infographics
INFOGRAPHIC: The 10 Most Influential Poets in (Western) History
A who influenced who look at the history of Western poetry
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Although the title of the infographic implies it is looking at all poetry, it seems pretty clear that this is more a list of the most influential poets in Western English-language poetry, not all poetry from around the world.
How did they come up with this list?
We conducted extensive research to find out who the top poetry influencers were and studied approximately 250 poets to determine whether they were influenced by any other poets, and, if so, who. We entered more than 1000 influences into our database to come up with our top ten, which you can see in the infographic.
You can read more about their methodology here.
