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

Kubla Khan /ˌkʊblə ˈkɑːn/ is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. According to Coleridge's Preface to Kubla Khan, the poem was composed one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol ruler and Emperor of China Kublai Khan. Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by "a person on business from Porlock". The poem could not be completed according to its original 200–300 line plan as the interruption caused him to forget the lines. He left it unpublished and kept it for private readings for his friends until 1816 when, on the prompting by George Gordon Byron, it was published.

Some of Coleridge's contemporaries denounced the poem and questioned his story about its origin. It was not until years later that critics began to openly admire the poem. Most modern critics now view Kubla Khan as one of Coleridge's three great poems, with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. The poem is considered one of the most famous examples of Romanticism in English poetry. A copy of the manuscript is a permanent exhibit at the British Museum in London. (Full article...)

Selected image

American poet Walt Whitman in 1884 at the age of 65. Photograph by George C. Cox

image credit: public domain

Poetry WikiProject

Charles Baudelaire

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

Selected biography

Cædmon (/ˈkædmən/ or /ˈkædmɒn/) is the earliest English (Northumbrian) poet whose name is known. An Anglo-Saxon who cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch (Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy (657–680) of St. Hilda (614–680), he was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream, according to the 8th-century historian Bede. He later became a zealous monk and an accomplished and inspirational Christian poet.

Cædmon is one of twelve Anglo-Saxon poets identified in medieval sources, and one of only three of these for whom both roughly contemporary biographical information and examples of literary output have survived. His story is related in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastical History of the English People") by Bede who wrote, "[t]here was in the Monastery of this Abbess a certain brother particularly remarkable for the Grace of God, who was wont to make religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility in Old English, which was his native language. By his verse the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven."

Cædmon's only known surviving work is Cædmon's Hymn, the nine-line alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of God which he supposedly learned to sing in his initial dream. The poem is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English language and is, with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry. It is also one of the earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language. (Full article...)

Did you know (auto-generated) -

• ... that a fantasy novel by Irish poet and author Sarah Maria Griffin was sent to around 200,000 ticket-holders of the music festival Tomorrowland?
• ... that the Gujarati poem "Shav Vahini Ganga" criticises the Indian government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic?
• ... that Matei Donici, a general in the Imperial Russian Army, secretly wrote poetry with Romanian-nationalist and anti-Russian messages?
• ... that in 1968, actor Ludovic Antal recited a Romanian nationalist poem in front of tourists from Soviet Moldavia, causing them to flee for their bus for fear of a "provocation"?
• ... that when her local cafe was in lockdown, Kate Baer wrote her bestselling poems in her van in the cafe parking lot?
• ... that the 16th-century poet Fuzuli wrote a poetic letter titled "Complaint" after Ottoman officials cut his stipend?

Selected poem

Drinking Alone in the Moonlight by Li Bai

A pot of wine among flowers. I alone, drinking, without a companion. I lift the cup and invite the bright moon. My shadow opposite certainly makes us three. But the moon cannot drink, And my shadow follows the motions of my body in vain. For the briefest time are the moon and my shadow my companions. Oh, be joyful! One must make the most of Spring. I sing--the moon walks forward rhythmically; I dance, and my shadow shatters and becomes confused. In my waking moments we are happily blended. When I am drunk, we are divided from one another and scattered. For a long time I shall be obligated to wander without intention. But we will keep our appointment by the far-off Cloudy River.

Related portals

Topics

Recognized content

Categories

Category puzzle

Select [►] to view subcategories

Poetry

Poetry by country

Poetry by language

Poetry by period

Poems

Poets

Poetry-related lists

African poetry

Aviation poetry

Poetry awards

Poetry books

Characters in poems

Cultural depictions of poets

Poetry festivals

Genres of poetry

History of poetry

Indigenous poetry

Poetry museums

Poetry organizations

Poetics

Poetry houses

Poetry publishers

Spoken word

Works about poetry

Poetry stubs

Poets

Poets by continent

Poets by ethnicity

Poets by genre

Poets by language

Poets by nationality

Poets by period

Poets by religion

Fictional poets

Lists of poets

Poets with disabilities

Indigenous poets

LGBTQ poets

Male poets

Women poets

Poets of Alexander the Great

Ashiks

Children's poets

Communist poets

Cultural depictions of poets

Formalist poets

Humorous poets

Jacobite poets

Marxist poets

Poètes maudits

Modernist poets

Mystic poets

Objectivist poets

Oral poets

Outlaw poets

Poet priests

Poetry instructors

Poets laureate

Romantic poets

Sonneteers

Sound poets

Spoken word poets

Surrealist poets

Symbolist poets

War poets

Works about poets

Poet stubs

Wikipedia categories named after poets

English poetry

English poems

English poets

English poetry books

Middle English poetry

Old English poetry

Genres of poetry

Poetry by genre

Epic poetry

Folk poetry

Graphic poetry

Jazz poetry

Laments

Monologues

Poetry movements

Narrative poems

Nonsense poetry

Nursery rhymes

Occitan literary genres

Rapping

Slam poetry

Verse contests

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

• 

  List of all portals

• 

  The arts portal

• 

  Biography portal

• 

  Current events portal

• 

  Geography portal

• 

  History portal

• 

  Mathematics portal

• 

  Science portal

• 

  Society portal

• 

  Technology portal

• 

  Random portal

• 

  WikiProject Portals