Get Your Premium Membership

Best Famous Suicidal Poets Ever

Suicidal Poets and their poems. A list of the top 100 most popular and best famous poets who committed suicide. Some of these suicides remain in dispute, however they are still listed here. This list contains the most popular famous suicidal poets in history (with their best poetry).

Suicide rates are much higher among poets than among authors of other literary forms as well as the general population. This phenomenon has variously been attributed to the types of writers who are naturally drawn to poetry as well as to the features of poetry itself. For example, there is retrospective evidence to suggest that many suicidal poets have suffered from some form of depressive disorder throughout their lives. Poetry, it has been argued, may be a particularly appealing medium by which to cope with the unpredictable episodes of mood swings. Source: Word Use in the Poetry of Suicidal and Nonsuicidal Poets

Famous Poets Who Committed Suicide

12
1

 | 

Sylvia Plath was a troubled American poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Plath posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982.



2

 | 

Anne Gray Harvey Sexton, American poet and playwright, was born in Newton, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ralph Harvey, a successful woolen manufacturer, and Mary Gray Staples. Sexton is known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die.

3

 | 

Sara Teasdale was an American lyrical poet. She is the total embodiment of a tortured soul who had a gift for artistic expression. She was born on August 8, 1884 in St. Louis, Missouri. She died at the age of 48 on January 29, 1933 in New York City.

4

 | 

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor. He was born in Baghdati, Russian Empire on July 19, 1893. he was the youngest child of Ukrainian parents.

5

 | 

An American poet considered one of the founders of the Confessional school of poetry.. American poet and scholar



6

 | 

. Latin American Modernist poet

7

 | 

Yukio Mishima ( , Mishima Yukio ) is the pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka ( , Hiraoka Kimitake , January 14, 1925 – November 25, 1970), a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, and film director. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century; he was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was poised to win the prize in 1968 although lost the award to his fellow countryman Yasunari Kawabata, presumably because of his radical right-wing activities. His avant-garde work displayed a blending of modern and traditional aesthetics that broke cultural boundaries, with a focus on sexuality, death, and political change. He is also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état .

8

 | 

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (sometimes spelled as Esenin; Russian: ´ ´ ´; 3 October 1895 – 27 December 1925) was a Russian lyrical poet. He was one of the most popular and well-known Russian poets of the 20th century.. Russian lyrical poet

9

 | 

. American poet literary critic children's author essayist novelist; US Poet Laureate

10

 | 

Harold Hart Crane was an American poet. Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that is difficult, highly stylized, and very ambitious in its scope. In his most ambitious work, The Bridge, Crane sought to write an epic poem in the vein of The Waste Land that expressed something more sincere and optimistic than the ironic despair that Crane found in Eliot's poetry. In the years following his suicide at the age of 32, Crane has come to be seen as one of the most influential poets of his generation.. American modernist poet

11

 | 

. American poet

12

 | 

Paul Celan was a poet and translator. Paul Antschel was born into a Jewish family in Romania, but as a writer used the pseudonym "Paul Celan", becoming one of the major German-language poets of the post-World War II era.. Romanian-born Jewish poet and translator

13

 | 

Thomas Chatterton was an English poet and forger of pseudo-medieval poetry. He died of arsenic poisoning, either from a suicide attempt or self-medication for a venereal disease.. English poet and forger of pseudo-medieval poetry

14

 | 

Veronica Micle (born Ana Câmpeanu; April 22, 1850—August 3, 1889) was an Imperial Austrian-born Romanian poet, whose work was influenced by Romanticism. She is best known for her love affair with the poet Mihai Eminescu, one of the most important Romanian writers.. Imperial Austrian-born Romanian poet

15

 | 

John Gould Fletcher was a Pulitzer Prize winning Imagist poet and author. He was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to a socially prominent family. After attending Phillips Academy, Andover Fletcher went on to Harvard University from 1903 to 1907, when he dropped out shortly after his fathers death.. Imagist poet

16

 | 

John Davidson was a Scottish poet, playwright and novelist, best known for his ballads. He also did translations from French and German. In 1909, financial difficulties, as well as both physical and mental health problems, led to his suicide.. Scottish poet playwright and novelist

17

 | 

Edward Stachura ['dvard sta'xura]  (listen ) (18 August 1937—24 July 1979) was a Polish poet and writer. He rose to prominence in the 1960s, receiving prizes for both poetry and prose. His literary output includes four volumes of poetry, three collections of short stories, two novels, a book of essays, and the final work, Fabula rasa, which is difficult to classify. In addition to writing, Stachura translated literature from Spanish and French, most notably works of Jorge Luis Borges, Gaston Miron and Michel Deguy. He also wrote songs, and occasionally performed them. He committed suicide at the age of forty-one.

18

 | 

José María Arguedas Altamirano (18 January 1911 – 28 November 1969) was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist. Arguedas was a mestizo of Spanish and Quechua descent who wrote novels, short stories, and poems in both Spanish and Quechua .

19

 | 

Tove Irma Margit Ditlevsen (14 December 1917 – 7 March 1976) was a female Danish poet and author.

20

 | 

Laurence Hope was the pen name of Adela Florence Cory Nicolson. Born in 1865, she was educated in England. At age 16 she joined her father in India, where she spent most of her adult life. In 1889 she married Col. Malcolm H. Nicolson, a man twice her age. She committed suicide two months after his death in 1904. Adela Florence Nicolson (née Cory) (9 April 1865 – 4 October 1904) was an English poet who wrote under the pseudonym Laurence Hope.

21

 | 

Qu Yuan (343–278 BC ) was a Chinese poet and minister who lived during the Warring States period of ancient China. He is principally remembered as the supposed origin of the Dragon Boat Festival. He is also known for his contributions to classical poetry and verses, especially through the poems of the Chu Ci anthology (also known as The Songs of the South or Songs of Chu ): a volume of poems attributed to or considered to be inspired by his verse writing. Together with the Shi Jing, the Chu Ci is one of the two great collections of ancient Chinese verse .

22

 | 

Ingrid Jonker (19 September 1933 – 19 July 1965) (OIS ), was a South African poet. Although she wrote in Afrikaans, her poems have been widely translated into other languages. Jonker has reached iconic status in South Africa and is often called the South African Sylvia Plath, owing to the intensity of her work and the tragic course of her turbulent life.

23

 | 

Peyo Yavorov (Bulgarian: (.) ; born Peyo Totev Kracholov, ; January 1, 1878–October 17, 1914) was a Bulgarian Symbolist poet. He was considered to be one of the finest poetic talents in the fin de siècle Kingdom of Bulgaria. Yavorov was a prominent member of the Misal group. His life and work are closely connected with the liberation movement Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization in Macedonia. He was also a supporter of the Armenian Independence Movement, and wrote a number of poems about Armenians.. Bulgarian Symbolist poet

24

 | 

. Russian and Soviet poet

25

 | 

Gérard de Nerval (French pronunciation) was the nom-de-plume of the French poet, essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie, one of the most essentially Romantic French poets.. French poet essayist and translator

12

Book: Shattered Sighs