List RulesVote up the all time greatest female poets
Who are the best female poets? This list includes great female poets such as Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sylvia Plath, and Emily Dickinson. The women on this list have all changed poetry in their own way and left their mark on the genre. Women have been writing poetry through many eras and generations, but the poets on this list are the best.
Written works have the ability to make us feel. They make us want to believe, be inspired, and live vicariously through the stories on the page. Whether short or long form, poetry is often illusory, and full of rich imagery or hidden meaning. It is these elements which provoke readers to dig deeper. The best poems and poets are read throughout the ages. They are passed from generation to generation and taught throughout schools to young students.
Poets and their poetry have the ability to take readers places and into worlds never imagined. Poets can often be tortured souls or great thinkers who allow readers a new view on the world. These greatest women poets provide the kind of emotional connection to the written word that few can.
Vote up the best woman poets on the list below, or add the women poets you think are the top if they aren't already on the list.1
15467Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar, Ariel2
10646Sappho
Sappho, the poems and fragments3
7649Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose4
5021Sara Teasdale
Helen of Troy and Other Poems, Love Songs5
22694Emily Dickinson
The complete poems, The letters6
5839Anne Sexton
Verwandlungen / Transformations, All My Pretty Ones7
6251Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Poems and Letters8
4820Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova, Selected Poems9
5543Edna St. Vincent Millay
Fatal interview, The murder of Lidice10
5140Christina Rossetti
What Is Pink?, The Skylark11
4019Audre Lorde
The Cancer Journals, The Marvelous Arithmetic of Distance: Poems 1987-199212
4329Mary Oliver
Long Life: Essays And Other Writings, Why I Wake Early: New Poems13
19991Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Sister14
4433Gwendolyn Brooks
In the Mecca; Poems, Annie Allen15
3518Denise Levertov
Collection of serials with contributions by or articles about Denise Levertov, Seth Thomas16
3421Louise Bogan
Dark summer, Collected Poems17
3625Nikki Giovanni
Rosa, The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni18
279Sor Juana
Poesía, teatro y prosa19
4424Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights, Gondal poemsHer poetry is better than her sisters'.20
237Gabriela Mistral
Lagar II, Selected prose and prose-poems21
2922Marianne Moore
The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore, Homage to Henry James22
2417Amy Lowell
Six French poets, Ballads for sale23
2820Phillis Wheatley
Poems of Phillis Wheatley, The collected works of Phillis Wheatley24
2820Adrienne Rich
Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972, An Atlas of the Difficult World25
2826H.D.
Asphodel, Her