Poets' Lives and the Life of Poetry

By Bob Holman & Margery Snyder, About.com Guides to Poetry

Explore poetry through the lives of the people that write it: Here's where you will find articles, interviews, profiles and biographies of poets from A to Z, from Homer to contemporary teenage slam poets, the lives of poets through history and around the world.

1. Poets A - Z
2. Poetry History / Poets by Era
3. Interviews and News about Contemporary Poets

Poets A - Z

We aim to be inclusive rather than exclusive in this directory, giving you access to the wide range of poets published, profiled or interviewed here at About Poetry & elsewhere on the Net, all indexed by name. You can use the index below to find information on a particular poet by name or to browse through our collections & articles in search of a new poet whose name you don't know yet. These pages include poets from every era and area of the world -- if you're seeking poets from a particular time period (including the present) or a certain country, use the Poetry History and Poetry Around the World sections below.

• A, Steve Abbott to Ece Ayhan
• B, Jimmy Santiago Baca to George Gordon, Lord Byron
• C, Regie Cabico to Robert Creeley
• D, Rachel Dacus to Paul Lawrence Dunbar
• E, Richard Eberhart to Clayton Eshleman
• F, Lawrence Ferlinghetti to Robert Frost
• G, Allen Ginsberg to Thom Gunn
• H, Donald Hall to Ted Hughes
• I, David Ignatow to the International Drag Poets Ball
• J, Laura (Riding) Jackson to June Jordan

• K, Alan Kaufman to Stanley Kunitz
• L, Michael Lally to Alison Luterman
• M, Nathaniel Mackey to Eileen Myles
• N, Pablo Neruda to Naomi Shihab Nye
• O, Frank O'Hara to Ovid
• P, Michael Palmer to Frank Templeton Prince
• R, Raindog (R.D. Armstrong) to Jerome Rothenberg
• S, Sal Salasin to Everton Sylvester
• T, James Tate to Tu Fu (aka Du Fu)
• Y, William Butler Yeats

Poetry History / Poets by Era

Look here to find out about poets from every era, indexed by time period, and the lives of poets through history: our feature articles, memoirs and profiles, plus links for further reading and research on the poets of the past and present.

• Classical Poets: Homer, Li Po, Sappho, Virgil...
• Medieval Poets: Anonymous troubadours, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Petrarch...
• Renaissance Poets: Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, Shakespeare...
• 17th Century Poets: Donne, Herbert, Milton, Marvell, Rochester...

• 18th Century Poets: Swift, Pope, Gray, Blake...
• 19th Century Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Dickinson, Whitman...
• 20th Century Poets: Eliot, Bukowski, Ginsberg, Paz, Plath, Pound, Williams...
• Contemporary Poets, Living and Writing in the 21st Century

Interviews and News about Contemporary Poets

For more than 10 years, your Poetry Guides have been shining our spotlight into all the corners of today's poetry world.

• Poets You Ought to Know About
• American Poets Laureate