The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the six American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, published during the preceding calendar year.
Finalists have been announced from 1980, ordinarily two others beside the winner.
1918 and 1919 special prizes
The 1918 and 1919 Pulitzers included Special Citations for poetry books, "made possible by a special grant from The Poetry Society", which the Pulitzer program now lists as Poetry prizes. See Special Pulitzers for Letters.
- 1918, Sara Teasdale
- 1919, Carl Sandburg
- 1919, Margaret Widdemer
Winners
In its first 92 years to 2013, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry was awarded 92 times. Two were given in 2008, none in 1946. Robert Frost won the prize four times and several others won it more than once (below).
1920s
- 1922: Collected Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson
- 1923: The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver: A Few Figs from Thistles: Eight Sonnets in American Poetry, 1922. A Miscellany by Edna St. Vincent Millay
- 1924: New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes by Robert Frost
- 1925: The Man Who Died Twice by Edwin Arlington Robinson
- 1926: What's O'Clock by Amy Lowell
- 1927: Fiddler's Farewell by Leonora Speyer
- 1928: Tristram by Edwin Arlington Robinson
- 1929: John Brown's Body by Stephen Vincent Benét
1930s
- 1930: Selected Poems by Conrad Aiken
- 1931: Collected Poems by Robert Frost
- 1932: The Flowering Stone by George Dillon
- 1933: Conquistador by Archibald MacLeish
- 1934: Collected Verse by Robert Hillyer
- 1935: Bright Ambush by Audrey Wurdemann
- 1936: Strange Holiness by Robert P. T. Coffin
- 1937: A Further Range by Robert Frost
- 1938: Cold Morning Sky by Marya Zaturenska
- 1939: Selected Poems by John Gould Fletcher
1940s
- 1940: Collected Poems by Mark Van Doren
- 1941: Sunderland Capture by Leonard Bacon
- 1942: The Dust Which Is God by William Rose Benét
- 1943: A Witness Tree by Robert Frost
- 1944: Western Star by Stephen Vincent Benét
- 1945: V-Letter and Other Poems by Karl Shapiro
- 1946: no award given
- 1947: Lord Weary's Castle by Robert Lowell
- 1948: The Age of Anxiety by W. H. Auden
- 1949: Terror and Decorum by Peter Viereck
1950s
- 1950: Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks
- 1951: Complete Poems by Carl Sandburg
- 1952: Collected Poems by Marianne Moore
- 1953: Collected Poems 1917â€"1952 by Archibald MacLeish
- 1954: The Waking by Theodore Roethke
- 1955: Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens
- 1956: Poems: North & South - A Cold Spring by Elizabeth Bishop
- 1957: Things of This World by Richard Wilbur
- 1958: Promises: Poems 1954-1956 by Robert Penn Warren
- 1959: Selected Poems 1928-1958 by Stanley Kunitz
1960s
- 1960: Heart's Needle by W. D. Snodgrass
- 1961: Times Three: Selected Verse From Three Decades by Phyllis McGinley
- 1962: Poems by Alan Dugan
- 1963: Pictures from Brueghel by William Carlos Williams
- 1964: At The End Of The Open Road by Louis Simpson
- 1965: 77 Dream Songs by John Berryman
- 1966: Selected Poems by Richard Eberhart
- 1967: Live or Die by Anne Sexton
- 1968: The Hard Hours by Anthony Hecht
- 1969: Of Being Numerous by George Oppen
1970s
- 1970: Untitled Subjects by Richard Howard
- 1971: The Carrier of Ladders by William S. Merwin
- 1972: Collected Poems by James Wright
- 1973: Up Country by Maxine Kumin
- 1974: The Dolphin by Robert Lowell
- 1975: Turtle Island by Gary Snyder
- 1976: Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery
- 1977: Divine Comedies by James Merrill
- 1978: Collected Poems by Howard Nemerov
- 1979: Now and Then by Robert Penn Warren
1980s
- 1980: Selected Poems by Donald Justice
- 1981: The Morning of the Poem by James Schuyler
- 1982: The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
- 1983: Selected Poems by Galway Kinnell
- 1984: American Primitive by Mary Oliver
- 1985: Yin by Carolyn Kizer
- 1986: The Flying Change by Henry S. Taylor
- 1987: Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove
- 1988: Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems by William Meredith
- 1989: New and Collected Poems by Richard Wilbur
1990s
- 1990: The World Doesn't End by Charles Simic
- 1991: Near Changes by Mona Van Duyn
- 1992: Selected Poems by James Tate
- 1993: The Wild Iris by Louise Glück
- 1994: Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa
- 1995: The Simple Truth by Philip Levine
- 1996: The Dream of the Unified Field by Jorie Graham
- 1997: Alive Together: New and Selected Poems by Lisel Mueller
- 1998: Black Zodiac by Charles Wright
- 1999: Blizzard of One by Mark Strand
2000s
- 2000: Repair by C. K. Williams
- 2001: Different Hours by Stephen Dunn
- 2002: Practical Gods by Carl Dennis
- 2003: Moy Sand and Gravel by Paul Muldoon
- 2004: Walking to Martha's Vineyard by Franz Wright
- 2005: Delights & Shadows by Ted Kooser
- 2006: Late Wife by Claudia Emerson
- 2007: Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey
- 2008: Time and Materials by Robert Hass
- 2008: Failure by Philip Schultz
- 2009: The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin
2010s
- 2010: Versed by Rae Armantrout
- 2011: The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan
- 2012: Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith
- 2013: Stag's Leap by Sharon Olds
- 2014: 3 Sections by Vijay Seshadri
- 2015: Digest by Gregory Pardlo
Repeat winners
Robert Frost won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times from 1924 to 1943. Edwin Arlington Robinson won three prizes during the 1920s and several people have won two.
- Edwin Arlington Robinson, 1922, 1925, 1928
- Robert Frost, 1924, 1931, 1937, 1943
- Stephen Vincent Benét, 1929, 1944
- Archibald MacLeish, 1933, 1953
- Robert Lowell, 1947, 1974
- Richard Wilbur, 1957, 1989
- Robert Penn Warren, 1958, 1979
- William S. Merwin, 1971, 2009
Carl Sandburg won one of the special prizes for his poetry in 1919 and won the Poetry Pulitzer in 1951.
See also
- American poetry
- List of poetry awards