Poetry is the first form of literary expression in the world as evidenced by The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest piece of world literature. For over 4,000 years, people have been writing poetry to express personal, communal, or global experiences through one of the most intimate of art forms practiced by human beings in connecting with others.
The following collection presents some of the most famous poets and their works from the ancient and medieval eras. Many important figures have been omitted for space including Sappho of Lesbos and Callimachus of Cyrene, Horace, Ovid, Pindar, Chretien de Troyes, Petrarch, Dante, and Boccaccio, to name only a few, as well as Shakespeare, arguably the greatest poet in the English language. The works below are chosen for the influence they have had on later poets and world literature.
