The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.

• 1922: Collected Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson
• 1923: The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver: A Few Figs from Thistles: Eight Sonnets in American Poetry, 1922. A Miscellany by Edna St. Vincent Millay
• 1924: New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes by Robert Frost
• 1925: The Man Who Died Twice by Edwin Arlington Robinson
• 1926: What's O'Clock by Amy Lowell
• 1927: Fiddler's Farewell by Leonora Speyer
• 1928: Tristram by Edwin Arlington Robinson
• 1929: John Browns Body by Stephen Vincent Benet
• 1930: Selected Poems by Conrad Aiken
• 1931: Collected Poems by Robert Frost
• 1932: The Flowering Stone by George Dillon
• 1933: Conquistador by Archibald MacLeish
• 1934: Collected Verse by Robert Hillyer
• 1935: Bright Ambush by Audrey Wurdemann
• 1936: Strange Holiness by Robert P. Tristram Coffin
• 1937: A Further Range by Robert Frost
• 1938: Cold Morning Sky by Marya Zaturenska
• 1939: Selected Poems by John Gould Fletcher
• 1940: Collected Poems by Mark Van Doren
• 1941: Sunderland Capture by Leonard Bacon
• 1942: The Dust Which Is God by William Rose Benet
• 1943: A Witness Tree by Robert Frost
• 1944: Western Star by Stephen Vincent Benet
• 1945: V-Letter and Other Poems by Karl Shapiro
• 1946: no award given
• 1947: Lord Weary's Castle by Robert Lowell
• 1948: The Age of Anxiety by W. H. Auden
• 1949: Terror and Decorum by Peter Viereck
• 1950: Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks
• 1951: Complete Poems by Carl Sandburg
• 1952: Collected Poems by Marianne Moore
• 1953: Collected Poems 1917-1952 by Archibald MacLeish
• 1954: The Waking by Theodore Roethke
• 1955: Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens
• 1956: Poems - North & South by Elizabeth Bishop
• 1957: Things of This World by Richard Wilbur
• 1958: Promises: Poems 1954-1956 by Robert Penn Warren
• 1959: Selected Poems 1928-1958 by Stanley Kunitz
• 1960: Heart's Needle by W. D. Snodgrass
• 1961: Times Three: Selected Verse From Three Decades by Phyllis McGinley
• 1962: Poems by Alan Dugan
• 1963: Pictures from Breughel by William Carlos Williams
• 1964: At The End Of The Open Road by Louis Simpson
• 1965: 77 Dream Songs by John Berryman
• 1966: Selected Poems by Richard Eberhart
• 1967: Live or Die by Anne Sexton
• 1968: The Hard Hours by Anthony Hecht
• 1969: Of Being Numerous by George Oppen
• 1970: Untitled Subjects by Richard Howard
• 1971: The Carrier of Ladders by William S. Merwin
• 1972: Collected Poems by James Wright
• 1973: Up Country by Maxine Kumin
• 1974: The Dolphin by Robert Lowell
• 1975: Turtle Island by Gary Snyder
• 1976: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery
• 1977: Divine Comedies by James Merrill
• 1978: Collected Poems by Howard Nemerov
• 1979: Now and Then by Robert Penn Warren
• 1980: Selected Poems by Donald Justice
• 1981: The Morning of the Poem by James Schuyler
• 1982: The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
• 1983: Selected Poems by Galway Kinnell
• 1984: American Primitive by Mary Oliver
• 1985: Yin by Carolyn Kizer
• 1986: The Flying Change by Henry Taylor
• 1987: Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove
• 1988: Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems by William Meredith
• 1989: New and Collected Poems by Richard Wilbur
• 1990: The World Doesn't End by Charles Simic
• 1991: Near Changes by Mona Van Duyn
• 1992: Selected Poems by James Tate
• 1993: The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck
• 1994: Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa
• 1995: The Simple Truth by Philip Levine
• 1996: The Dream of the Unified Field by Jorie Graham
• 1997: Live Together: New and Selected Poems by Lisel Mueller
• 1998: Black Zodiac by Charles Wright
• 1999: Blizzard of One by Mark Strand
• 2000: Repair by C.K. Williams
• 2001: Different Hours by Stephen Dunn
• 2002: Practical Gods by Carl Dennis
• 2003: Moy Sand and Gravel by Paul Muldoon
• 2004: Walking to Martha's Vineyard (ISBN 0375415181) by Franz Wright