1588 in poetry

	… 1578; 1579; 1580; 1581; 1582; 1583; 1584; ; 1585; 1586; 1587; 1588; 1589; 1590; 1591; ; 1592; 1593; 1594; 1595; 1596; 1597; 1598 …;
	In literature 1585 1586 1587 1588 1589 1590 1591
	Art; Archaeology; Architecture; Literature; Music; Philosophy; Science; +...

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

Events

May–December – Lope de Vega serves in the Spanish Armada, where he begins writing his epic poem La Hermosura de Angélica.
Christopher Marlowe writes The Passionate Shepherd to His Love either this year or in 1589 (first published 1599).

William Byrd, editor, Psalmes, Sonets, & Songs of Sadnes and Pietie, Made into Musicke of Five Parts, anthology of verse set to music^[1]
Thomas Churchyard, The Worthines of Wales, prose and poetry^[1]
Angel Day, Daphnis and Chloe, prose and poetry, translated from the French of Jacques Amyot^[1]

Jean de Sponde, Essai de poemès chrétiens, published with a collection of prose meditations on four Psalms; France^[2]

June 11 – George Wither (died 1667), English poet and satirist
Guillaume Bautru (died 1665), French satirical poet and a founder member of the Académie française
Richard Brathwait (died 1673), English poet
Leonard Digges (died 1635), English translator and poet
Josua Stegmann (died 1632), German poet

June 18 – Robert Crowley (born 1517), English stationer, poet, polemicist and Protestant clergyman
November 1 – Jean Daurat also spelled "Jean Dorat"; Latin name: "Auratus" (born 1508), French poet and scholar, member of the Pléiade
Louis Bellaud (born 1543), French Occitan language writer and poet

^ ^a ^b ^c Cox, Michael, editor, The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-860634-6
^ France, Peter, editor, The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, 1993, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-866125-8