Portal:Poetry

Welcome to the Poetry Portal

The first lines of the Iliad

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...)

Selected article

First page of Beowulf in Cotton Vitellius A. xv

Beowulf (/ˈbeɪəwʊlf/, Old English: [ˈbeːowʊɫf]) is the conventional title of an Old English epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, the oldest surviving epic poem of Old English and thus commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature, and also arguably the earliest vernacular English literature.

The full poem survives in the manuscript known as the Nowell Codex, located in the British Library. Written in England, its composition by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet is dated between the 8th and the early 11th century. In 1731, the manuscript was badly damaged by a fire that swept through Ashburnham House in London that had a collection of medieval manuscripts assembled by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. The poem's existence for its first seven centuries or so made no impression on writers and scholars, and besides a brief mention in a 1705 catalogue by Humfrey Wanley it was not studied until the end of the 18th century, and not published in its entirety until Johan Bülow funded the 1815 Latin translation, prepared by the Icelandic-Danish scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin. After a heated debate with Thorkelin, Bülow offered to support a new translation by N.F.S. Grundtvig — this time into Danish. The result, Bjovulfs Drape (1820), was the first modern language translation of Beowulf. (Full article...)

Selected image

Christina Rossetti, by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti

image credit: public domain

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Selected biography

Hilda "H.D." Doolittle (September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) was an American poet, novelist, and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington.

H.D. was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1886 and moved to London in 1911, where her publications earned her a central role within the then emerging Imagist movement. A charismatic figure, she was championed by the modernist poet Ezra Pound, who was instrumental in building and furthering her career. From 1916–17, she acted as the literary editor of the Egoist journal, while her poetry appeared in the English Review and the Transatlantic Review. During the First World War, H.D. suffered the death of her brother and the breakup of her marriage to the poet Richard Aldington, and these events weighed heavily on her later poetry. Glenn Hughes, the authority on Imagism, wrote that 'her loneliness cries out from her poems. She had a deep interest in Ancient Greek literature, and her poetry often borrowed from Greek mythology and classical poets. Her work is noted for its incorporation of natural scenes and objects, which are often used to emote a particular feeling or mood.

She befriended Sigmund Freud during the 1930s, and became his patient in order to understand and express her bisexuality. H.D. married once, and undertook a number of relationships with both men and women. She was unapologetic about her sexuality, and thus became an icon for both the gay rights and feminist movements when her poems, plays, letters and essays were rediscovered during the 1970s and 1980s. (Full article...)

Did you know (auto-generated) -

• ... that Rabia Balkhi is the first known Persian woman poet?
• ... that the tallest captive elephant in Asia has been commemorated in verse, sculpture and film?
• ... that the Three Bards are the most celebrated poets in the history of Polish literature?
• ... that American poet Edwin Ford Piper preserved 828 folk songs, most of which were from Iowa and Nebraska?
• ... that after civil rights activist Andrew Goodman was murdered, Mary Doyle Curran found and published a poem that Goodman had written for her class?
• ... that Peter Fallon, an Irish poet who translated Virgil's Georgics, also edited a 1970 beat-poetry magazine that featured works by John Lennon and Allen Ginsberg?

Selected poem

Bhagavad Gita (excerpt, chapter 11) by anonymous

Behold! this is the Universe! — Look! what is live and dead I gather all in one — in Me! Gaze, as thy lips have said On GOD, ETERNAL, VERY GOD! See ME! what thou prayest! Thou canst not! — nor, with human eyes, Arjuna! ever mayest! Therefore I give thee sense divine. Have other eyes, new light! And, look! This is My glory, unveiled to mortal sight! Sanjaya. Then, O King! to God, so saying, Stood, to Pritha's Son displaying All the splendour, wonder, dread Of His vast Almighty-head. Out of countless eyes beholding, Out of countless mouths commanding, Countless mystic forms enfolding In one Form: supremely standing Countless radiant glories wearing, Countless heavenly weapons bearing, Crowned with garlands of star-clusters, Robed in garb of woven lustres, Breathing from His perfect Presence Breaths of every subtle essence Of all heavenly odours; shedding Blinding brilliance; overspreading — Boundless, beautiful — all spaces With His all-regarding faces; So He showed! If there should rise Suddenly within the skies Sunburst of a thousand suns Flooding earth with beams undeemed-of, Then might be that Holy One's Majesty and radiance dreamed of!

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