Portal:Poetry

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

Welcome to the Poetry Portal

Great Seal Script character for poetry, ancient China

Poetry (a term derived from the Greek word poiesis, "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle.

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...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

edit

Selected article

"To Autumn" is a poem by English Romantic poet John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821). The work was composed on 19 September 1819 and published in 1820 in a volume of Keats's poetry that included Lamia and The Eve of St. Agnes. "To Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats's "1819 odes". Although personal problems left him little time to devote to poetry in 1819, he composed "To Autumn" after a walk near Winchester one autumnal evening. The work marks the end of his poetic career, as he needed to earn money and could no longer devote himself to the lifestyle of a poet. A little over a year following the publication of "To Autumn", Keats died in Rome.

The poem has three eleven-line stanzas which describe a progression through the season, from the late maturation of the crops to the harvest and to the last days of autumn when winter is nearing. The imagery is richly achieved through the personification of Autumn, and the description of its bounty, its sights and sounds. It has parallels in the work of English landscape artists, with Keats himself describing the fields of stubble that he saw on his walk as being like that in a painting.

The work has been interpreted as a meditation on death; as an allegory of artistic creation; as Keats's response to the Peterloo Massacre, which took place in the same year; and as an expression of nationalist sentiment. One of the most anthologised English lyric poems, "To Autumn" has been regarded by critics as one of the most perfect short poems in the English language. (Full article...)

Full set of selected articles

edit

Selected image

Bust of Arthur Rimbaud

image credit: Sidsmeets

Full set of selected images

edit

Poetry WikiProject

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

edit

Selected biography

Masaoka Shiki (正岡子規, October 14, 1867 – September 19, 1902), pen-name of Masaoka Noboru (正岡升), was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry, credited with writing nearly 20,000 stanzas during his short life. He also wrote on reform of tanka poetry.

Some consider Shiki to be one of the four great haiku masters, the others being Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa.

Full set of selected biographies

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that Paul McCartney wrote a poem about Dumb Woman's Lane?
... that the fall of Sundrum Castle was alluded to in a poem by Robert Chambers in the 19th century and was later referred to as a curse?
... that Ephraim E. Lisitzky wrote an epic poem in Hebrew based on Native American legends?
... that the "Poetic Essay of the Great Bliss of the Sexual Union of Heaven and Earth and Yin and Yang" argues that heterosexual sex is the "ultimate human pleasure", but affirms homosexuality as well?
... that the Cornish poet D. M. Thomas blamed himself for the death of William Golding, the author of Lord of the Flies?
... that the tallest captive elephant in Asia has been commemorated in verse, sculpture and film?

edit

Selected poem

The Sick Muse / La Muse malade by Charles Baudelaire

Poor Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, today?
Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn,
Upon thy brow in alternation play,
Madness and Horror, cold and taciturn.

Have the green lemure and the goblin red
Poured on thee love and terror from their urn?
Or with despotic hand the nightmare dread
Deep plunged thee in some fabulous Minturne?

Would that thy breast, where so deep thoughts arise,
Breathed forth a healthful perfume with thy sighs;
Would that thy Christian blood ran wave by wave

In rhythmic sounds the antique numbers gave,
When Phoebus shared his alternating reign
With mighty Pan, lord of the ripening grain.

Full set of selected poems

More about the author

edit

Related portals

Topics

edit

Recognized content

Extended content

This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged or categorized (e.g. Category:WikiProject Poetry articles) correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.

Featured articles

Featured lists

Good articles

Did you know? articles

Featured portals

Portal:Poetry

Former featured articles

Former featured lists

List of cultural references in The Cantos

Former good articles

edit

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Commons
Free media repository
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals
Wikidata
Free knowledge base
Wikinews
Free-content news
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations
Wikisource
Free-content library
Wikiversity
Free learning tools
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus

Discover Wikipedia using portals

v t e Lists of poets
By language	Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Assamese Awadhi Belarusian Bengali Bosnian Bulgarian Catalan Chinese Croatian Danish Dutch English French German Greek (Ancient) Gujarati Hebrew Hindi Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Kashmiri Konkani Kannada Korean Kurdish Latin Maithili Malayalam Maltese Manipuri Marathi Nepali Oriya Pashto Pennsylvania Dutch Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Rajasthani Romanian Russian Sanskrit Sindhi Slovak Slovenian Sorbian Spanish Swedish Syriac Tamil Telugu Turkic Ukrainian Urdu Uzbek Welsh Yiddish
By nationality or culture	Afghan American Argentine Australian Austrian Bangladeshi Bosniak Brazilian Breton Bulgarian Canadian Chicano Estonian Finnish Ghanaian Greek Indian Iraqi Irish Israeli Mexican Nepalese New Zealander Nicaraguan Nigerian Ottoman Pakistani Peruvian Romani Romanian Somali South African Swedish Swiss Syrian Turkish
By type	Anarchist Early-modern women (England, Wales, Great Britain) Feminist Lyric Modernist National Performance Romantic Speculative Surrealist War Women

Welcome to the Poetry Portal

Selected article

Selected image

Poetry WikiProject

Selected biography

Selected poem

Related portals

Topics

Recognized content

Featured articles

Featured lists

Good articles

Did you know? articles

Featured portals

Former featured articles

Former featured lists

Former good articles

Categories

Associated Wikimedia