Top 35 Most Famous Poets

April is National Poetry Month, but few Americans name any contemporary poets when asked what poets they can think of and who their favorite poet is. In fact, it’s a Dead Poets Society for the Top 35 poets, all of whom are deceased.

Four out of ten Americans name Edgar Allan Poe, making him the most famous poet by far. In fact, 29% of respondents named him first, and 18% said he was their favorite poet.

A distant second is the Bard. William Shakespeare was named by two out of ten Americans, being named first by 11% and the favorite of 7%.

Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Maya Angelou are the next tier of famous poets, named by 14%, 12%, and 11% of respondents respectively.

Rounding out the Top 10 are Walt Whitman, John Keats, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Langston Hughes, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Rank	Poet	First to Mind	Subsequently Named	Named at All	Favorite
1	Edgar Allan Poe	29%	11%	40%	18%
2	William Shakespeare	11%	9%	20%	7%
3	Robert Frost	6%	8%	14%	5%
4	Emily Dickinson	4%	8%	12%	3%
5	Maya Angelou	5%	6%	11%	5%
6	Walt Whitman	3%	6%	9%	2%
7	John Keats	2%	4%	5%	1%
8	Henry Wadsworth Longfellow	3%	2%	5%	1%
9	Langston Hughes	1%	2%	3%	<1%
10	Ralph Waldo Emerson	1%	2%	3%	<1%
11	Shel Silverstein	1%	1%	2%	1%
12	Sylvia Plath	1%	2%	2%	1%
13	John Butler Yeats	1%	2%	2%	<1%
14	Percy Bysshe Shelley	1%	1%	2%	<1%
15	e e cummings	1%	1%	2%	<1%
16	Lord Byron	<1%	1%	2%	<1%
17	Elizabeth Barrett Browning	1%	1%	1%	<1%
18	Tupac Shakur	1%	1%	1%	1%
19	Mark Twain	1%	<1%	1%	<1%
20	Alfred, Lord Tennyson	1%	1%	1%	<1%
21	William Blake	<1%	1%	1%	<1%
22	T.S. Elliot	1%	<1%	1%	<1%
23	Henry David Thoreau	<1%	1%	1%	0%
24	Robert Burns	<1%	1%	1%	<1%
25	Ernest Hemingway	1%	<1%	1%	<1%
26	Oscar Wilde	<1%	<1%	1%	<1%
27	Carl Sandberg	<1%	1%	1%	<1%
28	Dr. Seuss	1%	<1%	1%	1%
29	Allen Ginsberg	<1%	<1%	1%	<1%
30	Robert Browning	<1%	1%	1%	<1%
31	Homer	<1%	1%	1%	<1%
32	Rudyard Kipling	<1%	<1%	1%	<1%
33	Pablo Neruda	<1%	<1%	1%	<1%
34	Dylan Thomas	<1%	<1%	1%	<1%
35	Charles Dickens	<1%	<1%	1%	<1%

Proving that poetry doesn’t have to be serious, Shel Silverstein just misses the top 10, coming in at #11, and named by 2% of respondents.

A shoutout goes to the respondent who named Enheduanna and no other poets. I’m going to guess they Googled “first poet” (the question wording was “What is the name of the first poet who comes to mind? What other poets can you think of?”).

I had a hypothesis that because of the release of her new album, The Tortured Poets Society, Taylor Swift would make the Top 10. In fact, only three respondents named her at all. Bob Dylan—despite winning a Nobel Prize for Literature for his lyrics—edged her out by just one respondent.

The lyricist who did make the Top 35 was Tupac Shakur, coming in at #18, thanks to his book of poems, The Rose That Grew From Concrete.

Other songwriters named, though outside the Top 35, included Jimmy Buffet, Kurt Cobain, Paul Simon, Patty Smith, and Tim McGraw.

Favorite Poems

“The Raven” (11%), “The Road Not Taken” (3%), “And Still I Rise” (2%) were the most often named favorite poems.

Apparently “Romeo & Juliet” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” are poems now.

Rank	Poem	Mentions	Percentage
1	The Raven	122	11%
2	The Road Not Taken	33	3%
3	And Still I Rise	20	2%
4	Romeo and Juliet	15	1%
5	The Tell-Tale Heart	13	1%
6	Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening	13	1%
7	Roses are red, violets are blue	13	1%
8	Sympathy (I know why the caged bird sings)	11	1%
9	Trees	9	1%
10	Annabel Lee	8	1%
11	If	7	1%
12	Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18)	6	1%
13	Footprints in the Sand	6	1%
14	How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)	5	<1%
15	Leaves of Grass	5	<1%
16	The Rose That Grew from Concrete	4	<1%
17	The Waste Land	4	<1%
18	Green Eggs and Ham	4	<1%
	Alone	3	<1%
	The Cat in the Hat	3	<1%
	The Charge of the Light Brigade	3	<1%
	Daffodils	3	<1%
	Do not go gentle into that good night	3	<1%
	Hickory Dickory Dock	3	<1%
	The Hill We Climb	3	<1%
	“Hope” is the thing with feathers	3	<1%
	Howl	3	<1%
	One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish	3	<1%
	Where the Sidewalk Ends	3	<1%

Almost all of the eleven respondents who mentioned “Sympathy (I know why the caged bird sings)” attributed it to Maya Angelou. She named a book from that line in the poem, but the poem itself is by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

“The Hill We Climb” is the only favorite poem to get at least three mentions and be written by a living poet (i.e., Amanda Gorman).

Frequency of Reading Poetry

One in twenty Americans read poetry at least once a day, and 8% read poetry a few times a week. Nearly 70% read it less often than once a month (35%) or never read poetry (34%).

The younger the respondent, the more frequently they read poetry: 11% of Gen Z read poetry every day, vs. 6% of Millennials, and 2% of Gen X. Only one in five Gen Z never read poems.

The frequency didn’t vary significantly by gender or household income.

The results are from an online newsmaker survey of 1,145 participants fielded from April 26 to 28, 2024. The frequency question was weighted to be representative of the overall population by ten demographic variables. The open-ended questions were not weighted.

Photo credit: licccka, iStockPhoto.