Portal:Poetry
Welcome to the Poetry Portal
Poetry (a term derived from the Greek word poiesis, "making"), also called verse, is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meaning. Such a literary composition is a poem and is written by a poet. Poetic devices such as assonance, alliteration, euphony and cacophony, onomatopoeia, rhythm (via metre), and sound symbolism commonly convey musical or incantatory effects.
Poetry has a long and varied history, evolving differentially across the globe. It dates back at least to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile, Niger, and Volta River valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE. The earliest surviving Western Asian epic poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, was written in the Sumerian language.
Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing as well as from religious hymns (the Sanskrit Rigveda, the Zoroastrian Gathas, the Hurrian songs, and the Hebrew Psalms); or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Egyptian Story of Sinuhe, Indian epic poetry, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. (Full article...)
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It describes how Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table, accepts a challenge from a mysterious "Green Knight" who challenges any knight to strike him with his axe if he will take a return blow in a year and a day. Gawain accepts and beheads him with his blow, at which the Green Knight stands up, picks up his head and reminds Gawain of the appointed time. In his struggles to keep his bargain Gawain demonstrates chivalry and loyalty until his honour is called into question by a test involving Lady Bertilak, the lady of the Green Knight's castle.
The poem survives in a single manuscript, the Cotton Nero A.x., which also includes three religious narrative poems: Pearl, Purity and Patience. All are thought to have been written by the same unknown author, dubbed the "Pearl Poet" or "Gawain Poet", since all four are written in a North West Midland dialect of Middle English. (Full article...)
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Poetry WikiProject
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Akhmatova's work ranges from short lyric poems to intricately structured cycles, such as Requiem (1935–40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her style, characterised by its economy and emotional restraint, was strikingly original and distinctive to her contemporaries. The strong and clear leading female voice struck a new chord in Russian poetry. Her writing can be said to fall into two periods – the early work (1912–25) and her later work (from around 1936 until her death), divided by a decade of reduced literary output. Her work was condemned and censored by Stalinist authorities and she is notable for choosing not to emigrate, and remaining in Russia, acting as witness to the atrocities around her. Her perennial themes include meditations on time and memory, and the difficulties of living and writing in the shadow of Stalinism. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Van Morrison performed and recorded a collection of ancient Irish poems for Moles nightclub in Bath, Somerset?
- ... that the name of the band Zuriaake is a metaphor for the Chinese poet Qu Yuan, who drowned himself due to his hatred of the government?
- ... that Sylvia Plath criticized her own award-winning poem for its "old crystal-brittle and sugar-faceted voice"?
- ... that in 1968, actor Ludovic Antal recited a Romanian nationalist poem in front of tourists from Soviet Moldavia, causing them to flee for their bus for fear of a "provocation"?
- ... that the 1887 execution of George Flaxman may have inspired Rudyard Kipling's poem "Danny Deever"?
- ... that L. J. Potts translated the Poetics as Aristotle on the Art of Fiction, a title accused of "[narrowing] dangerously the wide gap between Aristotle and ourselves", but later called "creative genius"?
Selected poem
| A Hymn to God the Father by John Donne |
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Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun, |
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