A poet is a person who writes poetry.

[edit] Etymology

From the ancient Greek : ποιέω, poieō : "I make or compose" ; ποιητης, poïêtes : "artisan, creator, maker (also makar), author, poet" > Latin : poēta : "poet, author" > Old French : (1200-1400) poëte or poète > Used (poet) in 14th. century, in classical English language, for all sorts of writers or composers of works of literature. The term makar, which is another older term for poet, is a calque from the Greek.

[edit] List of many poets classed by language in alphabetical order

"L'inspiration du poète" , by Nicolas Poussin. (1630)

• The Ancient Greek language has some of the richest poetry in ancient history, including that of Homer, Sappho, Pindar, Alcaeus of Mytilene, Anacreon, Apollonius of Rhodes, Aratus, Archilochus, Arctinus of Miletus, Arion, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Euripides, Epicharmus of Kos, Epimenides, Herodotus, Hesiod, Mimnermus, Philitas of Cos, Simonides of Ceos, Solon, Sophocles, Terpander, Theognis of Megara, Tyrtaeus and Xenophanes.

• In Arabic, the most notable poets include Al-Ma`arri, Al-Mutanabbi, Abu Nuwas, Ahmed Shawqi, Khalil Gibran, Mahmoud Darwish.

• The Bengali language has been used by many poets including Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam.

• The Bulgarian language has been used by poets like Hristo Botev, Pencho Slaveikov, Peyo Yavorov, Dimcho Debelyanov, Hristo Smirnenski and Ivan Vazov.

• In the Chinese language there have been such poets as Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei, Li Qingzhao, Qu Yuan, Shitao, Bei Dao, Xue Tao, Yu Xuanji, Su Xiaoxiao, Lu You, Ouyang Xiu, Mei Yaochen, Gu Cheng, Li He, Bai Juyi, Su Shi, Yang Lian, Qiu Jin, Mao Zedong, and Cao Zhi.

• The Czech language has been used by many poets, such as Karel Hynek Mácha, Jaroslav Seifert, Egon Bondy, Otokar Březina, Antonín Sova, Vítězslav Nezval, Jaroslav Durych, Viktor Dyk, Jiří Grossmann, Adolf Heyduk, Vladimír Holan, Josef Jungmann, Karel Kryl, Rio Preisner, Václav Renč and Fráňa Šrámek.

• In the Danish language we can read the poetry of Johannes Secundus, Jens Immanuel Baggesen, Jens Fink-Jensen, Piet Hein, Ambrosius Stub, Jeppe Aakjær, Hans Christian Andersen, Steen Steensen Blicher, Holger Drachmann, Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger and Johan Herman Wessel.

• The Dutch language has been used by poets such as Piet Paaltjens, Paul van Ostaijen, Guido Gezelle, Hugo Claus, P.C. Hooft.

• In the English language, poets generally considered to be the most influential include Christopher Marlow, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Thomas Wyatt, Lord Byron, Alexander Pope, John Milton, William Blake, e. e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Edgar Allan Poe, W. B. Yeats, Robert Browning, Isaac Rosenberg, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, Hart Crane, Emma Lazarus, Wallace Stevens, H.D., Edna St. Vincent Millay, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Philip Larkin, William Empson, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Derek Walcott, Henry Lawson, Shel Silverstein, Banjo Patterson and Geoffrey Hill.

• The Finnish language has been used by poets such as Aaro Hellaakoski, Martti Haavio, Veikko Antero Koskenniemi, Joel Lehtonen, Eino Leino, Larin Paraske, Aale Tynni, Katri Vala and Julius Krohn.

• The French language has been used by such illustrious poets as Chrétien de Troyes, Adam de la Halle, Béroul, Thomas d'Angleterre, Marie de France, Jean Bodel, Robert Wace, Rutebeuf, Charles d'Orléans, François Villon, Clément Marot, Joachim du Bellay, Pierre de Ronsard, Maurice Scève, Agrippa d'Aubigné, Jean de Sponde, Vincent Voiture, Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant, Jean de La Fontaine, Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Voltaire, André Chénier, Alfred de Vigny, Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Aloysius Bertrand, Gérard de Nerval, Alfred de Musset, Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle, Sully Prudhomme, François Coppée, José-Maria de Heredia, Paul Verlaine, Tristan Corbière, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Cros, Comte de Lautréamont, Pierre Louÿs, Jean Lorrain, Georges Rodenbach, Jean Moréas, Stéphane Mallarmé, Anna de Noailles, Emile Verhaeren, Jules Laforgue, Paul Claudel, Paul Valéry, Guillaume Apollinaire, Victor Segalen, Blaise Cendrars, André Breton, Paul Éluard, Jacques Prévert, Robert Desnos, Jean Cocteau, Gaston Miron, Saint-John Perse, Antonin Artaud, Maurice Maeterlinck, Henri Michaux, Francis Ponge, Gherasim Luca, Aimé Césaire, Edmond Jabès, René Char, Yves Bonnefoy, Jacques Dupin, Claude Esteban, André du Bouchet and Philippe Jaccottet.

• The German language carries the great works of Angelus Silesius, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gottfried August Bürger, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Peter Rosegger, August Silberstein, Gotthold Lessing, Friedrich Schlegel, August Schlegel, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Nietzsche, Novalis, Friedrich von Schiller, Heinrich von Kleist, Friedrich Holderlin, Christian Morgenstern, Georg Trakl, Theodor Storm, Rainer Maria Rilke, Erich Kästner, Adalbert Stifter, Karl Kraus, Ernst Toller, Franz Werfel, Else Lasker-Schüler, Nelly Sachs, Hermann Hesse, Paul Celan, Till Lindemann, Bertolt Brecht and Günter Grass.

• The Modern Greek language has been used by a line of poets including Constantine P. Cavafy, Kostis Palamas, Dionysios Solomos, Odysseas Elytis, Giorgos Seferis, Yiannis Ritsos, Kostas Karyotakis, Angelos Sikelianos, Alexandros Panagoulis, Nikos Kavvadias, Andreas Embirikos, Nikos Engonopoulos, Kiki Dimoula and Dimitris P. Kraniotis.

• In the Gujarati language, Harilal Upadhyay was a respected poet known as Haribhai Kavi ("Kavi" means poet in Gujarati).

• The Hebrew language has been used by many poets such as Abraham ibn Ezra, Yehuda Amichai, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Haim Gouri, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Leah Goldberg, Yehuda Halevi, Ahimaaz ben Paltiel, Hanoch Levin, Rachel Bluwstein, Avraham Shlonsky, Shaul Tchernichovsky, Natan Yonatan and David Edelstadt.

• The Hungarian language has been used by poets such as Endre Ady, János Arany, Bálint Balassa, Attila József, József Katona, Ágoston Pável, Sándor Petőfi, Mihály Vörösmarty, Albert Wass and Miklós Zrínyi.

• In the Italian language there have been such poets as Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, Vittorio Alfieri, Guido Cavalcanti, Ludovico Ariosto, Eugenio Montale, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Ugo Foscolo, Petrarch, Salvatore Quasimodo, Giovanni Pascoli, Giambattista Basile, Torquato Tasso, Cesare Pavese, Umberto Saba, Alessandro Manzoni, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Giacomo Leopardi.

• In the Japanese language we can read the poetry of Matsuo Bashō, Fujiwara no Shunzei, Fujiwara no Teika, Sakutarō Hagiwara, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, Ikkyū, Izumi Shikibu, Kambara Ariake, Kamo no Chōmei, Hakushū Kitahara, Kitamura Tokoku, Kūkai, Masao Kume, Kunikida Doppo, Masaoka Shiki, Yukio Mishima, Kenji Miyazawa, Tatsuji Miyoshi, Mori Ōgai, Murasaki Shikibu, Saneatsu Mushanokōji, Chūya Nakahara, Natsume Sōseki, Nishiwaki Junzaburo, Yone Noguchi, Okamoto Kanoko, Ono no Komachi, Ryōkan, Saigyō Hōshi, Santō Kyōden, Sei Shōnagon, Sugawara no Michizane, Ueda Akinari and Takuboku Ishikawa.

• The Korean language has been used by poets such as Choe Chiwon, Ko Un, Hwang Jin-i, Chon Sang-pyong and Seo Jeong-ju.

• The Kurdish Language has been used by a range of poets including its most influential Nalî. Others include the father of Kurdish literature, Ehmedê Xanî, and the founder of modern Kurdish poetry, Abdulla Goran.

• The Latin language has been used by such great poets as Ausonius, Catullus, Ennius, Horace, Juvenal, Lucretius, Martial, Ovid, Sextus Propertius, Statius, Terence, Tibullus and Virgil.

• The Macedonian language has been used by poets like Bogomil Gjuzel, Blaže Koneski and Mateja Matevski.

• Maltese poetry features such poets as Dun Karm Psaila, Pietro Caxaro, Rużar Briffa, Anton Buttigieg, Francis Ebejer, Emilio Lombardi, Mikiel Anton Vassalli and Gioacchino Navarro.

• The Norwegian language has been used by many poets including Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Jens Bjørneboe, Hans Børli, Olaf Bull, Kolbein Falkeid, Olav H. Hauge, Gunvor Hofmo, Johan Herman Wessel, Rolf Jacobsen, Jonas Lie, Henrik Wergeland, Herman Wildenvey and Henrik Ibsen.

• In the Portuguese Language you can find the masterworks of Bocage, Cesário Verde, Florbela Espanca, Sophia de Mello Breyner, Antero de Quental, Fernando Pessoa, Luís de Camões, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Augusto dos Anjos, Gregório de Matos Guerra, Gonçalves Dias, Álvares de Azevedo, Mário Quintana, Clarice Lispector, Vinícius de Morais, Cruz e Sousa, Décio Pignatari, João Cabral de Melo Neto and Manuel Bandeira.

• The Persian language has been used by such world famous poets as Rumi, Hafez, Ferdowsi, Saadi, Khayyam, Nezami, Rudaki, Naser Khosrow, Sanai Ghaznavi, Jami, Asadi Tusi, Amir Khosravi Dehlavi, Sheikh Bahaii, Mohammad-Taghi Bahar, Abusaeid Abolkheir, Farid al-Din Attar, Muhammad Iqbal, Asad Gorgani, Farrukhi Sistani, Baba Tahir Oryan, Anvari, Nesîmî, Manuchihri, Nima Yushij, Ahmad Shamlou, Parvin E'tesami, Forough Farrokhzad, Sohrab Sepehri, Khwaju Kermani, Khaqani Shirvani, Abdol-Qader Bidel Dehlavi and Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib.

• The Polish language poets are represented by Jan Kochanowski, Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński, Maria Konopnicka, Bolesław Leśmian, Adam Mickiewicz, Czeslaw Milosz, Cyprian Kamil Norwid, Leon Pasternak, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Juliusz Słowacki, Leopold Staff, Halina Poświatowska, and Wislawa Szymborska.

• The Romanian language has been used by many poets such as Tudor Arghezi, Ana Blandiana, George Cosbuc, Mihai Eminescu, and Nicolae Labis.

• The Russian language can be represented by Bella Akhmadulina, Anna Akhmatova, Innokenty Annensky, Evgeny Baratynsky, Alexander Blok, Joseph Brodsky, Ivan Bunin, Sasha Cherny, Gavrila Derzhavin, Afanasy Fet, Nikolay Gumilyov, Velimir Khlebnikov, Ivan Krylov, Mikhail Lermontov, Osip Mandelstam, Peretz Markish, Samuil Marshak, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nikolay Nekrasov, Boris Pasternak, Alexander Pushkin, David Samoylov, Konstantin Simonov, Arseny Tarkovsky, Marina Tsvetayeva, Fyodor Tyutchev, Maximilian Voloshin, Andrey Voznesensky, Sergei Yesenin, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Vasily Zhukovsky.

• The Spanish language is vibrant with the words of Miguel de Cervantes, Francisco de Quevedo, Luis de Góngora, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Luis Cernuda, Federico García Lorca, Jorge Guillén, Vicente Aleixandre, Pedro Salinas, Rafael Alberti, Manuel Altolaguirre, Dámaso Alonso,Gerardo Diego, Lope de Vega, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Jorge Luis Borges, Blas Infante, León Felipe, Miguel Hernández, Rubén Darío, Jorge Guillén, José Lezama Lima, Antonio Machado, Jorge Manrique, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra, Octavio Paz, César Vallejo, Jorge Eduardo Eielson, Giannina Braschi, Pedro Figueredo, Ernesto Cardenal and Camilo José Cela.

• Modern Scottish Gaelic poets include Sorley Maclean.

• Scots language poets include John Barbour, James I, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, Alexander Montgomerie, Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Hugh MacDiarmid, Robert Garioch and Robert Burns.

• The Swedish language has been used by notable poets such as Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, Dan Andersson, Carl Michael Bellman, Bo Bergman, Karin Boye, Olof von Dalin, Elmer Diktonius, Nils Ferlin, Gustaf Fröding, Lars Gustafsson, Ola Hansson, Verner von Heidenstam, Harry Martinson, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Johan Henrik Kellgren, Pär Lagerkvist, Anna Maria Lenngren, Oscar Levertin, Lasse Lucidor, Ture Nerman, Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht, Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Viktor Rydberg, Erik Johan Stagnelius, August Strindberg, Esaias Tegnér, Zacharias Topelius and Tomas Tranströmer.

• The Turkish language has been used by poets such as Bâkî, Hayâlî, Nazım Hikmet, Nedîm and Neşâtî.

• The Urdu language, carries the work of Amir Khusro, Mir Taqi Mir, Ghalib, Faiz, Jalib, Iqbal, and others.

• The Vietnamese language has been used by some poets such as Mong-Lan, Han Mac Tu, Nguyen Dinh Chieu, Nguyễn Du, Tố Hữu, Hồ Xuân Hương, Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm and Xuân Diệu.

• The Yiddish language has been used by dozens of poets including : David Edelstadt, Itzik Manger, Abraham Sutzkever, Srul Bronshtein, Celia Dropkin, Itzhak Katzenelson, Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, Yankev Shternberg.

[edit] See also

"Lesender Dichter in der Landschaft" (Poet reading in a landscape) by Schnorr von Carolsfeld.

• Language
• Literature
• Poetry
• History of poetry
• Buddhist poetry
• Biblical poetry
• Ancient Greek poetry
• Latin poetry
• Medieval poetry
• Chinese poetry
• Arabic poetry
• English poetry
• Japanese poetry
• Korean poetry
• French poetry
• Persian poetry
• Epic poetry
• Chanson de geste
• Bard

[edit] Gallery

The Chinese poem "Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain" by 宋高宗.	Illustration from كتاب الأغاني‎ Book of Songs by أبو الفرج الأصفهاني‎. (1216-20)	The Concourse of the Birds painted by Habib Allah for Farid ud-Din Attar poems. (1486–87)	Tiziano Vecellio's "Danae", inspired by the Metamorphoses of Ovidius. (1553-54)
Faust depicted in an etching by Rembrandt van Rijn. (1650)	The poet Yacuren and a companion strolling in a grove of yew trees, by 歌川国芳.	A Norse mythology image from the 18th century Prose Edda manuscript.	"The Ghost of a Flea" by William Blake. (1820)
"Der arme Poet", by Carl Spitzweg. (1839)	Illustration for the cover of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Other Poems, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (1862)	Wood engraving named "Farinata degli Uberti addresses Dante" from a Gustave Doré's illustrations to the Divine Comedy. (1861-1868)	"Le Coin de table", by Henri Fantin-Latour. (1872)
Édouard Manet's illustration of Poe's Raven. (1875)	One of Henry Holiday's illustrations to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark.	"Sappho and Alcaeus of Mytilene", by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. (1881)	Lucifer, the main protagonist of Paradise Lost, as drawn by Gustave Doré.
"Favourite Poete", by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. (1888)	Akashi Gidayu, No 83 100 Aspects of the Moon Series by 月岡 芳年. (1890)	"Le Poète et la Muse", by Auguste Rodin.	The Dinky Bird, by Maxfield Parrish, an illustration from Poems of Childhood by Eugene Field. (1904)
"At the Tomb of Omar Khayyam", by Jay Hambidge. (?-1911)	Apollinaire's calligramme. (1918)	村山 槐多's Self Portrait. (1918)	"Dancing Girl", an undated ink-on-paper piece by Rabindranath Tagore.