20th-century American poets

Henri Coulette (November 17, 1927 – March 26, 1988) was an American poet and educator. His first book, The War of the Secret Agents and Other Poems (Scribner, 1965), was greeted with acclaim and won the Lamont Poetry Prize. His second collection, The Family Goldschmitt (Scribner, 1971), seems to have received little attention, and it has been reported that much of the print run was accidentally pulped. He did not publish another book during his life, but had been organizing a volume when he died. Of these later poems, Tad Richards has written, "Though only in his fifties, he surveys the territory of death, particularly in the near-perfect 'Petition,' an elegy for his cat, with a concreteness he did not often find in life." Two of Coulette's poems, "Night Thoughts" and "Postscript", were included in the 2003 anthology, California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present; the editors write that "Coulette melded seamless metrics with a lifelong devotion to California icons like the LBG-30 (a Glendale computer), the noir Los Angeles memorialized by Raymond Chandler, and the gravesites of Hollywood movie stars."Coulette was born in Los Angeles, California, and earned a bachelor's degree in 1952 from Los Angeles State College, now known as California State University, Los Angeles. He studied at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, after which he returned to California. He spent nearly his entire career as a faculty member at California State University, Los Angeles. After Coulette's death (in South Pasadena, California, at 60), the poets Donald Justice and Robert Mezey edited and published Coulette's collected poetry. The collection included a wealth of unpublished poems, and was published in 1990 by the University of Arkansas Press.

Jane Cooper (October 9, 1924 – October 26, 2007) was an American poet.

Evan Shelby Connell Jr. (August 17, 1924 – January 10, 2013) was a U.S. novelist, short-story writer, essayist and author of epic historical works. He also published under the name Evan S. Connell Jr.
In 2009, Connell was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, for lifetime achievement. On April 23, 2010, he was awarded a Los Angeles Times Book Prize: the Robert Kirsch Award, for "a living author with a substantial connection to the American West, whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition."

Charles Gullans (May 5, 1929 – March 30, 1993) was an American poet, bibliographer, and educator. His first book, Arrivals and Departures (University of Minnesota Press, 1962), was his most critically acclaimed publication. He published five more poetry collections during his life. He also published translations including Last Letters from Stalingrad and The Wrong Side of the Rug, and compiled bibliographies of the works of Sir Robert Ayton and J V Cunningham.

Charles Kenneth "C. K." Williams (November 4, 1936 – September 20, 2015) was an American poet, critic and translator. Williams won many poetry awards. Flesh and Blood won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair (1999) won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The Singing won the 2003 National Book Award and Williams received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2005. The 2012 film The Color of Time relates aspects of Williams' life using his poetry.

Paul Landry Monette (October 16, 1945 – February 10, 1995) was an American author, poet, and activist best known for his books about gay relationships.