100 Great Poets of All Time
Kumar Paral is a writer, a culture enthusiast, and a bibliophile.
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Top 100 Great Poets of the World
Poetry is one of the earliest form of literature in the world. It originated in the form of folk songs – lullabies, work songs, war songs, spiritual songs, songs for children, songs of celebration, songs of dance, and songs of enjoyment- which were transmitted orally. It is believed that the first systematized and organized work of verse is “Rik Veda” in Sanskrit, one of the earliest Indo European languages, which was written around 1st century BC . It was composed much earlier. The earliest works of literature were collective communal creations and of communal ownership. The authorship was not mentioned in such works. The subsequent generation made changes in them and handed over to the next generation.
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The custom of identifying the author with a literary work was begun only after the printing of books had been started and it was transformed into a means of earning income by selling them. Though many of the greatest poets of the pre - printing era had not won the fame and money in their lifetime, but they wrote for the sake expressing their untamed creative energy and talents.
Great works of literature, though they are written in different languages, they share many common elements which make them classics. The sad fact is that only a few of them have been translated and available in other languages.So they cannot be enjoyed by all. The translation of great literary works including poetry in the international link languages is very much necessary for sharing the gems of world literature. That has to be done by international cultural organizations and universities of the world. Poetry has the power to unite the people of all the nations as ancestors and share holders of a common culture and civilization.
The Top 100 Poets of the World is my favorite list of poets. It was prepared based on many of similar studies and my personal research. This is not a ranked list. Critical opinions and comments are welcome.
Top 100 Great Poets of the World
- Homer
- Kalidasa
- Virgil
- Dante
- Du Fu
- T. S. Eliot
- Alexander Pushkin
- Pablo Neruda
- Milton
- William Shakespeare
- Johann Von Goethe
- William Wordsworth
- Alexander Pope
- Kimiko Hahn
- Matsuo Basho
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Chaucer
- John Keats
- Dylan Thomas
O N V Kurup
O N V Kurup, India
21. Percy Bysshe Shelley
22. Sylvia Plath
23. Emily Dickinson
24. John Donne
25. William Blake
26. Sly Cheney Coker
27. Li Bai
28. Edgar Allan Poe
29. William Butler Yeats
30. Algernon Charles Swinburne
31. Allen Ginsberg
32. Kobayashi Issa
33. Seamus Heaney
34. Robert Frost
35. Vladimir Mayakovsky
36. Joseph Brodsky
37. Andrew Marvell
38. Anna Akhmatova
39. Ben Jonson
40. Sappho
Maya Angelou
41. Mahagama Sekara
42. Kahlil Gibran
43. Langston Hughes
44. Walter Scott
45. Wole Soyinka
46. King Solomon
47. John Dryden
48. Wallace Stevens
49. Lord Alfred Tennyson
50. Firdawsi
51 Jayanta Mahapatra
52 Lord Byron
53 Louis MacNieice
54 Ezra Pound
55 Kwesi Brew
56 Meng Haoran
57 Lucille Clifton
58 Luis Borges
59 Matthew Arnold
60 Thomas Hardy
Anna Akhmatova
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61 Ted Hughes
62 Maya Angelou
63 Rabindranath Tagore
64 Michael Ondaatje
65 Walt Whitman
66 Ogden Nash
67 Elizabeth Barrett Browning
68 Omar Khayyam
69 Hafiz
70 Ralph Waldo Emerson
71 W.H. Auden
72 Alexander Pushkin
73 Robert Browning
74 G M hopkins
75 Robert Burns
76 Garcia Lorca
77 Keki N. Daruwalla
78 Geoffrey Hills
79 George Trakl
80 Gwendolyn Brooks
Robert Browning
Robert Browning
81 Henry Lawso
82 Robert Hayden
83 Robert Herrick
84 Nissim Ezekiel
85 Vladimir Mayakovsky
86 Robert Lowell
87 Stephen Crane
88 Stephen Spender
89 William Morris
90 Kumaran Asan
91 Stevie Smith
92 Paul Zimmer
93 A.E. Housman
94 Walter de La Mare
95 O N V Kurup
96 Theodore Roethke
97 Thom Gunn
98 Niyi Osundare
99 Gabriel Okara
100 Kofi Awoonor
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This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.
© 2013 Kumar Paral
Comments
Anshul kumar on October 02, 2013:
I like it so much .
