Welcome to the Poetry Portal
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...)
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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
Selected biography
Auden grew up in and near Birmingham in a professional middle-class family and read English literature at Christ Church, Oxford. His early poems from the late 1920s and early 1930s, written in an intense and dramatic tone and in a style that alternated between telegraphic modern and fluent traditional, established his reputation as a left-wing political poet and prophet. In the late 1930s he became uncomfortable in this role and abandoned it after he moved to the United States in 1939, where in 1946 he became an American citizen. In his poems from the 1940s he explored religious and ethical themes in a less dramatic manner than in his earlier works, and combined traditional forms and styles with new, original forms. The focus of many of his poems from the 1950s and 1960s was on the ways in which words revealed and concealed emotions. He took a particular interest in writing opera librettos, a form ideally suited to direct expression of strong feelings.
He was also a prolific writer of prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological and religious subjects, and he worked at various times on documentary films, poetic plays and other forms of performance. Throughout his career he was both controversial and influential. After his death, some of his poems, notably "Funeral Blues" ("Stop all the clocks"), "Musée des Beaux Arts", "Refugee Blues", "The Unknown Citizen", and "September 1, 1939", became known to a much wider public than during his lifetime through films, broadcasts, and popular media. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Iraqi poet Isa Hasan al-Yasiri ran away from school at 10 years old, before travelling with a camel caravan overnight to another village?
- ... that Taylor Swift initially wrote "This Love" as a poem, turning it into a song only when she came up with a melody?
- ... that Langston Hughes's poems "Mother to Son", "Harlem", and "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" have been described as "anthems of black America"?
- ... that How Doth the Little Crocodile by Leonora Carrington was based on Lewis Carroll's poem of the same name?
- ... that the frequently plagiarized poems "Candidate for a Pullet Surprise" and "A Grandchild's Guide to Using Grandpa's Computer" are often cited in discussions of internet publishing ethics?
- ... 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?
Selected poem
| Mandala 1, Hymn 1, Rigveda by anonymous |
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1. I Laud Agni, the chosen Priest, God, minister of sacrifice, The hotar, lavishest of wealth. 2. Worthy is Agni to be praised by living as by ancient seers. He shall bring. hitherward the Gods. 3. Through Agni man obtaineth wealth, yea, plenty waxing day by day, Most rich in heroes, glorious. 4. Agni, the perfect sacrifice which thou encompassest about Verily goeth to the Gods. 5. May Agni, sapient-minded Priest, truthful, most gloriously great, The God, come hither with the Gods. 6. Whatever blessing, Agni, thou wilt grant unto thy worshipper, That, Angiras, is indeed thy truth. 7. To thee, dispeller of the night, O Agni, day by day with prayer Bringing thee reverence, we come 8. Ruler of sacrifices, guard of Law eternal, radiant One, Increasing in thine own abode. 9. Be to us easy of approach, even as a father to his son: Agni, be with us for our weal. |
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