1886 in poetry

Events

• September 18 – The "Symbolist Manifesto" is published in French newspaper Le Figaro by Greek-born poet Jean Moréas, who announces that Symbolism is hostile to "plain meanings, declamations, false sentimentality and matter-of-fact description," and that its goal instead is to "clothe the Ideal in a perceptible form" whose "goal was not in itself, but whose sole purpose was to express the Ideal"
• December 10 – American poet Emily Dickinson dies aged 55 of Bright's disease at the family home in Amherst, Massachusetts with fewer than a dozen of her poems published and is buried under the self-penned epitaph "Called Back". Following first publication of a collection of her poems in 1890, she will become regarded as one of the two quintessential nineteenth-century American poets

Works published in English

Canada">Canadian poetry">Canada

• Charles Mair, Tecumseh: A Drama, a closet drama in blank verse; published in Toronto.
• Charles G. D. Roberts, In Divers Tones..

United Kingdom">English poetry">United Kingdom

• William Alexander, St. Augustine's Holiday, and Other Poems
• Rudyard Kipling, Departmental Ditties, and Other Verse
• Edith Nesbit, Lays and Legends, first series
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Collected Works, posthumously published
• Alfred Lord Tennyson, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After
• William Butler Yeats, Mosada: A Dramatic Poem a short verse play in three scenes, published as a pamphlet of 100 copies paid for by his father, Irish poet published in the United Kingdom

United States">American poetry">United States

• Charles Follen Adams, Cut, Cut Behind!
• William Ellery Channing, John Brown and the Heroes of Harpers Ferry
• Celia Thaxter, Idyls and Pastorals
• Jones Very, Poems and Essays
• John Greenleaf Whittier, ''St. Gregory's Guest''

Other in English

• William Butler Yeats, Mosada: A Dramatic Poem a short verse play in three scenes, published as a pamphlet of 100 copies paid for by his father, Irish poet published in the United Kingdom

Works published in other languages

• François Coppée, Poemes et recits; France
• Naim Frashëri, Bagëti e bujqësia, Albania
• Jens Peter Jacobsen, Digte og Udkast, Denmark, published posthumously
• Guido Mazzoni, Nuove poesie, Italy
• Charles G. D. Roberts, In Divers Tones, Canada

Births

• January 1 – Kinoshita Rigen 木下利玄, pen-name of Kinoshita Toshiharu, Japanese, Meiji- and Taishō-period tanka poet
• January 3 – John Gould Fletcher, American Imagist poet, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
• February 2 – William Rose Benêt, American poet, writer and editor; older brother of Stephen Vincent Benét
• February 11 – May Ziadeh, Lebanese-Palestinian poet, essayist and translator
• February 13 – Ricardo Güiraldes, Argentine gauchesque poet and author
• February 21 – Aleksei Kruchenykh, Russian Futurist poet
• February 22 – Hugo Ball, German poet and Dada artist
• March 30 – Frances Cornford, English
• April 15 – Nikolay Gumilyov, Russian Acmeist poet
• May 7 – Gottfried Benn, German essayist, novelist and expressionist poet
• May 15 – Helen Cruickshank, Scottish
• May 16 – Vladislav Khodasevich, Russian poet and critic
• May 20 – Chieko Takamura, Japanese
• July – Misao Fujimura, 藤村操, Japanese philosophy student and poet, largely remembered for the poem he carves into a tree before committing suicide as a teenager over an unrequited love; the boy and the poem are sensationalized by Japanese newspapers after his death
• September 8 – Siegfried Sassoon, English poet and author
• September 10 – H.D., American poet
• September 20 – Charles Williams, English writer and poet, and a member of the loose literary circle called the Inklings
• October 8 – Yoshii Isamu 吉井勇, Japanese, Taishō and Shōwa period tanka poet and playwright
• October 12 – Abd Al-Rahman Shokry, Egyptian poet, member of the Divan school of poetry
• October 24 – Delmira Agustini, Uruguayan
• October 30 – Zoë Rumbold Akins, American playwright, poet and author
• November 1 – Sakutarō Hagiwara 萩原 朔太郎, Japanese, Taishō and early Shōwa period literary critic and free-verse poet called the "father of modern colloquial poetry in Japan"
• December 6 – Joyce Kilmer, American journalist and poet whose best-known work is "Trees"

Deaths

• February 26 – Narmadashankar Dave, also known as "Narmad", Indian, Gujarati-language poet
• March 27 – Sir Henry Taylor, English dramatist, poet and public official
• April 15 – Abram Joseph Ryan, American poet, active proponent of the Confederate States of America, and a Roman Catholic priest called the "Poet-Priest of the Confederacy"
• July 6 – Paul Hamilton Hayne, 56, American poet, critic, and editor
• August 11 – Lydia Koidula, 42, Estonian poet
• October 7 – William Barnes, 86, English writer, poet, minister, and philologist
• October 21 – José Hernández, 51, Argentine poet
• December 10 – Emily Dickinson, 55, American poet