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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A villanelle, also known as villanesque, is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third lines of the first tercet repeated alternately at the end of each subsequent stanza until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines. The villanelle is an example of a fixed verse form. The word derives from Latin, then Italian, and is related to the initial subject of the form being the pastoral.
The form started as a simple ballad-like song with no fixed form; this fixed quality would only come much later, from the poem "Villanelle (J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle)" (1606) by Jean Passerat. From this point, its evolution into the "fixed form" used in the present day is debated. Despite its French origins, the majority of villanelles have been written in English, a trend which began in the late nineteenth century. The villanelle has been noted as a form that frequently treats the subject of obsessions, and one which appeals to outsiders; its defining feature of repetition prevents it from having a conventional tone. (Full article...)
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Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali pronunciation: [rəˈbindrəˈnɑt ˈtɑɡɔr] ), also written Rabīndranātha Thākura (pronounced [rəˈbindrəˈnɑtə ˈtɑkʊrə]), (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. Tagore introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. He was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of the modern Indian subcontinent, being highly commemorated in India and Bangladesh, as well as in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... 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 when her local cafe was in lockdown, Kate Baer wrote her bestselling poems in her van in the cafe parking lot?
- ... that Ove Jørgensen, after giving his name to a law of Homeric poetry, renounced classical studies to write about ballet?
- ... that Leon Schidlowsky wrote the Misa sine nomine in memory of Víctor Jara for speaker, choirs, organ and percussion, juxtaposing mass texts with contemporary poetry and Torah verses?
- ... that the poem "Ovid in the Third Reich" has been described as "a classic reaction" to the Eichmann trial, despite being published before the trial was held?
- ... that Taylor Swift initially wrote "This Love" as a poem, turning it into a song only when she came up with a melody?
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| Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll |
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'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! He took his vorpal sword in hand: And as in uffish thought he stood, One, two! One, two! And through and through "And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves |
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