American Poets

This selection includes some of the great contemporary American poets and also the early American poets. Pioneers such as, Whitman, Emerson and Dickinson who in many ways were the ground breakers for modern American literature.

Early American Poets

	Walt Whitman		Emily Dickinson
	Ralph Emerson		Henry Longfellow
	William Bryant		Henry Thoreau

Modern American Poets

	Maya Angelou		Amira Baraka
	Louise Bogan		Robert Bly
	E.E. Cummings		T.S.Eliot
	Jane Hirshfield		Langston Hughes
	W.S. Merwin		Millay, Edna St. Vincent
	Mary Oliver		Wallace Stevens
	William Carlos Williams

 

Related Links on America

• Poems on America
• Thomas Jefferson Quotes

External Websites

The Academy Of American Poets

The Academy was founded in 1934 to support American poets at all stages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry. To fulfill this mission, the Academy administers a wide variety of programs, including National Poetry Month (April), the largest literary celebration in the world; the Online Poetry Classroom, an online resource providing free poetry lesson plans for high school teachers; the Poetry Audio Archive, a collection of nearly 500 recordings dating back to the 1960s; and Poets.org, our award-winning website which provides a wealth of content on contemporary American poetry and receives an average of 400,000 unique users each month.

Modern American Poetry

An Online Journal and Multimedia Companion to Anthology of Modern American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Edited by Cary Nelson

Further Reading

Fifty Years of American Poetry : Over 200 Important Works by America’s Modern Masters
by Academy of American Poets, Joyce L. Vedral, Robert Frost

Eight American Poets :An Anthology
by JOEL CONARROE including the American poetsRoethke, Bishop, Lowell, Berryman, Sexton, Plath, Ginsberg and Merrill

Six American Poets :An Anthology
by JOEL CONARROE. Including 6 of the greatest American Poets Whitman, Dickinson, Williams, Stevens, Frost and Hughes