)
Maya Angelou (1928 - 2014)
Philip Levine (b. 1928)
John Ashberry (b. 1927)
W. S. Merwin (b. 1927)
Robert Bly (b. 1926)
A. R. Ammons (b. 1926)
Jack Gilbert (1925-2012)
James Berry (b. 1924)
James A. Emanuel (b. 1921)
Deconstruction / Culmination of Modernist Poetry
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
Paul Blackburn (1926-1971)
Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)
Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012)
Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)
William Bronk (1918-1999)
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)
Roald Dahl (1916-1990) - British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter.
John Cage (1912-1992) - American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist.
Modernist (poetry and art published around 1890-1950)
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)
John Berryman (1914-1972)
Robert Hayden (1913-1980)
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
W. H. Auden (1907-1973)
John Beecher (1904-1980)
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) - Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician.
Kay Boyle (1902-1992)
Gwendolyn Bennett (1902-1981)
Arna Bontemps (1902-1973)
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) - American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright and columnist.
Sterling A. Brown (1901-1989)
Hart Crane (1899-1932)
Louise Bogan (1897-1970)
E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)
Conrad Aiken (1889-1973)
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Marianne Moore (1887-1972)
H. D. (1886-1961)
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) - English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter.
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
Mina Loy (1882-1966)
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer.
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
Amy Lowell (1874-1925) - American imagiste poet.
Transcendental and Realist
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) - Irish poet.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) - English short story writer, poet, and novelist.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Emily Brontë (1818-1848)
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Romantic Movement
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
John Keats (1795-1821)
Percy Shelley (1792-1822)
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834)
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
William Blake (1757-1827)
Renaissance & Metaphysical Movement (16th-17th century)
Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) - Most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan.
Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
John Donne (1572-1631)
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
Medieval, Classical and Ancient
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)
Dante Alighieri (c. 1265-1321)
Rumi (1207-1273)
(Beowulf c. 975-1025)
Ovid (43 BCE-AD 17/18)
Virgil (70-19 BCE) - Ancient Roman poet famous for his epic the Aeneid.
Sappho (c. 630-570 BCE)
Homer (c. 850 BCE) - Ancient Greek author of the Iliad and the Odyssey
Enheduanna (c. 2285-2250 BCE) - Akkadian poet and Priestess of Ur. World's first author known by name, writing hymns and poetry in Ancient Mesopotamia.
(The Epic of Gilgamesh c. 2500 BCE)