For Emily Dickinson, fame is a bee; William Shakespeare, in the opening words of Love’s Labour’s Lost, described it as the thing that ‘all hunt after in their lives’. Poets have often written about celebrity and being famous, so here are 10 of the best poems about fame, glory, and celebrity.
Geoffrey Chaucer, The House of Fame. We begin this rundown of the best poems about fame with the first great poet in English literature: Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400). Although it’s nowhere near as long as The Canterbury Tales, The House of Fame is still a substantial work, in which the poet falls asleep and dreams he’s in a glass temple adorned with images of glorious and famous people from history (including the poets Ovid and Virgil). This