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Portal:Poetry

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The first lines of the Iliad
The first lines of the Iliad
Great Seal Script character for poetry, ancient China
Great Seal Script character for poetry, ancient China

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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Song dynasty painting of a Han dynasty literary gathering
Song dynasty painting of a Han dynasty literary gathering

Fu (Chinese: ), 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

Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
The poetry WikiProject works to improve the quality and scope of all poetry-related articles. Please join us!

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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...)

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Beyond Seas by Sohrab Sepehri

I shall build a boat
I shall cast it in the water
I shall sail away from this strange earth
Where no one awaken the heroes in the wood of love

A boat empty of net
And longing heart for pearls
I shall continue sailing
Neither I shall loose my heart for the blues
Nor for the mermaids who emergeed from the water
To spread their charm from their locks
On the shining solitude of fishermen

I shall continue sailing
I shall continue singing
“One should sail away, sail away.”
The man in that town had no myth
The woman in that town was not as brimful as a cluster of grapes

No hall mirror repeated joys
Not even puddles reflected a torch
One should sail away, sail away
Night has sung its song
Now it is the turn of windows

I shall continue sailing
I shall continue singing

Beyond the seas there is a town
In which windows open to manifestation
There rooftops quarter pigeons that looks at the jets of human intelligence
In the hand of each 10-year-old child a branch of knowledge lies
The townsfolk took at hedges
As if they look at a flame, a tender dream
Earth hears the music of your feeling
And the fluttering sound of mythological birds are heard in the wind

Beyond the seas there is a town
Where the sun is as wide as the eyes of early-risers
Poets inherit water, wisdom and light

Beyond the seas there is a town!
One must build a boat

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