Top 15 Poets in English Literature
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Notes & Analysis
01. William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. He is
the eldest son of John and Mary Shakespeare. In 1595 he became the shareholder
of “The Lord Chamberlains Men”. In 1599 he got involved in the “Globe Theatre”.
His famous work are The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Romeo and
Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear and 154
sonnets. This great man died in 1616.
02. W.B Yeats
William Butler Yeats, an Irish poet, was born in 1865 in Dublin.
His father is John Butler and mother Susan Pollexfen Yeats. He was the founder
member of the Dublin Hermetic Society. The three major frameworks of his poetry
are mythological, theological and philosophical. His major works are The
Stolen child, The Sorrow of Love, The White Birds, The Secret Rose, Adam’s
Curse, No Second Troy, A Coat, The Scholars, Her Praise, Demon and Beast, The
Tower, Death, Byzantium, The Mother of God, High Talk, Under Ben Bulben etc.
This poet died in 1939 AD.
03. John Keats
John Keats, the youngest of the romantic poets, was born in 1795
in London. During his lifetime he was not recognized as a great poet. In the
modern age T.S.Eliot brought him the recognition as one of the major poets.
Hellenism is one of the dominant aspects of Keats poetry. His major poems are
Endymion, Isabella, Lamia, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche, Ode to Autumn,
Hyperion etc. His poetry is also full of sensuousness, aestheticism and
escapism.
04.William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was born in 1770 at Cockermouth in England. He
was known for his love of nature. He rejects secular values and emphasizes that
a child comes from heaven as an innocent and happy creature. His major poems
are The Thorn, Simon Lee, Poor Susan, Ruth, Michael, The Brothers, The
Recluse, To Milton, The Idiot Boy, Nutting, Lucy Gray, Animal Tranquility and
Decay etc. By his poems he always suggests his readers to stay close to
nature.
05. John Donne
John Donne was born in London in 1572 in a business family. His
marriage with Anne Donne makes him distressed though their conjugal life was
enjoyable. For Donne it must be said that he is the pioneer of metaphysical
poetry. A lot of his poetry deals with metaphysics. His remarkable poems are
No Man Is An Island, Death Be Not Proud, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,
For whom the Bell Tolls, Air And Angels, A Hymn To God The Father, Confined
Love, A Lame Beggar, Go and Catch a Falling Star, The Sun Rising, Good Morrow,
A Burnt Ship, A Fever, A Valediction Of Weeping etc.
06. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born at Durham in 1806. Her maiden
name was Elizabeth. She is the daughter of a west India planter. After her
first work noted above there was a pause of nine years, then appeared
Prometheus Bound. The other works are The Seraphim and the poems, Sonnets
from the Portuguese, Casa Guidi Windows, Aurora Leish, an immense poem of
blank verse and Last Poems.
07. Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich, an American poet born in 1951, is best known for
her scrutiny of the experiences of women in society. She has expressed that her
aim is to write directly and overtly as a woman, out of a woman’s body and
experience. Her major volumes are A Change of the World, Snapshots of a
Daughter-in-Law, The Dream of a Common Language, Your Native Land, Your Life,
Of Woman Born, What is Found there?, An Atlas of the Difficult World etc.
08. Robert Frost
Robert Frost is the most well known American Poet. He drew his
images from the New England countryside and his language from New England
speech. He won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for four times. Frost's poems
appear simple at first glance, but reveal themselves to be subtle and enigmatic
upon further scrutiny. Some popular poems of Frost are: Mowing, Revelation,
The Death of the Hired Man, The Road not Taken, Birches, Stopping by Woods on a
Snowy Evening and Desert Places.
09. P.B. Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the romantic poets who rebelled
against all conventional values. He was born in 1792 in a wealthy English
family. His literary works reflect his profound revolutionary zeal. His Prometheus
Unbound is a glorious venture for intellectual and spiritual liberty. Again
Queen Mab attacks Christianity and all the Guardians of it. His famous
poems Ode to the West Wind is also revolutionary in spirit.
10. Dylan Thomas
Thomas, Dylan Marlis(1914-1953) is a great poet, short story writer
renowned for his celebration of natural beauty. He possessed immense gifts and
talent which brought him his professional success as a writer, but in personal
life he often suffered from disappointment. His first book of poetry, Eighteen
Poems was published in 1934 when he was twenty years old. His best poems are- After
the Funeral, The Hunchback in the Park, Poem in October, A Refusal to Mourn the
Death and By Fire.
11. Robert Herrick
Robert Herrick was born in Cheapside, London in 1591. He followed
Ben Jonson in form and pagan philosophy. The theme of his work was balanced
personal paganism. His works was published in one volume with two titles Hesperides
and Noble Numbers. There was 1400 poems in this volume. Hesperides
was full of human joy and human brave life.
12. Sir Philip Sidney
He was a unique poet who embodied all the characters tha the
Elizabeth admired. He wrote a long pastoral romance called Arcadia in
two forms. He also composed Astrophel and Stella the first of great
Elizabethan sonnet cycle. He wrote Old Arcadia and Ye Goat-herd Gods in
the form of double sestets.
13. Edmund Spenser
He was called a "poet's' poet" and "prince of
poet" because many poets learned the art of versification from him. He has
his own Spenserian sonnet with a special rhyme scheme. He wrote The Faery
Queene where he used a lot of allegorical devices. He is also known for the
usage of musical effect and verse.
14. Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes , well known as Ted Hughes, was born on August
17, 1930 in England. During his study at Cambridge University he met with
Sylvia Plath whom Hughes married after his graduation. He wrote poems for
children, fables for young readers and plays for theatre goers. He feels that
non-human, or non-rational source fo life-force is overpowered by modern man's
excessive importance to objective intellect. His famous literary works are: The
Horses, Meeting, The Jaguar, Crow Hill, Fern, Relic, Crow's Last Stand, A
Childish Prank, The Risen, The Knight, Ravens, Sheep, The Song, Meet My Folks!,
Pike, How the Whale Became and so on.
15. John Milton
Shakespeare and Milton are the two figures that tower
conspicuously above the goodly fellowship of men who have made our literature
famous. John Milton (1608-1674) was born in a family of music that helped
him to catch the tone to write poems. His masterpieces were Paradise Lost and
Paradise Regained. Paradise Lost was written in blank verse. He
was self centered for he was the hero of most of his works and he wrote to
leave a work after his death.
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