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
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