Portal:Poetry
Welcome to the Poetry Portal
Poetry (from the Greek word poiesis, "making") 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 meanings. Any particular instance of poetry is called a poem and is written by a poet. Poets use a variety of techniques called poetic devices, such as assonance, alliteration, euphony and cacophony, onomatopoeia, rhythm (via metre), and sound symbolism, to produce musical or other artistic effects. Most written poems are formatted in verse: a series or stack of lines on a page, which follow a rhythmic or other deliberate structure. For this reason, verse has also become a synonym (a metonym) for poetry.
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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Fu (Chinese: 賦), variously translated as rhapsody or poetic exposition, is a form of Chinese rhymed prose that was the dominant literary form during the Han dynasty. Fu are poetic pieces in which an object, feeling, or subject is described and rhapsodized in exhaustive detail and from as many angles as possible. Classical fu composers attempted to use as wide a vocabulary as they could, and often included great numbers of rare and archaic terms in their compositions. Fu poems employ alternating rhyme and prose, varying line length, close alliteration, onomatopoeia, loose parallelism, and extensive cataloging of their topics.
Unlike the songs of the Classic of Poetry (Shijing) or the Verses of Chu (Chu ci), fu were meant to be recited aloud or chanted but not sung. The fu genre came into being around the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC and continued to be regularly used into the Song dynasty. Fu were used as grand praises for the imperial courts, palaces, and cities, but were also used to write "fu on things", in which any place, object, or feeling was rhapsodized in exhaustive detail. The largest collections of historical fu are the Selections of Refined Literature (Wen xuan), the Book of Han (Han shu), the New Songs from the Jade Terrace (Yutai xinyong), and official dynastic histories.
There is no counterpart or similar form to the fu genre in Western literature. During a large part of the twentieth century, fu poetry was harshly criticized by Chinese scholars as excessively ornate, lacking in real emotion, and ambiguous in its moral messages. Because of these historical associations, scholarship on fu poetry in China almost ceased entirely between 1949 and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Since then, study of fu has gradually returned to its previous level. (Full article...)
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Poetry WikiProject
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Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉, 1644 – 1694), born error: error: {{nihongo}}: Japanese or romaji text required (help): Japanese or romaji text required (help), then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa (松尾 忠右衛門 宗房), was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku (then called hokku). Matsuo Bashō's poetry is internationally renowned; and, in Japan, many of his poems are reproduced on monuments and traditional sites. Although Bashō is justifiably famous in the West for his hokku, he himself believed his best work lay in leading and participating in renku. He is quoted as saying, “Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses.”
Bashō was introduced to poetry young, and after integrating himself into the intellectual scene of Edo (modern Tokyo) he quickly became well known throughout Japan. He made a living as a teacher; but then renounced the social, urban life of the literary circles and was inclined to wander throughout the country, heading west, east, and far into the northern wilderness to gain inspiration for his writing. His poems were influenced by his firsthand experience of the world around him, often encapsulating the feeling of a scene in a few simple elements. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Isabella Correa was one of the few Jewish women poets active in the Netherlands before the 19th century?
- ... that Saudi Arabian poet Hamad al-Hajji lost three members of his family during his childhood and later suffered from schizophrenia until he died at the age of 49 after a lung disease?
- ... that poet Peggy Pond Church became a strong pacifist and a member of the Society of Friends after the Manhattan Project used her home as a place to build nuclear weapons?
- ... that Li Zhaoxing, a former Chinese minister of foreign affairs, has published more than 200 poems and was known as a "poet minister"?
- ... that one reviewer for Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century was let down by the book's lack of poetry?
- ... 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"?
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| Beyond Seas by Sohrab Sepehri |
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I shall build a boat |
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