# top 3-5 poets of all time **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 26, 2015, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598 "2015-11-26T03:20:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![thanatic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/97f17d/32.png) [@thanatic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thanatic)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/1 "2015-11-26T03:20:11Z")
who are your top 3-5 favorite poets of all time (any language) ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/2 "2015-11-26T03:26:36Z")
1. Edgar Allan Poe 2. William Shakespeare I don’t have a third. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/3 "2015-11-26T03:52:27Z")
My favorite? 1. Seamus Heaney 2. Wislawa Szymborska 3. Pablo Neruda 4. Walt Whitman 5. W.H. Auden ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/4 "2015-11-26T04:04:22Z")
Robert Frost Percy Bysshe Shelly William Butler Yeats AE Houseman Lord Byron ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/5 "2015-11-26T04:05:49Z")
Basho Issa Yeats ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/6 "2015-11-26T04:38:54Z")
Poe Frost Homer ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/7 "2015-11-26T05:07:30Z")
John Donne. Thomas Gray. “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.” Who could do better than that? It scans, it rhymes, and evokes like mad. And Shakespeare, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/les_espaces_du_sommeil/32/308_2.png) [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Les_Espaces_Du_Sommeil)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/8 "2015-11-26T09:37:21Z")
**Charles Baudelaire Thomas Stearns Eliot Paul Verlaine Edward Estlin Cummings Rainer Maria Rilke** By language [SPOILER]English **Thomas Stearns Eliot Edward Estlin Cummings John Donne Robert Lee Frost William Shakespeare** French **Charles Baudelaire Paul Verlaine Victor Hugo Guillaume Apollinaire Henri Michaux** Apart from **Rilke** , I don’t know German poetry enough to come up with a list. Same for all the other languages.[/SPOILER] However, some of my favourite poems were written by other poets. If the question had been “List your ten favourite poems”, the names would have been significantly different. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/9 "2015-11-26T12:43:22Z")
In no particular order: C. Louis Leipoldt Bashō TS Eliot Ginsberg Wallace Stevens ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/10 "2015-11-26T13:41:11Z")
No love for Billy Collins? I can appreciate other poets but when I read Billy Collins I really get what he is saying. > [@](#): > > I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey’s Version Of “Three Blind Mice” > > And I start wondering how they came to be blind. > If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister, > and I think of the poor mother > brooding over her sightless young triplets. > > Or was it a common accident, all three caught > in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps? > If not, > if each came to his or her blindness separately, > > how did they ever manage to find one another? > Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse > to locate even one fellow mouse with vision > Let alone two other blind ones > \ ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/11 "2015-11-26T13:45:14Z")
Li Po Baudelaire Yeats. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/12 "2015-11-26T13:48:53Z")
Oooooo…I can have two more? Didn’t see that at first. William Carlos Williams Walter de la Mare ---
**Author:** ![Octarine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/22d042/32.png) [@Octarine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octarine)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/13 "2015-11-26T13:49:31Z")
T.S. Eliot, Yeats, Poe, Dylan Thomas, and Billy. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Memnon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@Memnon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Memnon)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/14 "2015-11-26T13:53:32Z")
1. Edgar Allen Poe. 2. Seamus Heaney. 3. W.B. Yeats. 4. Percy Shelley. 5. Vanilla Ice. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Mapp](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miss_mapp/32/369_2.png) [@Miss\_Mapp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Mapp)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/15 "2015-11-26T13:58:11Z")
Blake Yeats Dickinson Wordsworth ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/16 "2015-11-26T14:15:52Z")
Robert Browning e. e. cummings T. S. Eliot A. E. Housman Edgar Allan Poe …in alphabetical order. Order of preference would vary daily. ---
**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/17 "2015-11-26T14:46:41Z")
William Shakespeare James Wright William Yeats Emily Dickinson Wallace Stevens Six more, perhaps not of “all time” but ones I love: Stephen Dunn Kenneth Patchen Miller Williams Philip Larkin Jane Kenyon Richard Hugo ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/18 "2015-11-26T15:11:40Z")
Shakespeare Yeats Longfellow Edna St. Vincent Millay Langston Hughes ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/19 "2015-11-26T16:32:28Z")
[- YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlisgoyvuQE)😃 ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598/20 "2015-11-26T16:35:57Z")
No love for Charles Bukowski? ☹ [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/top-3-5-poets-of-all-time/738598.md?page=2)