Talk:Poet

Urgent

This article gives no information on Bedri Rahmi, the family of the artist would like to write a new text, how can we proceed? Thank you.

Hughette Eyüboğlu alias Yazmame —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yazmame (talk • contribs) 11:35, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Can wikipedia please remove this article? It's partial, biased, uninformative, misinformed, barely literate, and appears to have been written by a child. 'Poet' requires no entry anyway. 'A poet is someone who writes poetry' is entirely sufficient, unless someone wants to write an article on the sociocultural role of the poet over the last five millennia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dharmabam (talk • contribs) 15:59, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Second. This is a horrible, useless article filled with ridiculous statements and written extremely poorly. Just to give an idea of what kind of ridiculous stuff is here:

"The Ancient Greek language was one of the most richest poetry of the ancient history..."

"In the Arabian language, the poets as... are remarkable."

"In the Chinese language there are such literary geniuses as..."

"The Finnish language owns poets as..."

"The French language possesses illustrious poets as..."

It seems to have been written by the sort of person who would say this:

"T.S. Eliot is also a wonderful poet but not as brilliant as they"

Because so many people contributed, apparently joining in on some kind of attempt at a literary p*ssing contest, my inkling is that someone who knows how to format Wikipedia and change links and pages better than I should change this into a "List of Poets by Nationality" page. I agree that we need no page for "Poet." Chicopac (talk) 05:06, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Chicopac (talk) 05:01, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Phetote

Phetote is an anagram for The Poet. It is the name of a Performance Poet who travels the land, teaching and performing. He was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He believes that Poets are still responsible for passing along historical and social happenings, just as the Gruits did (and still do), in many parts of Africa.

Free Verse

The sentence "English poets also invented a form of poetry called free verse" is, at worst, utterly false, and at best misleading. To the Whitman claim, one could say the Jules Laforgue was doing unmetered poetry at the same time. Aside from that, the only claim I can think of for the English inventing free verse is Smart's Jubilate Agno, but that wasn't published until the 1940's. And the term "free verse" is itself a just a translation of the French "vers libre". Corbmobile

For that matter, Hebrew-language poets were writing unmetered poetry (e.g., the Psalms) over 2000 years before Whitman. Bruce Tindall 21:41, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Other categories of poets

Why no hungarian or romanian poets? Do u really think these countries don't exist?????????? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.178.95.78 (talk) 7 Dec 2005

List order

When names are listed in long lists in alphabetical order, it would be easier to find what you were looking for if the names were formatted as Last, First Middle. In fact, I think this is true of all alphabetical--Cromwellt|Talk 00:29, 18 March 2006 (UTC) lists (the text should be displayed in the order that the alphabetizing was done). If anyone else has an opinion please post is here. If the overall consensis is for the L,FM syntax, I'll change the lists accordingly as I see them. Otherwise the current system is good enough for me as well. Thanks. Rlee0001 22:18 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)

All names in the Wikipedia are in the format as they appear on this page. If you change them all to L,FM you'll have to either REDIRECT every name in the 'pedia, or else give every name on this page an alias. -- Zoe

The idea was just to do something like Frost, Robert. A small VB program can be written to do the conversion on the clipboard directly. But like I said, its fine either way. I'm not here to step on toes. It was just a suggestions. I'd be more then willing to do the work if everyone thought it was in the pedia's best interests. Rlee0001 23:32 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)

I don't think L,FM is used anywhere else on the 'pedia, and I say good riddance to it. --Brion VIBBER

Well then how about if we start alphabetizing by first name? The idea of alphabetizing is to allow the human eye to quickly scan a long list of varied strings and jump directly to the desired string. My original problem with the current house style is that the Last name column doesn't line up due to the fact that the first names are of varied lengths. Is the position of the last names are staggered the human eye can't scan through the list. We might as well not be alphabetizing at all. Don't get me wrong, I'll follow the current standard of practice. As I mentioned before, its fine by me either way, but I thought it was worth bring up anyways. Rlee0001 00:33 Jul 26, 2002 (PDT)

Followup: Does nobody have a response?

On your last suggestion - alphabetizing by first name:

• That is not a common practice and I don't think it is a good idea.

On your first suggestion - changing all lists to Last Name, First Name:

• I do not agree that most people have a problem finding a name when the list is sorted First Name Last Name. We have tables of contents on nearly all the lists (and many of these have compact tocs, which display the alphabet horizontally) which means you can jump straight down to the first letter of the surname immediately, and the sublist cuts down the number of entries you have to read considerably (on some of our larger lists, we even have tocs for the first two letters of the name). Once there, I think only a small number of people would be slowed down by having to read the last name. You obviously think otherwise.

• What about non-English names like Mao Zedong, where his family name is actually Mao, and he is listed under the Ms. Do you list him as Mao, Zedong? People never call him Zedong Mao. Since his first name and last name are reversed in this situation, the order you suggest adds confusion. A perfect example is Lu Xun on Wikiquote begin listed as Xun, Lu on the List of people by name, even though Lu is his family name. And listed under the Xs instead of the Ls.

• Are we going to list Arc, Joan of, even though everyone knows her as Joan and she would be listed under the Js? Many other people have names with of in them. This again adds confusion.

• The whole concept of accidental links is broken here, although it could be argued that that only applies to prose and not lists.

• I am fairly sure I have seen this discussion (except a much longer one) somewhere on meta already, I just can't find where (if anyone can, please post a link). My memory is not perfect, but on that page I don't think a consensus was reached to change to a new format.

• We are talking about a lot of lists, hundreds in fact, although the number is not really important, it just shows that hundreds of people have not been motivated enough to change it so far on any lists, and hence have implicitly shown they are in favor of the current format. This point is possibly debatable as maybe people just haven't thought of it before, however some people, as shown above (Zoe and Brion) have and like the current format. If you want to organize a vote for it somewhere other than here (since it affects a lot of people on the English Wikipedia), be my guest, but I doubt very much you will get a majority agreeing to Last Name, First Name as a general rule. Nanobug 15:19, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Woah. A lot of women there. Er....Byron?! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.254.81.209 (talk) 09:00, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Only a list

On a different note, this page is currently nothing more than a list of poets, so I think it should be named that. I'm sure there's more to write about poets than just listing them. Jeronimo 23:44 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)

Moved list, replaced with a definition to encourage stub development. --mav

Looks like the list got alphabetized by last name anyway. Sigh. --Zoe

It was to begin with. Check the history. :o) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rlee0001 (talk • contribs) on 26 July 2002

Another list of poets

The Wiki List of Canadian Poets which exists , does not show up when I added the name to the List of Poets on this page?? WayneRay 14:00, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Must have been a glitch. It's there now. --Cromwellt|Talk 00:29, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

The very best English-language poets

Why are Keats, Shelley, Blake, and Milton not included in the list of poets who are among the best in the English language? Whitman is a good poet, but he does not stand up to those four. T.S. Eliot is also a wonderful poet but not as brilliant as they. Rintrah 06:28, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Good points. I think Whitman was included as one of the best (certainly one of the best-known) poets from the United States, and because he was very influential in the history of modern poetry. I also think the list here leaves out many wonderful, incredible poets because they are trying to keep it extremely short (which is why it says "very best" and "often considered"). What about Pope? In my opinion, he's better than Blake, but I would say that both are among the very best. What about Coleridge? What about Hawthorne? Poe? Dickinson? Instead of throwing all these names in (and many more), let's keep the list extremely short, and make sure it lists a few poets that we all pretty much agree are among the very best. If people want to read a list of names that is any longer, they can go to the appropriate list. If you feel very strongly about this, I would recommend replacing one of the poets listed with one of the ones you listed, but I wouldn't recommend just adding those names or replacing all four with your four, since it is extremely debatable (and personal) which are the absolute top. --Cromwellt|Talk 00:29, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree that Whitman should not be included. With T.S. Eliot we already have one American on the list of four which seems a fair representation considering the amount of time English has been spoken (and versified) in the U.S.. I am going to replace him with Chaucer to try and create a more historically aware list: with Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Eliot we have a very rough documentation of the development of English poetry from Middle English, through the Renaissance, Romanticism and Modernism. Moreover it seems quite preposterous to leave the poet who wrote the earliest recognisable English verse. Personally I think we need someone from the C19th but if the list must be as short as possible then I'll leave it. Stephen 00:58, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Wordsworth already comes from the 19th century. Byron, Blake, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, and so on, are names that could be added from the 19th century. I would rather Milton be added, however, for the enimence of his poetry. Rintrah 03:05, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what list you guys were talking about, it seems to have become moot in the face of this current, monster list. But I've already posted up above, and down here I want to say something to Rintrah: You could not be more incorrect about T.S. Eliot. Look anywhere and ye shall find, most especially in the poetry of the man himself: T.S. Eliot is one of The Greats in all past times and places of poesy, hands down, it is futile to question it. I felt like responding to your sweeping, un-cited and unsubstantiated claim in kind, with the only difference being that I happen to be correct. Honestly, go sharpen up, brighten that melon, and then go back and reread The Waste Land, Prufrock, Four Quartets, Hollow Men, et al, and then perhaps any bit of the endless volumes of Eliot criticism, and you will find worlds you hadn't erstwhile heard of-- and a poet better than those you listed. Chicopac (talk) 05:11, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Removed sentences

I removed these sentences:

"Some may speculate that this is so because ordinary middle-class people aspire to increase or maintain their social standing, whereas the aristocracy become involved in politics and power. But on the other hand, one can think of many more effective ways than writing poems to increase social standing."

The reader is unlikely to hold that speculation. So raising it and refuting it is unnecessary; it only fills space. "Some may" shows the weakness of it anyway. Rintrah 09:18, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Life of a Poet

The section "Life of a Poet" needs to be rewritten. It seems to say little more than poets are middle class, alienated, probably deviant, probably cannot live off the profession, have some connection to the people, and are usually supported by an institution (a patron). The second paragraph illustrates the exceptional circumstances of a few poets but says very little about others, except with vague generalisation.

It says little of the lifestyle of a poet; nothing about the kind of patrons poets had in the past; and little about how political circumstances, social circumstancse, and commerce influenced poets' lives. There is also no detail on how poets interacted with one another.

Saying poets are middle class, weird, and often not well financially supported is hardly informative. The information in this section seems inaccurate; e.g. alienation because of the poet's deviant traits is an important feature of the poet's life. The extremity of Pound and Eliot is not representative of poets generally.

"poets may achieve a kind of alternative aristocracy" is also quite vague.

Rintrah 09:48, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh no. I came BACK to this article because of the very section you are describing as vague! I was particularly interested in the bit about poets typically being middle class; I was also annoyed that it did not go into detail on this point, so my coming back was in the hope of the article's having expanded, not contracted. Thanks! But wait, I am being a bit unfair. You did rightly suggest that more specific aspects, such as relations of poets to one another and to patrons, were not gone into. Someone else must have slashed what was formerly a decent beginning of an article into its now unrecognizable blandness. 121.73.26.57 08:00, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

General Plea

Can someone make this article more interesting?!

In its present state it seems like something written by a bored student. Not once is Shakespeare's name mentioned, despite his enormous influence on poetry. Other than free verse, no other type of poetry is mentioned. The introduction contains a rather uninteresting speculation of the poetic canon, without any reference to its defintion. Finally, the only insight rendered to the reader is a list of stereotypes, which do not rely heavily on research, of typical poets.

For all these reasons, reading this article makes me bored. Rintrah 15:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Who's Shakespeare? Anyway, stereotypes about poets are always true. Jaykay! Chicopac (talk) 16:41, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

more aspects of the poet ???

Can someone expand this article to include the role of poets in society (which is why I went to read it)? In Celtic traditions, for example, the poet had the power of words, and words could either aid and support the king with praise poetry, or, if he was a bad ruler, could remove him from power with the use of satire. I.e., poet as social commentator ... perhaps even the relation of idiot or royal fool to poet in regards to who is priviledge to comment on society with impunity. Some of these ideas may be more literary or archetypal ideas of poets, but I'm writing a paper and some info on these aspects would be quite helpful. I'm thinking of roles of such people in Shakespeare plays and the like.

--71.243.4.69 19:52, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Merged with Poetry

Does anyone else think this article ought to be merged with poetry? It is rather pointless as is, and ridiculously biased towards American poetry. Algabal 19:41, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Lelkesa 14:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

At present, there is little worth saving here, so I don't know what a merger would accomplish. At some point, someone should try to do something with this article - there is a lot of material on poets individually, their relationship with their art and with the broader culture, etc. But if someone takes it on, I'd recommend they just replace this one wholesale. A Musing (formerly Sam) 14:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think they should be merged - they're two separate topics.

Interwiki Link

The link to the Polish (I think? "polski" pl.wikipedia.org) article is wrong, it sends you to the article on lyrical poetry. Can someone fix that? I don't speak any Polish I just know because I was adding interwiki links to the newly translated Spanish version and I noticed they had it linked to "Lyrical poetry" which I recognized in Spanish and French. Thanks!

Jim Morrison

This article is pretty small.

Plus, it only mentions classical poets.

What about acid poets, or people like Jim Morrison or Don Van Vliet AKA Captain Beefheart? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.134.241.115 (talk) 13:10, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

It seems to me that this article has issues with having a neutral point of view. Literary geniuses? Profound? I like a few of these poets, but what if somebody absolutely despieses their work? --Kannie | talk 20:01, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree that some sentences might read like a praise of the poets rather than merely a list of them. Puceron (talk) 00:13, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

How many poets do we want?

Various people have started adding every poet they can think of to each language entry. Since this could obviously go on for every, resulting in a completely unwieldy page I suggest putting a top limit of the number of poets per language, with any more going to a separate page. How about five as a limit? DJ Clayworth (talk) 19:23, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I doubt this will really be possible, although I agree there is a problem with limiting the number of poets for each language entry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.16.122.252 (talk) 21:02, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, which five poets? It would be an invitation to edit warring. We should try to do something better altogether with this article than just a list of poets anyway, see my comment below Grcaldwell (talk) 23:20, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Introductions

I understand the importance of variety in all writing, but does it also pertain to encyclopedia entries? I mean, the list of poets on this page, rather than a page informing the reader about what a poet is, has different lead-ins to the lists of famous and influential poets by the language in which they originally wrote. While this does discourage menotony, what in the world does it mean when the article in an encyclopedia says, "The Persian language owns a few of the more popular poets who are still widely read today" and "In the Japanese language we can read" etc. Just say "_Insert language_ poets include:" Sapiens23 (talk) 18:45, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

And let's not have users add sections using wording like "The Dutch language has got good poets as well." Sapiens23 (talk) 18:48, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

It's not a requirement that every editor speak English as a native. While I reserve judgement regarding the quality and usefulness of this WP article, your focus on the quality of the editors' English appears narrow. If you're that concerned, why not just fix it?
--Yumegusa (talk) 13:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Needs work

This article is troublesome. I am not sure if it is meant to be an article on a "poet" or if it is supposed to be a list of poets; it seems to have aspects of both. If it is to be an article on poets, then it needs to have clear descriptions on what it means to be a poet, the types of poets, and a critical analysis on poesis. But I have a feeling that this is supposed to be a list, and even then, it is more of a "here are some poets that a group of editors likes for various reasons."Mrathel (talk) 02:32, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. This "article" is problematic. It is nothing more than a dictionary definition, etymology, random list, and image gallery. None of which belongs in an encyclopedia article.

My proposal is to redirect to the poetry article. I would have simply done it myself, but considering the amount of work that seems to have gone into this, I figured I'd seek others' input first. —D. Monack ^talk 18:27, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Bob Dylan?

Bob Dylan is one of the greatest poets of the English language? Really? --121.44.16.231 (talk) 08:41, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

How about semi poets too?

Poetry is well loose and free these days! There were semi poets( There first "love" was either prose or othjer fields)Such as the noterious "poet" playwright and writer and poet and Nazi spy! Gerorge Sylvester Virieck (he was also wringting about "gay" rights even though a german America spy Spy for the Abwhere German Nazi spy service) And the brillant but eccnetic and OCD plagued genius Nikola tesla91856-1943) In he 1880s Tesla while reading Gothe strolling in a park(located on an island in the middle of the Danube by the Buda and Pest shores! The LigetPark) Suddenly stooped down and drew in nthe park sand the theroy of the Rotating Magnetic Field! Which made the Alternating CVurrent Electric Motor a realty!) But Tesla was also a Poet a BAD Poet but a poet none the less! THanks!(I think I shall never see a Wikipedia Editor aluive and free. Free from arrogant imperial stance, But hey I wrote this just on chance! Hey ,Tesla wasnt the only "poet" who can write poetry! !) Bye (Dr.Edson/Andre')Andreisme (talk) 19:25, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

A bit disappointing

I see that quite a lot of work has gone into creating this list, but perhaps giving it the title "Poet" is not the best use of that space, or what people searching for "poet" would be expecting to find. I can see that it's useful to have such a list, but it may be better to split the list part into an article with a more appropriate title and use the existing lead here as a start for an article that could actually address the "Poet" in terms of their varying roles throughtout history, in different societies; their influence on wider social issues and other art forms, and so on. Some POV --> Reading the comments attached to online newspapers articles concerning the new poet laureate here in the UK I was struck by the apparent majority opinion that poets and poetry were completely irrelevant to modern society, i don't believe this is so, and it certainly wasn't so historically (whatever one might think about about the laureate position). This WP entry could usefully give a history of the sort of impact that poets have historically had and so be a useful resource (although obviously it should include the counter argument, even lovers of poetry like Harold Bloom call this an unpoetic age). Grcaldwell (talk) 00:48, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

If this article were titled "List of Poets", then it could exist without the lead. However, since it takes the title "poet", the article is required to assert the notability of the term just as any article would be. I do think the article, if turned into one about poets, could easily tackle the issue of poetry throughout the history of language in prose form, including prominence. When I first came to this article, I have to be honest that I was surprised that it was merely a list without a definition. As "List of Poets" would probably be too cumbersome for one article, if each section of this list were broken into smaller lists of poets from different cultures, there could be links to those lists at the end of each section. Mrathel (talk) 01:14, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Etymology

I'm reading Aristotle's Poetics and he seems to suggest that the word 'poet' was once used to describe the creator of anything.

"People do, indeed, add the word 'poet' to the name of the metre... as if it were not the imitation that makes the poet, but the verse that entitle them all indiscriminately to the name. Even when a treatise on medicine or science is brought out in verse, the name of the poet is, by custom, given to the author"

Am I misunderstanding this? It would make sense that 'poet' be used in place of author, as poet meant 'maker'. If so, however, I think this should be added to the etymology section. 168.158.220.3 (talk) 22:44, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

please get rid of this article asap

I agree with other posters that this article is not needed. There is an excellent FA article on poetry. This is an encyclopedia not a dictionary. Poet needs no entry. How do we merge this with poetry thereby redirecting 'poet' to poetry? Spanglej (talk) 23:26, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

 Done —D. Monack ^talk 00:25, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

 Undone Apparently, someone disagrees that this page should be a redirect. If you support keeping Poet separate from Poetry, please explain your reasons. My position is that the featured article "Poetry" already explains what a poet is better than this article does. In fact, this article is mostly about poetry, not poets, and adds little. —D. Monack ^talk 00:03, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

I undo the redirect to poetry, because the article poet is encyclopedic, a profession how advocate, architect, engineer, nurse, physician, physicist, professor, scientist and many other. As we have the article poet, makes no sense a redirect to poetry. Before doing the redirect of this article, we would have to discuss the issue of all other articles of professions. Another issue to not do the redirect, are the interwikis; there are many interwikis for this article. Thanks. OffsBlink (talk) 22:54, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The essence of this line of reasoning is "everyone else does it" which is a pretty poor argument. Most of those other profession articles you cite are for jobs that have specific criteria for inclusion. A nurse for example isn't merely someone that practices medicine or even nursing. If I take someone's temperature or connect an I.V., I'm practicing nursing but I'm not a nurse which requires specific training and qualifications. If I write poetry, I'm a poet because a poet is someone that writes poetry. The existence of interwikis is not a reason to keep this article either. Firstly, other wikis may be making the same mistake. Second, one should be wary of assuming that two words in different languages mean the exact same thing. The reason we should redirect "Poet" to "Poetry" is that the Poetry article is better in every way at explaining what a poet is and does. —D. Monack ^talk 07:24, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

It's amazing there's no disambiguation page on this popular name! Americasroof (talk) 01:00, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Is it popular? Until you added that hat note, I didn't think anything was called "poet" except for people that write poetry. If there are more things called poet, a disambig page can be created but I doubt it's necessary. —D. Monack ^talk 06:52, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with redirecting this article to Poetry. This article as written is uninformative and poorly written. --MLKLewis (talk) 22:08, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Be active to act

• I think "Poet" is a basicl subject of any language of the literature.Poet and Poetry are two subjects with its own definition,both need separate article.Poet is not just a word but it is a sea of knowledge and wisdom,from which opens the different ways of poetry and thoughts.Poet definition will be and can be refered to every language of the world and accepted,but poetry definition may not,because every language has its own style and definition of poetry.

When you are mentioning the list of poets,and giving no any description of the poet,it is,in my view,a subject without its definition Separate article on "Poet" is the need and value of the wikipedia encyclopedia,rather than making the mixture of the subject.An encyclopedia should have a separate article on every subject.

I would not like to exemplify here,but ofcourse I suggest it,someone go ahead to make informative,improve and expand the article,rather than thinking to redirect or merge somewhere else.Be active to act,not only dicussing.Cheers.Ehsan Sehgal (talk) 11:23, 6 October 2011 (UTC)