César Vallejo

Remarkable Peruvian poet famously photographed in classic writer pose.

Mary Kinzie

Poet, professor, lover of forms, face toucher when the cameras click

Pablo Neruda

The great poet succumbs

Jeanette Winterson

Technically this one’s head and hands, but the picture, clearly Ms. Winterson’s favorite (check her site), strikes me as the perfect author photo with its implied balance of seriousness and absurdity.

Nicanor Parra

Antipoet, funny face toucher

Dylan Thomas

"I've had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that's the record . . ." the poet said before going less than gently into that good night, after, of course, posing with his hands to his face.

Ciaran Carson

My favorite living poet is also guilty.

Jose Donoso

Author of The Obscene Bird of Night, Chilean face toucher.

T. S. Eliot

Great poet, top-notch critic, "refugee from St. Louis," he changed poetry but couldn't assail the temptation to pose with his chin to his hand.

Albert Camus

Author of The Plague, died in a car accident not before posing finger-to-chin.

Carmen Boullosa

Unclassifiable Mexican storyteller and poet does her smiling version of The Thinker

Samuel Beckett

Absurdist writer rubs his eye.

Anne Sexton

Confessional face touching poet.

George Bernard Shaw

Playwright, wit, bearded face tocuher.

Adrienne Rich

Feminist, author of "Living in Sin" (a great poem), toucher of the face.

Robert Hass

American Poet Laureate from 1995 to 1997, face tocuher.