The 36 Greatest Poets of all Time
By M.A. Rathore
The language of words and the shape of every letter is a
universal beauty. Although nearly all forms of literary work have been seen,
poetry has created a lasting impact on the world. Appearing as early as the
20th century B.C., poetry can first be seen in epic poems such as Homer’s “The Odyssey.” This birth
of new writing allowed people to explore their form of poetry and the many
routes they can take when it comes to it. Poetry has, like many forms of literature,
evolved through each age of history. However, as the world evolved, poetry
transformed as well and went through several different periods, ultimately
leading to the most recent one — contemporary poetry. By definition,
contemporary poetry is “a style of poetry that follows a specific series of
traits and literary tools: inconsistent meter, variations upon standard rhyme.”
Poets writing in this style allow their ink to place a unique sense of self
upon the words, making every poet’s story special. Below are seven contemporary
poets who are changing the world of writing, one page at a time.
1: Edgar Allen Poe
Birthplace: Boston
Famous
poem:” The Raven”
Famous
quote:” I have great faith in fools
— self-confidence my friends call it.”
2: William Shakespeare
Birthplace: Stratford-upon-Avon, England
Famous
poem:” Sonnet XVIII” (Shall I
compare thee to a summer’s day?)
Famous
quote:” All the world’s a stage,
and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their
entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts. His acts are being seven
ages.”
3: Maya Angelou
Birthplace: St. Louis
Famous
poem:” On the Pulse of Morning”
Famous
quote:” I’ve learned that people
will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will
never forget how you made them feel.”
4: Emily Dickinson
Birthplace: Amherst, Massachusetts
Famous
poem: “‘Hope’ is the thing
with feathers”
Famous
quote: “Hope is the thing with
feathers that perches in the soul — and sings the tunes without the words — and
never stops at all.”
5: Shel Silverstein
Birthplace: Chicago
Famous
poem: “Where the Sidewalk
Ends”
Famous
quote:” What I do is good. I
wouldn’t let it out if I didn’t think it was.”
6: Robert Frost
Birthplace: San Francisco
Famous
poem: “The Road Not Taken”
Famous
quote: “The woods are lovely,
dark and deep. But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.”
6: Pablo Neruda
Birthplace: Parral, Chile
Famous
poem: “I Do Not Love You
Except Because I Love You”
Famous
quote: “To feel the love of
people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.”
7: E. E. Cummings
Birthplace: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Famous
poem: “I carry your heart with
me”
Famous
quote: “It takes courage to
grow up and become who you really are.”
8: Langston Hughes
Birthplace: Joplin, Missouri
Famous
poem: “I Too Sing America”
Famous
quote: “Hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”
9: Walt Whitman
Birthplace: Long Island, New York
Famous
poem: “I Hear America Singing”
Famous
quote: “Either define the
moment or the moment will define you.”
10: Thomas Hardy
Birthplace: Dorset, England
Famous
poem: “Hap”
Famous
quote: “The main object of
religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.”
11: Rudyard Kipling
Birthplace: Bombay Presidency, British India
Famous
poem: “Gunga Din”
Famous
quote: “We have forty million
reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.”
12: Oscar Wilde
Birthplace: Dublin, Ireland
Famous
poem: “A Vision”
Famous
quote: “I have the simplest
tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”
13: John Keats
Birthplace: London
Famous
poem: “A Thing of Beauty
(Endymion)”
Famous
quote: “A thing of beauty is a
joy forever; its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.”
15: Elizabeth Barrett
Browning
Birthplace: Durham, England
Famous
poem: “How Do I Love Thee?”
Famous
quote: “If you desire faith,
then you have faith enough.”
16: William Blake
Birthplace: London
Famous
poem: “The Tiger”
Famous
quote: “The glory of Christianity
is to conquer by forgiveness.”
17: Sylvia Plath
Birthplace: Boston
Famous
poem: “Daddy”
Famous
quote: “Everything in life is
writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it and the imagination to
improvise.”
18: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Birthplace: Portland, Maine
Famous
poem: “The Song of Hiawatha”
Famous
quote: “Give what you have. To
someone, it may be better than you dare to think.”
19: William Wordsworth
Birthplace: Cumberland, England
Famous
poem: “The Prelude”
Famous
quote: “Fill your paper with
the breathings of your heart.”
20: Mark Twain
Birthplace: Florida, Missouri
Famous
poem: “Ode to Stephen Dowling
Bots, Dec’d.”
Famous
quote: “Kindness is the
language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
21: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Birthplace: Boston
Famous
poem: “Uriel”
Famous
quote: “A hero is no braver
than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.”
22: John Donne
Birthplace: London
Famous
poem: “No Man Is An Island”
Famous
quote: “Any man’s death diminishes
me because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
23: W.B. Yeats
Birthplace: County Dublin, Ireland
Famous
poem: “The Second Coming”
Famous
quote: “Education is not the
filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
24: Lord Byron
Birthplace: London
Famous
poem: “She Walks in Beauty”
Famous
quote: “There is no instinct
like that of the heart.”
25: Lewis Carroll
Birthplace: Cheshire, England
Famous
poem: “Jabberwocky”
Famous
quote: “It is one of the great
secrets of life that those things which are most worth doing, we do for
others.”
26: Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Birthplace: Lincolnshire, England
Famous
poem: “The Charge of the Light
Brigade”
Famous
quote: “‘Tis better to have
loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
27: Dante Alighieri
Birthplace: Florence, Italy
Famous
poem: “Divine Comedy”
Famous
quote: “Consider your origin;
you were not born to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.”
28: Dr. Jernail Singh
Anand
Birthplace: Punjab, India
Famous poem: 'Lustus: The Prince of Darkness (epic Part I of
Mahakaal Trilogy)
Famous Quote: “I am a descendant of God. I must be great. I
cannot be otherwise."
29: Dr. Maja Harman
Sekulic
Birthplace: Serbia
Famous poem: Lady of Vincha
Famous Quote: “We live in harmony, we are one, Equals, we
look each other straight in the eye, Man and women, we are fertile as the
earth, And always dying and being born again.”
30: T.S. Eliot
Birthplace: St. Louis
Famous
poem: “The Waste Land”
Famous
quote: “Friendship should be
more than biting time can sever.”
31: Ezra Pound
Birthplace: Hailey, Idaho
Famous
poem: “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley”
Famous
quote: “With one day’s reading
a man may have the key in his hands.”
32: John Milton
Birthplace: London
Famous
poem: “Paradise Lost”
Famous
quote: “A good book is the
precious lifeblood of a master spirit.”
33: Sappho
Birthplace: Lesbos, Greece
Famous
poem: “Sappho 31”
Famous
quote: “What is beautiful is
good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.”
34: Homer
Birthplace: Smyrna (present-day Greece)
Famous
poem: “The Iliad”
Famous
quote: “Evil deeds do not
prosper; the slow man catches up with the swift.”
35: Li Bai
Birthplace: Tang Empire (present-day Kyrgyzstan)
Famous
poem: “Quiet Night Thought”
Famous
quote: “We sit together, the
mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.”
36: Jalal al-Din Rumi
Birthplace: Khorasan (present-day Afghanistan)
Famous
poem: “Masnavi-ye Ma’navi
(Spiritual Verses)”
Famous
quote: “Raise your words, not
voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”
