These well-known poets used their personal experiences to inform their distinctive poetic voices and create poignant poetry about life and the universe.
Poetry has flourished as one of the most widely used forms of expression from ancient times to the present. Prominent poets like Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, and Pablo Neruda seemed to draw inspiration from anything, from the brutalities of racism and war to the comforts of the New England coast.
Even decades or even centuries after they were written, their works still pique our interest. Learn about these ten well-known poets whose most well-known pieces have endured.
Homer
About this well-known Greek poet who lived before the common era, little is certain. Some even doubt that The Iliad and The Odyssey, two epics attributed to Homer, were written by the same individual. Some academics argue that by describing the blind minstrel Demodokos in The Odyssey, he may have revealed details about his own life.
Despite these doubts, authors throughout history such as J.R.R. Tolkien and James Joyce have been affected by the two epics concerning the fall of Troy and the events that followed. Homer’s works are characterized by the use of vivid metaphors and similes as well as the in media res narrative style, which starts in the middle of the plot and flashes back to earlier events.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882
Three years after receiving his Unitarian Church ordination, Emerson resigned from the ministry. Instead, he started writing and giving lectures, and with early works like “Nature,” published in 1836, he became a key player in the New England Transcendentalism movement. Two other prominent Transcendentalists were Margaret Fuller and Henry David Thoreau.
The Poetry Foundation claims that Emerson was the first well-known American author to examine concepts and mythologies from the Middle East and Asia in his works. Works like the article “Persian Poetry” and poem “Brahma” demonstrated this.
Edgar Allan Poe
Poe, a Boston native, gained notoriety in 1845 for his poem “The Raven,” which tackles death and loss in a manner similar to his assortment of other horror and mystery stories, such as “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
Poe started penning poetry while he was a teenager. Remarkably, considering how well-known his writing has become, he was first paid little for his writing and had to support himself as an editor of publications in New York City and Philadelphia.
Walt Whitman
1819-1892
Whitman was a journalist before his poems gained him recognition. He was well-known for his radical views on labor practices, immigration, and women’s property rights. However, the New York-born poet solidified his own distinctive writing style—using first person and eschewing strict meter—with the publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855.
A science fiction short tale by Ray Bradbury, an episode of The Twilight Zone, and a song by Lana Del Rey from 2012 were all influenced by one of the collection’s poems, “I Sing the Body Electric.”
Emily Dickinson
1830-1886
Four years after Dickinson’s death in 1890, the first book of her poems was released; a complete collection was not made available until 1955. This is partially due to the fact that she frequently wrote alone; some academics speculate that she may have had agoraphobia.
Dickinson was well-known for writing in the first person, akin to authors like Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and for employing compressed verse.
