Hi Andrew,

And thanks for the interesting question! So, some of my favorite French poets are:
C20th: Guillaume Apollinaire (picture poems), Francis Ponge (prose poems), Jacques Prevert (poems often set to music). Prevert would be the easiest.
C19th: Charles Baudelaire (my HS text), Victor Hugo (wrote huge amounts), Arthur Rimbaud (the boy genius), Gerard de Nerval (wrote much less verse).
C18th: people skip (Voltaire).
C17th: Jean de La Fontaine (fables - French schoolkids learn these); the dramatists.
C16th: Pierre de Ronsard, Jean Du Bellay (the Pleiade), Louise Labe (a great woman poet).
C15th: Francois Villon (outlaw poet).

I'd add the C12th Marie de France but that's Old French and unreadable without training. My students read her, Rimbaud, and Apollinaire in English.

Happy reading!
John

How did I forget Apollonaire.

To clarify, you're suggesting that a pretty solid intermediate reader could tackle any of these?

I teach Marie de France (translation, of course) in my Brit Lit class. She's Anglo-Norman, so I think she counts. Also, I find her dealing with gender interesting when compared with, say, Chaucer.

This is a great list (all of whom I've heard of, almost all 19th-20th century I've read), but if you were to pick among these poets to give, say, a recommendation to an intermediate student, which would you pick?

Hi Andrew, how about Renée Vivien? Here's a terrific new translation that uses Vivien's meter and rhyme. Full disclosure: I, as Headmistress Press, published the book.

It's in my cart, Mary! If you recommend, I know it must be good. Also, on Twitter, I spent time sharing French poems I loved when I was in France this summer, and realized it was shameful how few French women poets I knew. I came across Marceline Desbordes-Valmore through Anna Evans (and Rosanna Warren) and that was it. Seriously, embarrassing.

Frances Jammes.

A rhyme made of an open syllable (no closing consonantal sound) is simply open syllable rhyme or open rhyme.

What would be the point of making this specification in poetry though?

Desbordes-Valmore is perfectly good, and I'm glad to hear you teach Marie de France, she's great. In the two-volume C20th French poetry anthology on my shelves (Gallimard), the following women poets get a poem each:

i
Anna de Noailles
Marie Noel
Catherine Pozzi
ii
Rina Lasnier
Anne Hebert
Andree Chedid
Anne Perrier
Liliane Wouters
Marie-Claire Bancquart
Venus Khoury-Ghata
Anne-Marie Albiach
Marie Etienne
Gabrielle Althen
Michelle Grangaud

You'll notice more women poets make Volume II. This remains (in II) roughly 1/10 of the male poets listed. My Ph.D. was on a French woman author and I can speak from personal experience to the uphill climb facing women authors in France to this day.

Cheers,
John

Update: which makes it cool, Mary, that you are publishing French women poets in English.

Andrew, you ask which of my list an intermediate reader could tackle in French. Here's a shortlist.

C20th: Jacques Prevert, "Dejeuner du matin" and "Barbara."
C19th: Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal (I read him in HS).
Victor Hugo, "Demain des l'aube" (about the daughter he lost).
Arthur Rimbaud (the short poems and maybe Illuminations).
Gerard de Nerval, Les Chimeres (very short).
Marceline Desbordes_Valmore, "Les Roses de Saadi."
C17th: Jean de La Fontaine (the fables - French schoolkids learn these).
C16th: Pierre de Ronsard, "Comme on voit sur la branche...".
Jean Du Bellay, "O voyageur...", "Heureux qui comme Ulysse..."
Louise Labe (more sonnets)
C15th: Francois Villon, "Ballade des pendus."

I think this short list is readable for an intermediate reader, and available online. Though I did give you Les Fleurs du Mal, my high school French text. You could also branch out with Rimbaud's Illuminations and some famous La Fontaine fables. :-)

Cheers,
John

To be fair, there are a few extra rules thrown in. In prior centuries, French identity rhymes were not allowed to be the same part of speech, because that was deemed too lazy. So poets could identity-rhyme a verb with a noun, or a verb with an adjective, but not two verbs with each other.

Thanks Nemo and John.

John, what's the text you use?