Theological Poets

At Faith and Theology blog, a list of poets is proposed as "essential" for theologians. Unlike their recent list of novelists, they limited themselves only to poets writing in English.

I present a more modest list, which makes no claims to be essential or comprehensive. Instead you may find it idiosyncratic and preferential. I omit living authors, those who lived before Christ, and those whose primary genre was drama or longer narrative. What else is missing? Russian, Asian, African poets.

The unknown poet who wrote The Dream of the Rood, English (sometime between 6th and 10th Century)
Dante Alighieri, Italian (c. June 1, 1265 – September 3. 13/14, 1321)
John of the Cross, SpanishE (June 24, 1542 – December 14, 1591)
John Donne, English (1572 – March 31, 1631)
George Herbert, English (April 3, 1593 – March 1, 1633)
John Milton, English (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674)
John Dryden, English (August 9, 1631 – May 12, 1700)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German (August 28, 1749 – March 22, 1832)
Giacomo Leopardi, Italian (June 29, 1798 – June 14, 1837)
Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin, German (March 20, 1770 – June 6, 1843)
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, English (December 10, 1830 - May 15, 1886)
Gerard Manley Hopkins, English (July 28, 1844 - June 8, 1889)
Charles Péguy, French (January 7, 1873 - September 4, 1914)
Rainer Maria Rilke, German (December 4, 1875 – December 29, 1926)
Federico Garcia Lorca, Spanish (June 5, 1898 – August 19, 1936)
Paul Claudel, French (August 6, 1868 – February 23, 1955)
T.S. Eliot, English (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965)
Langston Hughes, English (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967)
Pablo Neruda, Spanish (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973)
Elizabeth Bishop, English (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979)

Crossposted at Cahiers Peguy

Ars Theologica has also posted a list of Theological Poets.