This is the third of my four part series called High School Literature List. This section covers some of the most famous poets you might want to read about and read some of their poetry. As with all these literature selections it is not necessary to cover them all, but to try and include a nice cross section of poetry for your high school student to engage with.

Authors of Poetry

1. Alfred Lord Tennyson –  The Brook, Sweet and Low, The Coming of Arthur, Balin and Balan
2. Edgar Allen Poe – To One Departed, The Bells, Serenade
3. Elizabeth Barrett Browning – How Do I Love Thee?, My Heart and I, The House of Clouds
4. Emily Dickinson – Conferring with Myself, Few Yet Enough, Here Where the Daisies Fit My Head
5. Ernest Hemingway – A Moveable Feast,  Pride and Prejudice, Emma
6. E.E. Cummings – I Carry Your Heart With Me, All In Green Went My Love Riding, This is the Garden: Colours Come and Go
7. Henry David Thoreau – Walden, Civil Disobedience
8. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Chaucer, Christmas Bells, Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis
9. Homer – Hymn to Demeter, The Iliad
10. John Keates – Hymn to Apollo, Last Sonnet, Ode to a Nightingale
11. Langston Hughes – Nigh Funeral in Harlem, Quiet Girl, The Blues
12. Maya Angelou – Alone, Touched by An Angel, Woman Work
13. Oscar Wilde – At Verona, Charmides, Panthea, Portia
14. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Ode to Beauty, Loss and Gain, Give All to Love
15. Robert Frost – A Passing Glimpse, Gathering Leaves, Putting in the Seed, The Egg and the Machine
16. Shel Silverstein – Where the Sidewalk Ends, Anteater, The Toucan
17. Sir Walter Raleigh – Farewell to the Court, Now What Is Love, Song of Myself
18. Sylvia Plath – Tulips, Wuthering Heights, Conversation Among the Ruins
19. T.S. Eliot – Gus: The Theatre Cat, Gerontion, multiple Preludes
20. Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass, All is Truth, O Captain! My Captain!
21. William Butler Yeats – The Falling of the Leaves, Broken Dream, Brown Penny
22. William Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Othello – The Moor of Venice, The Winter’s Tale, Julius Caesar, As You Like It
23. William Wordsworth – I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, The Ancient Mariner, The Thorn

For a list of these and other famous poets, as well as their biographies and poetry check out The Most Popular Famous Poets – The Top 50 Poets in Order from Poetry Soup.

High School Literature List Series:

• American Literature
• World Literature (includes British)
• Popular or Contemporary Literature

Are there books that you thought of or have read that you think belong on this High School Literature List? Share with us in the comments!