tp下载安装|poet
作者： tp下载安装
2024-03-13 06:50:26
Poet - Wikipedia
Poet - Wikipedia
Jump to content
Main menu
Main menu
move to sidebar
hide
Navigation
Main pageContentsCurrent eventsRandom articleAbout WikipediaContact usDonate
Contribute
HelpLearn to editCommunity portalRecent changesUpload file
Search
Search
Create account
Log in
Personal tools
Create account Log in
Pages for logged out editors learn more
ContributionsTalk
Contents
move to sidebar
hide
(Top)
1History
2Education
3Poets of sacred verse
4See also
5References
6Further reading
Toggle the table of contents
Poet
130 languages
AfrikaansالعربيةAragonésঅসমীয়াअवधीАварAymar aruAzərbaycancaتۆرکجهবাংলাBân-lâm-gúБеларускаяБеларуская (тарашкевіца)भोजपुरीБългарскиབོད་ཡིགCatalàЧӑвашлаČeštinaCymraegDanskDavvisámegiellaDeutschEestiΕλληνικάEmiliàn e rumagnòlЭрзяньEspañolفارسیFrançaisFryskGaeilgeGagauzGàidhligГӀалгӀайગુજરાતી한국어Հայերենहिन्दीHrvatskiIdoIlokanoBahasa IndonesiaIsiZuluÍslenskaItalianoעבריתJawaಕನ್ನಡKapampanganकॉशुर / کٲشُرKreyòl ayisyenKurdîКыргызчаLadinoLatviešuЛезгиLigureLivvinkarjalaLombardMagyarमैथिलीМакедонскиMalagasyമലയാളംMaltiमराठीმარგალურიمصرىمازِرونیBahasa MelayuМокшеньМонголNederlandsनेपालीनेपाल भाषा日本語NapulitanoНохчийнNordfriiskNorsk bokmålNorsk nynorskOccitanОлык марийଓଡ଼ିଆOʻzbekcha / ўзбекчаਪੰਜਾਬੀپنجابیپښتوPolskiPortuguêsQaraqalpaqshaRomânăRuna SimiРусиньскыйРусскийसंस्कृतम्SarduScotsShqipසිංහලSimple EnglishسنڌيSlovenčinaSlovenščinaSoomaaligaکوردیСрпски / srpskiSrpskohrvatski / српскохрватскиSundaSuomiSvenskaTagalogதமிழ்Татарча / tatarçaไทยТоҷикӣTürkçeTürkmençeУкраїнськаاردوVènetoTiếng ViệtVõroWalon吴语ייִדיש粵語Zazaki中文
Edit links
ArticleTalk
English
ReadEditView history
Tools
Tools
move to sidebar
hide
Actions
ReadEditView history
General
What links hereRelated changesUpload fileSpecial pagesPermanent linkPage informationCite this pageGet shortened URLDownload QR codeWikidata item
Print/export
Download as PDFPrintable version
In other projects
Wikimedia CommonsWikiquote
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Person who writes and publishes poetry
For other uses, see Poet (disambiguation).
"Poetess" redirects here. For the American rapper, see The Poetess.
PoetOccupationNamesPoet, Troubador, BardOccupation typeVocationActivity sectorsLiteraryDescriptionCompetenciesWritingRelated jobsNovelist, writer, lyricist
Literature
Oral literature
Folklore
Fable
Fairy tale
Folk play
Folksong
Heroic epic
Legend
Myth
Proverb
Oration
Performance
Audiobook
Spoken word
Saying
Major written forms
Drama
Closet drama
Poetry
Lyric
Narrative
Prose
Nonsense
Verse
Ergodic
Electronic
Long prose fiction
Anthology
Serial
Novel/romance
Short prose fiction
Novella
Novelette
Short story
Sketch
Flash fiction
Parable
Religious
Wisdom
Prose genres
Fiction
Speculative
Realist
Children's
Genre
Adventure
Coming-of-age
Crime
Erotic
Fantasy
Military
Paranormal
Romance
Science fiction
Supernatural
Western
Horror
Historical
Encyclopedic
Non-fiction
Academic
History
Philosophy
Anecdote
Epistle
Essay
Journalism
Letter
Life
Nature
Persuasive
Travelogue
Poetry genres
Narrative
Epic
Dramatic
Verse novel
National
Lyric
Ballad
Elegy
Epigram
Ghazal
Haiku
Hymn
Limerick
Ode
Qasida
Sonnet
Villanelle
Lists
Epic
Groups and movements
Poets
Dramatic genres
Comedy
Libretto
Play
Historical
Moral
Satire
Script
Tragedy
Tragicomedy
History
Ancient
Classical
Medieval
Modernist
Postmodern
Lists and outlines
Outline
Glossary
Books
Writers
Movements
Cycles
Literary awards
poetry
Theory and criticism
Sociology
Magazines
Composition
Language
Narrative
Feud
Literature portalvte
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or written), or they may also perform their art to an audience.
The work of a poet is essentially one of communication, expressing ideas either in a literal sense (such as communicating about a specific event or place) or metaphorically. Poets have existed since prehistory, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary greatly in different cultures and periods.[1] Throughout each civilization and language, poets have used various styles that have changed over time, resulting in countless poets as diverse as the literature that (since the advent of writing systems) they have produced.
History[edit]
This is about the history of the poet profession. For a history of poetry, see History of poetry
Poetry may have been started in prehistory, when poems are presumed to have been left written on the walls of Lascaux Cave and presumably on tortoise shells in Jiahu. Sumer made poetry become very popular and important, since lots of poems from ancient times are from Sumer. The Epic of Gilgamesh, was a very important and widely read epic poem in the ancient Middle East. The poem was first written c. 2100 BC in the Third Dynasty of Ur, and copies of the poem continued to be published and written until it ran out of print c. 600 to 150 BC. Story of Sinuhe was a popular narrative poem from Ancient Egypt, written c. 1750 BC, about an ancient Egyptian man named Sinuhe, who flees his country, and therefore lives as a foreigner. It is only shortly before his death, he returns to his country. Story of Sinuhe was one of several popular narrative Ancient Egyptian poems, especially back in the time of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. It has been conjectured that Story of Sinuhe was actually written by an Ancient Egyptian man named Sinuhe, describing his life in the poem. Therefore, Sinuhe is conjectured to be a real person.
In Ancient Rome, professional poets were generally sponsored by patrons, wealthy supporters including nobility and military officials.[2] For instance, Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, friend to Caesar Augustus, was an important patron for the Augustan poets, including both Horace and Virgil. While Ovid, a well established poet, was banished from Rome by the first Augustus.
Poets held an important position in pre-Islamic Arabic society with the poet or sha'ir filling the role of historian, soothsayer and propagandist. Words in praise of the tribe (qit'ah) and lampoons denigrating other tribes (hija') seem to have been some of the most popular forms of early poetry. The sha'ir represented an individual tribe's prestige and importance in the Arabian peninsula, and mock battles in poetry or zajal would stand in lieu of real wars. 'Ukaz, a market town not far from Mecca, would play host to a regular poetry festival where the craft of the sha'irs would be exhibited.
In the High Middle Ages, troubadors were an important class of poets and came from a variety of backgrounds. They lived and travelled in many different places and were looked upon as actors or musicians as much as poets. They were often under patronage, but many travelled extensively.
The Renaissance period saw a continuation of patronage of poets by royalty. Many poets, however, had other sources of income, including
Italians like Dante Aligheri, Giovanni Boccaccio and Petrarch's works in a pharmacist's guild and William Shakespeare's work in the theater.
In the Romantic period and onwards, many poets were independent writers who made their living through their work, often supplemented by income from other occupations or from family.[3] This included poets such as William Wordsworth and Robert Burns.
Poets such as Virgil in the Aeneid and John Milton in Paradise Lost invoked the aid of a Muse.
Education[edit]
Poets of earlier times were often well read and highly educated people while others were to a large extent self-educated. A few poets such as John Gower and John Milton were able to write poetry in more than one language. Some Portuguese poets, as Francisco de Sá de Miranda, wrote not only in Portuguese but also in Spanish.[4] Jan Kochanowski wrote in Polish and in Latin,[5] France Prešeren and Karel Hynek Mácha[6] wrote some poems in German, although they were poets of Slovenian and Czech respectively. Adam Mickiewicz, the greatest poet of Polish language, wrote a Latin ode for emperor Napoleon III. Another example is Jerzy Pietrkiewicz, a Polish poet. When he moved to Great Britain, he ceased to write poetry in Polish, but started writing a novel in English.[7] He also translated poetry into English.
Many universities offer degrees in creative writing though these only came into existence in the 20th century. While these courses are not necessary for a career as a poet, they can be helpful as training, and for giving the student several years of time focused on their writing.[8]
Poets of sacred verse[edit]
Main article: Lyricist
Lyrical poets who write sacred poetry ("hymnographers") differ from the usual image of poets in a number of ways. A hymnographer such as Isaac Watts who wrote 700 poems in his lifetime, may have their lyrics sung by millions of people every Sunday morning, but are not always included in anthologies of poetry. Because hymns are perceived of as "worship" rather than "poetry", the term "artistic kenosis" is sometimes used to describe the hymnographer's success in "emptying out" the instinct to succeed as a poet. A singer in the pew might have several of Watts's stanzas memorized, without ever knowing his name or thinking of him as a poet.
See also[edit]
List of poets
Bard
Lyricist
List of poetry groups and movements
References[edit]
^ Orban, Clara Elizabeth (1997). The Culture of Fragments: Word and Images in Futurism and Surrealism. Rodopi. p. 3. ISBN 90-420-0111-9.
^ Barbara K. Gold (2014), Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome", University of Texas Press.
^ Peter T. Murphy (2005), "Poetry as an Occupation and an Art in Britain", Cambridge University Press.
^ "Francisco de Sá de Miranda | Portuguese author". Britannica. Archived from the original on 6 September 2018. Retrieved 24 December 2021.
^ "Catholic Encyclopedia: Jan Kochanowski". New Advent. Archived from the original on 24 December 2021. Retrieved 24 December 2021.
^ Burns, Tracy A. "Karel Hynek Mácha: A leading poet of Czech Romanticism". Prague Blog. Archived from the original on 23 January 2022. Retrieved 24 December 2021.
^ "Jerzy Peterkiewicz: Polish poet turned English novelist". The Independent. 26 January 2008. Archived from the original on 12 November 2018. Retrieved 24 December 2021.
^ Nikki Moustaki (2001), The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Poetry, Penguin.
Further reading[edit]
Look up poet or poetess in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Poets.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to poets.
Reginald Gibbons (ed), The Poet's Work: 29 poets on the origins and practice of their art. University of Chicago Press (1979). ISBN 978-0-226-29054-6 at Google Books
vteLists of poetsBy language
Afrikaans
Albanian
Arabic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Assamese
Awadhi
Belarusian
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Chinese
Croatian
Danish
Dutch
English
French
German
Greek (Ancient)
Gujarati
Hebrew
Hindi
Icelandic
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Kashmiri
Konkani
Kannada
Korean
Kurdish
Latin
Maithili
Malayalam
Maltese
Manipuri
Marathi
Nepali
Oriya
Pashto
Pennsylvania Dutch
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Punjabi
Rajasthani
Romanian
Russian
Sanskrit
Sindhi
Slovak
Slovenian
Sorbian
Spanish
Swedish
Syriac
Tamil
Telugu
Turkic
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
Welsh
Yiddish
By nationalityor culture
Afghan
American
Argentine
Australian
Austrian
Bangladeshi
Bosniak
Brazilian
Breton
Bulgarian
Canadian
Chicano
Estonian
Finnish
Ghanaian
Greek
Indian
Iraqi
Irish
Israeli
Mexican
Nepalese
New Zealander
Nicaraguan
Nigerian
Ottoman
Pakistani
Peruvian
Romani
Romanian
Somali
South African
Swedish
Swiss
Syrian
Turkish
By type
Anarchist
Early-modern women (England, Wales, Great Britain)
Feminist
Lyric
Modernist
National
Performance
Romantic
Speculative
Surrealist
War
Women
Poetry portal
Portal: Poetry
Authority control databases International
FAST
National
Spain
France
BnF data
Germany
2
3
Israel
United States
Latvia
2
Japan
Czech Republic
2
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Poet&oldid=1204655279"
Categories: PoetsOccupations in literatureHidden categories: Articles with short descriptionShort description is different from WikidataUse dmy dates from June 2018Pages using sidebar with the child parameterCommons category link is on WikidataArticles with FAST identifiersArticles with BNE identifiersArticles with BNF identifiersArticles with BNFdata identifiersArticles with GND identifiersArticles with J9U identifiersArticles with LCCN identifiersArticles with LNB identifiersArticles with NDL identifiersArticles with NKC identifiers
This page was last edited on 7 February 2024, at 16:18 (UTC).
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0;
additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Code of Conduct
Developers
Statistics
Cookie statement
Mobile view
Toggle limited content width
Poet Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Poet Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Menu Toggle
Merriam-Webster Logo
Games & Quizzes
Games & Quizzes
Word of the Day
Grammar
Wordplay
Word Finder
Thesaurus
Join MWU
Shop
Books
Merch
Settings
My Words
Recents
Account
Log Out
More
Thesaurus
Join MWU
Shop
Books
Merch
Log In
Username
My Words
Recents
Account
Log Out
Est. 1828
Dictionary
Definition
Definition
Synonyms
Example Sentences
Word History
Phrases Containing
Related Articles
Entries Near
Cite this EntryCitation
Share
Kids DefinitionKids
More from M-W
Show more
Show more
Citation
Share
Kids
More from M-W
Save Word
To save this word, you'll need to log in.
Log In
poet
noun
po·et
ˈpō-ət
-it,
also ˈpȯ(-)it
Synonyms of poet
1
: one who writes poetry : a maker of verses
2
: one (such as a creative artist) of great imaginative and expressive capabilities and special sensitivity to the medium
Synonyms
bard
minstrel
muse
poetaster
rhymester
rimester
versifier
See all Synonyms & Antonyms in Thesaurus
Examples of poet in a Sentence
Emily Dickinson is famous as the poet who rarely left the house but often journeyed to the depths of the human heart.
Recent Examples on the Web
Beyond partnering with luxury brands, Nachum also hopes to collaborate with other artists, musicians, poets, actors and architects.
—Christopher Kuo, New York Times, 8 Mar. 2024
For example, civic heroine and poet Laudomia Forteguerri, a young widow and mother of three, commanded a battalion of women fighting to protect the city of Siena against attack.
—Norman Weinstein, The Christian Science Monitor, 7 Mar. 2024
The dramatic work was inspired by the life of 20th-century Latin American poet Delmira Agustini, one of the first female poets of the modern era.
—The Enquirer, 7 Mar. 2024
Ancestry’s findings, which were announced Monday (March 4), show that both Swift and the poet — who was born in 1830 and passed away at 55 years old in 1886 — are descended from the same 17th century English immigrant.
—Hannah Dailey, Billboard, 4 Mar. 2024
Taylor Swift has a very famous poet in her bloodline.
—Kirsty Hatcher, Peoplemag, 4 Mar. 2024
Apparently poetry is hereditary — just ask Taylor Swift, the heralded lyricist who shares a bloodline with a very famous poet.
—Shania Russell, EW.com, 4 Mar. 2024
Such objections were memorably articulated, in another context, by the St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott.
—Julian Lucas, The New Yorker, 2 Mar. 2024
The new Oxford edition, ever dutiful, treats us to the poet’s earnest envoi, its stanzas stiff with respectable yearning.
—Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 26 Feb. 2024
See More
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'poet.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Etymology
Middle English, from Anglo-French poete, from Latin poeta, from Greek poiētēs maker, poet, from poiein to make; akin to Sanskrit cinoti he gathers, heaps up
First Known Use
14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1
Time Traveler
The first known use of poet was
in the 14th century
See more words from the same century
Phrases Containing poet
poet laureate
Articles Related to poet
A Poet by any Other Name
Poets are makers. Literally.
8 Poets Share Their Favorite Words
Pinsky, Rankine, Harjo, and others discuss the words they love
Dictionary Entries Near poet
poesy
poet
poet's narcissus
See More Nearby Entries
Cite this Entry
Style
MLA
Chicago
APA
Merriam-Webster
“Poet.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poet. Accessed 12 Mar. 2024.
Copy Citation
Share
Post the Definition of poet to Facebook
Share the Definition of poet on Twitter
Kids Definition
poet
noun
po·et
ˈpō-ət
-it
: a person who writes poetry
More from Merriam-Webster on poet
Nglish: Translation of poet for Spanish Speakers
Britannica English: Translation of poet for Arabic Speakers
Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about poet
Last Updated:
12 Mar 2024
- Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?
Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play
Play
Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play
Play
Word of the Day
ulterior
See Definitions and Examples »
Get Word of the Day daily email!
Popular in Grammar & Usage
See All
8 Grammar Terms You Used to Know, But Forgot
Homophones, Homographs, and Homonyms
Your vs. You're: How to Use Them Correctly
Every Letter Is Silent, Sometimes: A-Z List of Examples
More Commonly Mispronounced Words
See All
Popular in Wordplay
See All
'Arsy-Varsy,' and Other Snappy Reduplicatives
The Words of the Week - Mar. 8
10 Scrabble Words Without Any Vowels
12 More Bird Names that Sound Like Insults (and Sometimes Are)
8 Uncommon Words Related to Love
See All
Games & Quizzes
See All
Quordle
Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play
Blossom Word Game
You can make only 12 words. Pick the best ones!
Play
Missing Letter
A crossword with a twist
Play
Spelling Bee Quiz
Can you outdo past winners of the National Spelli...
Take the quiz
Merriam Webster
Learn a new word every day. Delivered to your inbox!
Help
About Us
Advertising Info
Contact Us
Diversity
Privacy Policy
Terms of Use
YouTube
© 2024 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated
10 of the Most Famous Poets Throughout History
f the Most Famous Poets Throughout HistorySearchWomen’s HistoryHistory & CultureMusiciansMovies & TVAthletesArtistsPower & PoliticsBusinessScholars & EducatorsScientistsActivistsNotorious FiguresBIO BuysNewsletterPrivacy NoticeTerms Of UseSkip to ContentWomen’s HistoryMusiciansMovies & TVAthletesNewsletterFamous Authors & WritersPoets10 Famous Poets Who Left an Indelible Mark on Literature10 Famous Poets Who Left an Indelible Mark on LiteratureIn their unique styles, these influential poets drew from their experiences to craft memorable poems about the human experience and the world around them.By Tyler PiccottiPublished: Sep 26, 2023 3:43 PM ESTGetty ImagesStarting in ancient times and continuing through the modern age, poetry has thrived as one of the most popular forms of expression. From the horrors of war and racism to the familiarity of the New England seaside, influential poets like Pablo Neruda, Maya Angelou, and Robert Frost could seemingly find inspiration in almost anything. Decades later—and for some, even centuries—their writings continue to spark our imaginations. Get to know these 10 famous poets whose most popular works have left enduring legacies.HomerGetty ImagesBirth and death date unknownLittle is definitively known about this famous Greek poet who lived before the common era. Some even question whether the same person wrote both epics credited to Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Some scholars believe he might have left hints about his own life through his descriptions of the blind minstrel character Demodokos in The Odyssey.Despite these uncertainties, the two epics about the fall of Troy and subsequent events have influenced writers throughout history like J.R.R. Tolkien and James Joyce. The use of vivid similes and metaphors as well as the in media res narrative structure—beginning in the middle of the plot and flashing back to past events—are characteristics of Homer’s writings. Learn More About HomerRalph Waldo EmersonGetty Images1803-1882Originally ordained in the Unitarian Church, Emerson resigned from the clergy after three years. He took up writing and lecturing instead, becoming a founding figure of the Transcendentalism movement in New England with early works such as 1836’s “Nature.” Other notable Transcendentalists included Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller.According to the Poetry Foundation, Emerson was the first major American writer to explore Middle Eastern and Asian ideas and mythologies in his writing. This was evident in works such as the poem “Brahma” and essay “Persian Poetry.” Learn More About Ralph Waldo EmersonEdgar Allan PoeGetty Images1809-1849Poe, originally from Boston, is best known for his 1845 poem “The Raven,” which explores themes of death and loss akin to his collection of other horror and mystery tales like “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”Poe began writing poems during adolescence. Surprisingly, given how famous his works have become, he initially received little profits from his writing and had to support himself by editing magazines in Philadelphia and New York City. Learn More About Edgar Allan PoeRelated: Why Edgar Allan Poe’s Death Remains a MysteryAdvertisement - Continue Reading BelowWalt WhitmanGetty Images1819-1892 Before his poetry earned him acclaim, Whitman worked as a journalist and was known for taking radical stances on issues like women’s property rights, immigration, and labor practices. But with the 1855 release of Leaves of Grass, the New York–born poet cemented his own unique writing style: using first person and rejecting rigid meter.One of the poems in the collection, “I Sing the Body Electric,” went on to inspire a short story by author Ray Bradbury, an episode of the science-fiction TV show The Twilight Zone, and even a 2012 song by Lana Del Rey. Learn More About Walt WhitmanEmily DickinsonGetty Images1830-1886The first volume of Dickinson’s poetry wasn’t published until 1890, four years after her death, and a full compilation wasn’t available until 1955. This is partly because she often wrote in seclusion, with some scholars suggesting she might have suffered from agoraphobia. Dickinson was known for using compressed verse in her writing and a first-person style similar to writers such as Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.Learn More About Emily DickinsonWilliam Butler YeatsGetty Images1865-1939Born in Ireland and raised in London, Yeats first had his poetry published in the Dublin University Review in 1885. He included legends, folklore, and ballads of his home country in much of his work. He was especially fascinated with the occult.In 1890, after he returned to London, Yeats helped form a poetry group called the Rhymers’ Club who met regularly to discuss their craft. Their input apparently helped, as Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.Learn More About William Butler YeatsAdvertisement - Continue Reading BelowRobert FrostGetty Images1874-1963Frost—who, following the death of his father, moved from California to Massachusetts with his mother and sister at age 11—became known for his references to New England life and locales in his work. His conversational poems avoided traditional verse forms and usually rhymes, too. Some of his notable pieces include “Fire and Ice,” “Mending Wall,” and “The Road Not Taken.”Frost received a plethora of honors throughout his career, including a record four Pulitzer Prizes and the then-unofficial title of U.S. poet laureate under President John F. Kennedy. Learn More About Robert Frost Pablo NerudaGetty Images1904-1973Neruda received the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature, and fellow author Gabriel García Márquez once called him “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.” From Chile, Neruda used his writing abilities to reflect on large-scale atrocities from the Spanish Civil War in Spain in Our Hearts, as well as two of his own relationships in Twenty Love Poems. However, Neruda’s success wasn’t without controversy, as he also wrote poems praising Communist figureheads like Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro. Investigations into his untimely death are ongoing, with some people alleging he was poisoned.Learn More About Pablo NerudaMaya AngelouGetty Images1928-2014A multiformat artist, Angelou received a Tony Award nomination in 1973 for the stage play Look Away and an Emmy nomination for the 1977 TV miniseries Roots. However, she is most famous for her writing, including her 1971 poetry collection Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie that earned her a Pulitzer nomination.Angelou was also only the second poet—after Frost—to perform at a presidential inauguration, reciting “On the Pulse of Morning” at Bill Clinton’s big day in 1993. Learn More About Maya AngelouRelated: The Meaning of Maya Angelou’s Poem “Still I Rise”Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowSylvia PlathGetty Images1932-1963Plath is considered a key figure of confessional poetry, a personal style of writing that includes descriptions of the author’s own trauma and intense psychological experiences. Her notable collection Ariel, published two years after her tragic death, was influenced by the depression she suffered after the fracturing of her marriage to Ted Hughes. In 1982, Plath became the first person to win a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for an assortment of her works titled The Collected Poems. Learn More About Sylvia PlathTyler PiccottiAssociate News Editor, Biography.comTyler Piccotti joined the Biography.com staff in 2023, and before that had worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University, an avid sports fan, a frequent moviegoer, and trivia buff.Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowPoets10 Famous Langston Hughes PoemsAmanda GormanLangston Hughes7 Facts About Literary Icon Langston HughesAdvertisement - Continue Reading BelowMaya AngelouHow Did Edgar Allan Poe Die?Why Edgar Allan Poe’s Death Remains a MysteryEdgar Allan Poe14 Hispanic Women Who Have Made History11 Notable Artists from the Harlem RenaissanceHomerJames BaldwinAdvertisement - Continue Reading BelowAbout Biography.comNewsletterContact UsOther Hearst SubscriptionsA Part of Hearst Digital MediaWe may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.©2024 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networks®protected in the US and other countries around the globe.Privacy NoticeTerms of UseCA Notice at CollectionDAA Industry Opt OutYour CA Privacy Rights/Shine the LightCookies ChoiPoetry | Definition, Types, Terms, Examples, & Facts | Britannica
Poetry | Definition, Types, Terms, Examples, & Facts | Britannica
Search Britannica
Click here to search
Search Britannica
Click here to search
Login
Subscribe
Subscribe
Home
Games & Quizzes
History & Society
Science & Tech
Biographies
Animals & Nature
Geography & Travel
Arts & Culture
Money
Videos
On This Day
One Good Fact
Dictionary
New Articles
History & Society
Lifestyles & Social Issues
Philosophy & Religion
Politics, Law & Government
World History
Science & Tech
Health & Medicine
Science
Technology
Biographies
Browse Biographies
Animals & Nature
Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
Environment
Fossils & Geologic Time
Mammals
Plants
Geography & Travel
Geography & Travel
Arts & Culture
Entertainment & Pop Culture
Literature
Sports & Recreation
Visual Arts
Companions
Demystified
Image Galleries
Infographics
Lists
Podcasts
Spotlights
Summaries
The Forum
Top Questions
#WTFact
100 Women
Britannica Kids
Saving Earth
Space Next 50
Student Center
Home
Games & Quizzes
History & Society
Science & Tech
Biographies
Animals & Nature
Geography & Travel
Arts & Culture
Money
Videos
poetry
Table of Contents
poetry
Table of Contents
IntroductionAttempts to define poetryPoetry and proseMajor differencesPoetic diction and experienceForm in poetryPoetry as a mode of thought: the Protean encounter
References & Edit History
Related Topics
Images & Videos
For Students
poetry summary
Quizzes
The Literary World
A Study of Poetry
Famous Poets and Poetic Form
Poetry: First Lines
Emily Dickinson
Related Questions
What is Miguel de Cervantes best known for?
What was Miguel de Cervantes’s early life like?
Why is Dante significant?
What was Dante’s early life like?
What is William Blake’s poetry about?
Read Next
World Poetry Day
The Afterlife of Miguel de Cervantes
12 Novels Considered the “Greatest Book Ever Written”
The Death of Shakespeare
9 Historic Buildings in Florence
Discover
The Largest Islands in the World
Celebrating Ramadan
8 Must-See Paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Who Votes for the Academy Awards?
Periods of American Literature
Ten Days That Vanished: The Switch to the Gregorian Calendar
New Seven Wonders of the World
Home
Literature
Poetry
Arts & Culture
poetry
literature
Actions
Cite
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies.
Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
MLA
APA
Chicago Manual of Style
Copy Citation
Share
Share
Share to social media
URL
https://www.britannica.com/art/poetry
Give Feedback
External Websites
Feedback
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Feedback Type
Select a type (Required)
Factual Correction
Spelling/Grammar Correction
Link Correction
Additional Information
Other
Your Feedback
Submit Feedback
Thank you for your feedback
Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
External Websites
Palm Beach State College - What is Poetry?
University of Texas - Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services - What is Poetry?
Humanities LibreTexts - About Poetry
Academia - History of Poetry
Poetry Foundation - U.S. Latinx Voices in Poetry
The Open University - What is poetry?
Britannica Websites
Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.
poetry - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
poetry - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
Please select which sections you would like to print:
Table Of Contents
Cite
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies.
Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
MLA
APA
Chicago Manual of Style
Copy Citation
Share
Share
Share to social media
URL
https://www.britannica.com/art/poetry
Feedback
External Websites
Feedback
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Feedback Type
Select a type (Required)
Factual Correction
Spelling/Grammar Correction
Link Correction
Additional Information
Other
Your Feedback
Submit Feedback
Thank you for your feedback
Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
External Websites
Palm Beach State College - What is Poetry?
University of Texas - Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services - What is Poetry?
Humanities LibreTexts - About Poetry
Academia - History of Poetry
Poetry Foundation - U.S. Latinx Voices in Poetry
The Open University - What is poetry?
Britannica Websites
Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.
poetry - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
poetry - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
Written by
Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov
Fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated:
Mar 1, 2024
•
Article History
Table of Contents
International Festival of Poetry
See all media
Category:
Arts & Culture
Key People:
William Shakespeare
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
John Milton
Samuel Johnson
Michelangelo
(Show more)
Related Topics:
epic
ballad
sonnet
heroic poetry
utopian poetry
(Show more)
See all related content →
Recent News
Mar. 1, 2024, 1:33 AM ET (The Guardian)
The best recent poetry – review roundup
poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm.(Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.)Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and older, present wherever religion is present, possibly—under some definitions—the primal and primary form of languages themselves. The present article means only to describe in as general a way as possible certain properties of poetry and of poetic thought regarded as in some sense independent modes of the mind. Naturally, not every tradition nor every local or individual variation can be—or need be—included, but the article illustrates by examples of poetry ranging between nursery rhyme and epic. This article considers the difficulty or impossibility of defining poetry; man’s nevertheless familiar acquaintance with it; the differences between poetry and prose; the idea of form in poetry; poetry as a mode of thought; and what little may be said in prose of the spirit of poetry. Attempts to define poetry Poetry is the other way of using language. Perhaps in some hypothetical beginning of things it was the only way of using language or simply was language tout court, prose being the derivative and younger rival. Both poetry and language are fashionably thought to have belonged to ritual in early agricultural societies; and poetry in particular, it has been claimed, arose at first in the form of magical spells recited to ensure a good harvest. Whatever the truth of this hypothesis, it blurs a useful distinction: by the time there begins to be a separate class of objects called poems, recognizable as such, these objects are no longer much regarded for their possible yam-growing properties, and such magic as they may be thought capable of has retired to do its business upon the human spirit and not directly upon the natural world outside.
Britannica Quiz
A Study of Poetry
Formally, poetry is recognizable by its greater dependence on at least one more parameter, the line, than appears in prose composition. This changes its appearance on the page; and it seems clear that people take their cue from this changed appearance, reading poetry aloud in a very different voice from their habitual voice, possibly because, as Ben Jonson said, poetry “speaketh somewhat above a mortal mouth.” If, as a test of this description, people are shown poems printed as prose, it most often turns out that they will read the result as prose simply because it looks that way; which is to say that they are no longer guided in their reading by the balance and shift of the line in relation to the breath as well as the syntax.
That is a minimal definition but perhaps not altogether uninformative. It may be all that ought to be attempted in the way of a definition: Poetry is the way it is because it looks that way, and it looks that way because it sounds that way and vice versa.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Subscribe Now
Poets | Poetry Foundation
Poets | Poetry Foundation
agendaangle-downangle-leftangleRightarrow-downarrowRightbarscalendarcaret-downcartchildrenhighlightlearningResourceslistmapMarkeropenBookp1pinpoetry-magazineprintquoteLeftquoteRightslideshowtagAudiotagVideoteenstrash-o
Skip to Content
Show Menu
Poetry Foundation
Poems & Poets
Poems Home
Poem Guides
Poets Home
Poem of the Day
Collections
Harriet
Harriet Books
Featured Blogger
All Posts
Articles
Articles Home
Essays
Interviews
Profiles
All Articles
Video
Video Home
All Videos
Podcasts
Podcasts Home
All Podcasts
Learn
Learn Home
Children
Teens
Adults
Educators
Glossary of Poetic Terms
Poetry Out Loud
Events
Upcoming Events
All Past Events
Exhibitions
Poetry Magazine
Poetry Magazine Home
Current Issue
Poetry Magazine Archive
Subscriptions
About the Magazine
How to Submit
Advertise with Us
About Us
About Us Home
Visit
Library
Foundation News
Awards & Grants
Media Partnerships
People
Press Releases
Contact Us
Newsletter
Subscribe
Search
Search
About Us
About Us Home
Visit
Library
Foundation News
Awards & Grants
Media Partnerships
People
Press Releases
Contact Us
Newsletters
Subscribe
Poetry Foundation
Poems & Poets
Poems Home
Poem Guides
Poets Home
Poem of the Day
Collections
Harriet
Harriet Books
Featured Blogger
All Posts
Articles
Articles Home
Essays
Interviews
Profiles
All Articles
Video
Video Home
All Videos
Podcasts
Podcasts Home
All Podcasts
Learn
Learn Home
Children
Teens
Adults
Educators
Glossary of Poetic Terms
Poetry Out Loud
Events
Upcoming Events
All Past Events
Exhibitions
Poetry Magazine
Poetry Magazine Home
Current Issue
Poetry Magazine Archive
Subscriptions
About the Magazine
How to Submit
Advertise with Us
Poets
Begin in delight, end in wisdom.
Explore Poets
Featured Poets
author
Salima Rivera
Poet, activist, and community organizer Salima Rivera was born in Isabela, Puerto Rico. In her late teens and her twenties, Rivera became a notable figure in the Chicago Latino literary...
Read More
author
John Tickhill
John Tickhill, also spelled John de Tickhill, is an English poet who wrote “A Bird in Bishopswood” in 1395. The poem was found by an archivist at St. Paul’s Cathedral,...
Read More
author
Petra Kuppers
Petra Kuppers is a disability culture activist and a community performance artist. She is the Anita Gonzalez Collegiate Professor of Performance Studies and Disability Culture in the English and Women’s...
Read More
Browse All Poets
Schools and Movements
The Black Arts Movement
By The Editors
Poetry and the Civil Rights Movement
By The Editors
The English Renaissance
By The Editors
Modernism
By The Editors
The Victorian Era
By The Editors
Featured Poem Samplers
Lucille Clifton 101
By Benjamin Voigt
Read More
Haki R. Madhubuti: Selections
By The Editors & Jenna Peng
Poems from an architect of the Black Arts Movement
Read More
Lorine Niedecker 101
By Benjamin Voigt
Exploring the work of a brilliant craftsperson.
Read More
Robert Frost: Selections
By Benjamin Voigt
An introduction to one of America’s most popular poets
Read More
E.E. Cummings 101
By The Editors
The complicated work of one of our most popular poets.
Read More
Langston Hughes 101
By Benjamin Voigt
Understanding a poet of the people, for the people.
Read More
More Poem Samplers
Poems
All Poems
Poem Guides
Audio Poems
Collections
Poets
All Poets
Articles
Essays
Interviews
Profiles
All Articles
Video
All Video
Podcasts
All Podcasts
Audio Poem of the Day
Learn
Children
Teens
Adults
Educators
Glossary of Poetic Terms
Poetry Out Loud
Events
All Past Events
Exhibitions
Poetry Magazine
Current Issue
Poetry Magazine Archive
Subscriptions
About the Magazine
How to Submit
Advertise with Us
About Us
Give
Visit
Library
Foundation News
Awards & Grants
Media Partnerships
People
Press Releases
Contact Us
Jobs
Find us on Twitter
Find us on Facebook
Find us on Instagram
Find us on Facebook
Poetry Foundation Children
Find us on Twitter
Poetry Magazine
Contact Us
Newsletters
Press
Privacy Policy
Terms of Use
Poetry Mobile App
61 West Superior Street, Chicago, IL 60654
© 2024 Poetry Foundation
See a problem on this page?
POET | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
POET | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
Dictionary
Translate
Grammar
Thesaurus
+Plus
Cambridge Dictionary +Plus
Shop
Cambridge Dictionary +Plus
My profile
+Plus help
Log out
Cambridge Dictionary +Plus
My profile
+Plus help
Log out
Log in
/
Sign up
English (UK)
Search
Search
English
Meaning of poet in English
poetnoun [ C ] uk
Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio
/ˈpəʊ.ɪt/ us
Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio
/ˈpoʊ.ət/
Add to word list
Add to word list
B1 a person who writes poems
Examples
Robert Burns is Scotland's most venerated poet.Wordsworth is one of Britain's most famous poets.symbolist poetsa minor poet of the 16th centuryWhat do you think the poet is getting at in these lines?
SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases
Literature
accentual
action hero
alliterative
alternative history
anapest
fictionality
fictionally
fictive
fictively
framing
non-character
non-literary
non-metrical
non-poetic
nonsense verse
tanka
tartan noir
theatrics
threnody
topos
See more results »
You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:
People who write for work or pleasure
Examples from literature
Built in 1600, the bridge got its name from Lord Byron, a famous 19th-century English poet.
(Definition of poet from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)
poet | American Dictionary
poetnoun [ C ] us
Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio
/ˈpoʊ·ɪt/
Add to word list
Add to word list
literature someone who writes poems
(Definition of poet from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)
Examples of poet
poet
The passages might even be seen - despite their preservation as written texts - to provide a unique witness to the improvisatory practices of oral poets.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
His recent electronic work explores the use of voice as a sound source and often involves collaboration with poets and visual artists.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
He even compares his state, deprived of a dramatic poet, to that of a maiden with no suitors.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
Instead, if a pattern is frequently used, it must be metrical (for the given poet).
From the Cambridge English Corpus
Scottish poets and editors (who may well have been the same people) were in many cases the dominant voices in the papers of the day.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
The scholar is compared favourably with that other notoriously frivolous and unproductive cultural figure, the poet.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
Once sensationalism became a public concern during the 1860s, critics commented repeatedly on the resemblance between the "fleshly" poets' sensuous, avant-garde poetry and sensation fiction.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
Through the power of the conceit, the two unlike parts of this metaphor evolve toward such similitude that the earthly poet takes on sacred power.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
Who produced these works and commissioned the poets, artists and composers to accomplish them?
From the Cambridge English Corpus
After 1555, the figure of the poet-singer seems to have vanished from literary circles.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
The publisher smiled at the illustrator of the poet who had an untidy beard.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.
Collocations with poet
poet
These are words often used in combination with poet.Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.
accomplished poetHe had been an accomplished poet in his youth.
From Wikipedia
This example is from Wikipedia and may be reused under a CC BY-SA license.
contemporary poetPoets meet in moderated conversation, discussing aesthetics, the role of the contemporary poet and other topical issues.
From Wikipedia
This example is from Wikipedia and may be reused under a CC BY-SA license.
famous poetA famous poet laureate wrote a book about it.
From the Hansard archive
Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.
See all collocations with poet
What is the pronunciation of poet?
B1
Translations of poet
in Chinese (Traditional)
詩人…
See more
in Chinese (Simplified)
诗人…
See more
in Spanish
poeta, poeta [masculine-feminine, singular]…
See more
in Portuguese
poeta, poeta/-tisa [masculine-feminine]…
See more
in more languages
in Marathi
in Japanese
in Turkish
in French
in Catalan
in Dutch
in Tamil
in Hindi
in Gujarati
in Danish
in Swedish
in Malay
in German
in Norwegian
in Urdu
in Ukrainian
in Russian
in Telugu
in Arabic
in Bengali
in Czech
in Indonesian
in Thai
in Vietnamese
in Polish
in Korean
in Italian
कवी…
See more
詩人, 歌人, 詩人（しじん）…
See more
şair…
See more
poète [masculine], poète/-oétesse…
See more
poeta…
See more
dichter…
See more
கவிதைகள் எழுதுபவர்…
See more
कवि…
See more
કવિ…
See more
digter, poet…
See more
poet, diktare, skald…
See more
penyajak…
See more
der Dichter / die Dichterin…
See more
poet [masculine], dikter [masculine], dikter…
See more
شاعر…
See more
поет…
See more
поэт…
See more
కవి, కవయిత్రి/ కవితలు రాసే వ్యక్తి…
See more
شاعِر…
See more
কবি…
See more
básník, -řka…
See more
penyair…
See more
กวี…
See more
nhà thơ…
See more
poet-a/ka, poeta…
See more
시인…
See more
poeta, -essa, poetessa…
See more
Need a translator?
Get a quick, free translation!
Translator tool
Browse
podos
poem
POEMS syndrome
poesy
poet
poet laureate
poetic
poetic justice
poetic licence
More meanings of poet
All
poet laureate
author/poet/artist in residence phrase
author/poet/artist in residence
an artist, poet, writer, etc. manqué
See all meanings
Idioms and phrases
author/poet/artist in residence phrase
Word of the Day
response
UK
Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio
/rɪˈspɒns/
US
Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio
/rɪˈspɑːns/
an answer or reaction
About this
Blog
Forget doing it or forget to do it? Avoiding common mistakes with verb patterns (2)
March 06, 2024
Read More
New Words
inverse vaccine
March 11, 2024
More new words
has been added to list
To top
Contents
EnglishAmericanExamplesCollocationsTranslations
© Cambridge University Press & Assessment 2024
Learn
Learn
Learn
New Words
Help
In Print
Word of the Year 2021
Word of the Year 2022
Word of the Year 2023
Develop
Develop
Develop
Dictionary API
Double-Click Lookup
Search Widgets
License Data
About
About
About
Accessibility
Cambridge English
Cambridge University Press & Assessment
Consent Management
Cookies and Privacy
Corpus
Terms of Use
© Cambridge University Press & Assessment 2024
Cambridge Dictionary +Plus
My profile
+Plus help
Log out
Dictionary
Definitions
Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English
English
Learner’s Dictionary
Essential British English
Essential American English
Translations
Click on the arrows to change the translation direction.
Bilingual Dictionaries
English–Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Simplified)–English
English–Chinese (Traditional)
Chinese (Traditional)–English
English–Dutch
Dutch–English
English–French
French–English
English–German
German–English
English–Indonesian
Indonesian–English
English–Italian
Italian–English
English–Japanese
Japanese–English
English–Norwegian
Norwegian–English
English–Polish
Polish–English
English–Portuguese
Portuguese–English
English–Spanish
Spanish–English
English–Swedish
Swedish–English
Semi-bilingual Dictionaries
English–Arabic
English–Bengali
English–Catalan
English–Czech
English–Danish
English–Gujarati
English–Hindi
English–Korean
English–Malay
English–Marathi
English–Russian
English–Tamil
English–Telugu
English–Thai
English–Turkish
English–Ukrainian
English–Urdu
English–Vietnamese
Translate
Grammar
Thesaurus
Pronunciation
Cambridge Dictionary +Plus
Shop
Cambridge Dictionary +Plus
My profile
+Plus help
Log out
Log in /
Sign up
English (UK)
Change
English (UK)
English (US)
Español
Русский
Português
Deutsch
Français
Italiano
中文 (简体)
正體中文 (繁體)
Polski
한국어
Türkçe
日本語
Tiếng Việt
Nederlands
Svenska
Dansk
Norsk
हिंदी
বাঙ্গালি
मराठी
ગુજરાતી
தமிழ்
తెలుగు
Українська
Follow us
Choose a dictionary
Recent and Recommended
Definitions
Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English
English
Learner’s Dictionary
Essential British English
Essential American English
Grammar and thesaurus
Usage explanations of natural written and spoken English
Grammar
Thesaurus
Pronunciation
British and American pronunciations with audio
English Pronunciation
Translation
Click on the arrows to change the translation direction.
Bilingual Dictionaries
English–Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Simplified)–English
English–Chinese (Traditional)
Chinese (Traditional)–English
English–Dutch
Dutch–English
English–French
French–English
English–German
German–English
English–Indonesian
Indonesian–English
English–Italian
Italian–English
English–Japanese
Japanese–English
English–Norwegian
Norwegian–English
English–Polish
Polish–English
English–Portuguese
Portuguese–English
English–Spanish
Spanish–English
English–Swedish
Swedish–English
Semi-bilingual Dictionaries
English–Arabic
English–Bengali
English–Catalan
English–Czech
English–Danish
English–Gujarati
English–Hindi
English–Korean
English–Malay
English–Marathi
English–Russian
English–Tamil
English–Telugu
English–Thai
English–Turkish
English–Ukrainian
English–Urdu
English–Vietnamese
Dictionary +Plus
Word Lists
Choose your language
English (UK)
English (US)
Español
Русский
Português
Deutsch
Français
Italiano
中文 (简体)
正體中文 (繁體)
Polski
한국어
Türkçe
日本語
Tiếng Việt
Nederlands
Svenska
Dansk
Norsk
हिंदी
বাঙ্গালি
मराठी
ગુજરાતી
தமிழ்
తెలుగు
Українська
Contents
English
Noun
American
Noun
Examples
Collocations
Translations
Grammar
All translations
My word lists
Add poet to one of your lists below, or create a new one.
More
Go to your word lists
Tell us about this example sentence:
The word in the example sentence does not match the entry word.
The sentence contains offensive content.
Cancel
Submit
The word in the example sentence does not match the entry word.
The sentence contains offensive content.
Cancel
Submit
Poets | Academy of American Poets
Poets | Academy of American Poets
Skip to main content
Poets.org
mobileMenu
Poems
Poets
Poem-a-Day
National Poetry Month
Materials for Teachers
Academy of American Poets
American Poets Magazine
Main navigation
Poets.org
Academy of American Poets
National Poetry Month
American Poets Magazine
User account menu
Log in
Membership
Donate
Donate
Donate
Search
Submit
Poets
Search more than 3,000 biographies of contemporary and classic poets.
Page submenu block
find poems
find poets
poem-a-day
library (texts, books & more)
materials for teachers
poetry near you
Search more than 3,000 biographies of contemporary and classic poets. Browse all poets, filter the list by state and schools & movements, or search by name below.
Sign up for Poem-a-Day to receive new, previously unpublished poems by some of America's best poets writing today.
State of Birth
- Any - Alaska Alabama Arkansas Arizona California Colorado Connecticut District of Columbia Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Iowa Idaho Illinois Indiana Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Massachusetts Maryland Maine Michigan Minnesota Missouri Mississippi Montana North Carolina North Dakota Nebraska New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico Nevada New York Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Virginia Virgin Islands Vermont Washington Wisconsin
School / Movement
- Any -Nuyorican PoetryObjectivistsTranscendentalismOULIPOPoets of ExileRomanticismNew York SchoolNew FormalismMisty PoetsModernismModernismoNégritudeSan Francisco RenaissanceSlam/Spoken WordSurrealismSymbolistsTranslatorsVictorianMetaphysical PoetLanguage PoetryConfessional PoetryContemporaryCowboy PoetryDark Room CollectiveConcrete PoetryConceptual PoetryAugustanBeatBlack ArtsBlack MountainEthnopoeticsFireside PoetHarlem RenaissanceImagismJazz PoetryKanaka Maoli poetryFuturismFugitivesPoets of World War IFlarfFormalismAcmeism
Search by poet name…
Title
School / Movement
Years
John Keats
Romanticism
1795
–1821
Naomi Shihab Nye
1952
–
Gary Soto
1952
–
Maya Angelou
Contemporary
1928
–2014
Anne Bradstreet
1612
–1672
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Fireside Poet
1807
–1882
William Wordsworth
Romanticism
1770
–1850
W. B. Yeats
Romanticism
1865
–1939
Ada Limón
Contemporary
1976
–
Amanda Gorman
Contemporary
1998
–
Andrea Gibson
Slam/Spoken Word
1975
–
Robert Frost
Modernism
1874
–1963
Langston Hughes
Harlem Renaissance, Jazz Poetry
1901
–1967
Walt Whitman
Romanticism
1819
–1892
William Shakespeare
1564
–1616
Edgar Allan Poe
Romanticism
1809
–1849
John Berryman
1914
–1972
E. E. Cummings
Modernism, Concrete Poetry, Poets of World War I
1894
–1962
William Blake
Romanticism
1757
–1827
Emily Dickinson
Romanticism
1830
–1886
Pagination
Current page
1
Page
2
Page
3
Page
4
…
Next page
››
Last page
Last »
Newsletter Sign Up
Academy of American Poets Newsletter
Academy of American Poets Educator Newsletter
Teach This Poem
Poem-a-Day
Email Address
Support Us
Become a Member
Donate Now
Get Involved
Make a Bequest
Advertise with Us
Poets Shop
Follow Us
Tumblr
SoundCloud
YouTube
Footer
poets.org
Find Poems
Find Poets
Poetry Near You
Jobs for Poets
Read Stanza
Privacy Policy
Press Center
Advertise
academy of american poets
About Us
Programs
Prizes
First Book Award
James Laughlin Award
Ambroggio Prize
Chancellors
Staff
national poetry month
Poetry & the Creative Mind
Dear Poet Project
Poster
30 Ways to Celebrate
Sponsorship
american poets
Books Noted
Essays
Advertise
© Academy of American Poets, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038
poets
.org
Poetry - Wikipedia
Poetry - Wikipedia
Jump to content
Main menu
Main menu
move to sidebar
hide
Navigation
Main pageContentsCurrent eventsRandom articleAbout WikipediaContact usDonate
Contribute
HelpLearn to editCommunity portalRecent changesUpload file
Search
Search
Create account
Log in
Personal tools
Create account Log in
Pages for logged out editors learn more
ContributionsTalk
Contents
move to sidebar
hide
(Top)
1History
Toggle History subsection
1.1Early works
1.2Western traditions
1.320th-century and 21st-century disputes
2Elements
Toggle Elements subsection
2.1Prosody
2.1.1Rhythm
2.1.2Meter
2.1.3Metrical patterns
2.2Rhyme, alliteration, assonance
2.2.1Rhyming schemes
2.3Form in poetry
2.3.1Lines and stanzas
2.3.2Visual presentation
2.4Diction
3Forms
Toggle Forms subsection
3.1Sonnet
3.2Shi
3.3Villanelle
3.4Limerick
3.5Tanka
3.6Haiku
3.7Khlong
3.7.1Khlong si suphap
3.8Ode
3.9Ghazal
4Genres
Toggle Genres subsection
4.1Narrative poetry
4.2Lyric poetry
4.3Epic poetry
4.4Satirical poetry
4.5Elegy
4.6Verse fable
4.7Dramatic poetry
4.8Speculative poetry
4.9Prose poetry
4.10Light poetry
4.11Slam poetry
4.12Performance poetry
4.13Language happenings
5See also
6Notes
7References
Toggle References subsection
7.1Citations
8Bibliography
9Further reading
Toggle the table of contents
Poetry
183 languages
AfrikaansAlemannischአማርኛالعربيةAragonésঅসমীয়াAsturianuअवधीAvañe'ẽAymar aruAzərbaycancaتۆرکجهবাংলাBân-lâm-gúБашҡортсаБеларускаяБеларуская (тарашкевіца)भोजपुरीBikol CentralБългарскиབོད་ཡིགBosanskiBrezhonegБуряадCatalàЧӑвашлаCebuanoČeštinaCorsuCymraegDanskDeutschEestiΕλληνικάEspañolEsperantoEstremeñuEuskaraفارسیFiji HindiFrançaisFryskGaeilgeGaelgGàidhligGalegoГӀалгӀай贛語गोंयची कोंकणी / Gõychi Konknni客家語/Hak-kâ-ngî한국어HausaՀայերենहिन्दीHrvatskiIdoIgboIlokanoবিষ্ণুপ্রিয়া মণিপুরীBahasa IndonesiaInterlinguaInterlingueИронIsiZuluÍslenskaItalianoעבריתJawaKabɩyɛಕನ್ನಡKapampanganКъарачай-малкъарქართულიकॉशुर / کٲشُرҚазақшаKernowekKiswahiliKreyòl ayisyenKriyòl gwiyannenKurdîКыргызчаLadinLadinoລາວLatinaLatviešuLietuviųLimburgsLingua Franca NovaLivvinkarjalaLa .lojban.LombardMagyarमैथिलीМакедонскиMalagasyമലയാളംMaltiमराठीმარგალურიمصرىဘာသာမန်Bahasa Melayuꯃꯤꯇꯩ ꯂꯣꯟ閩東語 / Mìng-dĕ̤ng-ngṳ̄МокшеньМонголNederlandsNedersaksiesनेपालीनेपाल भाषा日本語НохчийнNorsk bokmålNorsk nynorskNouormandOccitanОлык марийଓଡ଼ିଆOromooOʻzbekcha / ўзбекчаਪੰਜਾਬੀپنجابیPapiamentuپښتوPatoisPicardPiemontèisPolskiΠοντιακάPortuguêsQaraqalpaqshaQırımtatarcaRomânăRuna SimiРусиньскыйРусскийसंस्कृतम्ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤScotsSeelterskSetswanaShqipසිංහලSimple EnglishسنڌيSiSwatiSlovenčinaSlovenščinaSoomaaligaکوردیСрпски / srpskiSrpskohrvatski / српскохрватскиSundaSuomiSvenskaTagalogதமிழ்Татарча / tatarçaతెలుగుไทยТоҷикӣᏣᎳᎩTürkçeУкраїнськаاردوئۇيغۇرچە / UyghurcheVahcuenghVènetoVepsän kel’Tiếng ViệtVolapükWalon文言West-VlamsWinaray吴语ייִדישYorùbá粵語ZazakiŽemaitėška中文
Edit links
ArticleTalk
English
ReadEditView history
Tools
Tools
move to sidebar
hide
Actions
ReadEditView history
General
What links hereRelated changesUpload fileSpecial pagesPermanent linkPage informationCite this pageGet shortened URLDownload QR codeWikidata item
Print/export
Download as PDFPrintable version
In other projects
Wikimedia CommonsWikinewsWikiquoteWikiversity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 7 March 2024.
Form of literature
This article is about the art form. For other uses, see Poetry (disambiguation).
"Love poem" redirects here. For the EP, see Love Poem (EP). For the IU song, see Love Poem (song).
Literature
Oral literature
Folklore
Fable
Fairy tale
Folk play
Folksong
Heroic epic
Legend
Myth
Proverb
Oration
Performance
Audiobook
Spoken word
Saying
Major written forms
Drama
Closet drama
Poetry
Lyric
Narrative
Prose
Nonsense
Verse
Ergodic
Electronic
Long prose fiction
Anthology
Serial
Novel/romance
Short prose fiction
Novella
Novelette
Short story
Sketch
Flash fiction
Parable
Religious
Wisdom
Prose genres
Fiction
Speculative
Realist
Children's
Genre
Adventure
Coming-of-age
Crime
Erotic
Fantasy
Military
Paranormal
Romance
Science fiction
Supernatural
Western
Horror
Historical
Encyclopedic
Non-fiction
Academic
History
Philosophy
Anecdote
Epistle
Essay
Journalism
Letter
Life
Nature
Persuasive
Travelogue
Poetry genres
Narrative
Epic
Dramatic
Verse novel
National
Lyric
Ballad
Elegy
Epigram
Ghazal
Haiku
Hymn
Limerick
Ode
Qasida
Sonnet
Villanelle
Lists
Epic
Groups and movements
Poets
Dramatic genres
Comedy
Libretto
Play
Historical
Moral
Satire
Script
Tragedy
Tragicomedy
History
Ancient
Classical
Medieval
Modernist
Postmodern
Lists and outlines
Outline
Glossary
Books
Writers
Movements
Cycles
Literary awards
poetry
Theory and criticism
Sociology
Magazines
Composition
Language
Narrative
Feud
Literature portalvte
Poetry (a term derived from the Greek word poiesis, "making"), also called verse,[note 1] is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic[1][2][3] 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.[4] 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.
Ancient Greek attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song, and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition, verse form, and rhyme, and emphasized the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from more objectively-informative prosaic writing.
Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretations of words, or to evoke emotive responses. Devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and rhythm may convey musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony, and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly, figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, and metonymy[5] establish a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm.
Some poetry types are unique to particular cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Readers accustomed to identifying poetry with Dante, Goethe, Mickiewicz, or Rumi may think of it as written in lines based on rhyme and regular meter. There are, however, traditions, such as Biblical poetry and alliterative verse, that use other means to create rhythm and euphony. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition,[6] testing the principle of euphony itself or altogether forgoing rhyme or set rhythm.[7][8]
Poets – as, from the Greek, "makers" of language – have contributed to the evolution of the linguistic, expressive, and utilitarian qualities of their languages. In an increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles, and techniques from diverse cultures and languages.
A Western cultural tradition (extending at least from Homer to Rilke) associates the production of poetry with inspiration – often by a Muse (either classical or contemporary), or through other (often canonised) poets' work which sets some kind of example or challenge.
In first-person poems, the lyrics are spoken by an "I", a character who may be termed the speaker, distinct from the poet (the author). Thus if, for example, a poem asserts, "I killed my enemy in Reno", it is the speaker, not the poet, who is the killer (unless this "confession" is a form of metaphor which needs to be considered in closer context – via close reading).
History[edit]
Main articles: History of poetry and Literary theory
Early works[edit]
Some scholars believe that the art of poetry may predate literacy, and developed from folk epics and other oral genres.[9][10]
Others, however, suggest that poetry did not necessarily predate writing.[11]
The oldest surviving epic poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, dates from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer (in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq), and was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets and, later, on papyrus.[12] The Istanbul tablet#2461, dating to c. 2000 BCE, describes an annual rite in which the king symbolically married and mated with the goddess Inanna to ensure fertility and prosperity; some have labelled it the world's oldest love poem.[13][14] An example of Egyptian epic poetry is The Story of Sinuhe (c. 1800 BCE).[15]
Other ancient epics includes the Greek Iliad and the Odyssey; the Persian Avestan books (the Yasna); the Roman national epic, Virgil's Aeneid (written between 29 and 19 BCE); and the Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Epic poetry appears to have been composed in poetic form as an aid to memorization and oral transmission in ancient societies.[11][16]
Other forms of poetry, including such ancient collections of religious hymns as the Indian Sanskrit-language Rigveda, the Avestan Gathas, the Hurrian songs, and the Hebrew Psalms, possibly developed directly from folk songs. The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry, the Classic of Poetry (Shijing), were initially lyrics.[17] The Shijing, with its collection of poems and folk songs, was heavily valued by the philosopher Confucius and is considered to be one of the official Confucian classics. His remarks on the subject have become an invaluable source in ancient music theory.[18]
The efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in "poetics"—the study of the aesthetics of poetry.[19] Some ancient societies, such as China's through the Shijing, developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance.[20] More recently, thinkers have struggled to find a definition that could encompass formal differences as great as those between Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Matsuo Bashō's Oku no Hosomichi, as well as differences in content spanning Tanakh religious poetry, love poetry, and rap.[21]
Until recently, the earliest examples of stressed poetry had been thought to be works composed by Romanos the Melodist (fl. 6th century CE). However, Tim Whitmarsh writes that an inscribed Greek poem predated Romanos' stressed poetry.
[22][23][24]
The oldest known love poem. Sumerian terracotta tablet#2461 from Nippur, Iraq. Ur III period, 2037–2029 BCE. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul
The philosopher Confucius was influential in the developed approach to poetry and ancient music theory.
An early Chinese poetics, the Kǒngzǐ Shīlùn (孔子詩論), discussing the Shijing (Classic of Poetry)
Western traditions[edit]
Aristotle
Classical thinkers in the West employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Notably, the existing fragments of Aristotle's Poetics describe three genres of poetry—the epic, the comic, and the tragic—and develop rules to distinguish the highest-quality poetry in each genre, based on the perceived underlying purposes of the genre.[25] Later aestheticians identified three major genres: epic poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry.[26]
John Keats
Aristotle's work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age,[27] as well as in Europe during the Renaissance.[28] Later poets and aestheticians often distinguished poetry from, and defined it in opposition to prose, which they generally understood as writing with a proclivity to logical explication and a linear narrative structure.[29]
This does not imply that poetry is illogical or lacks narration, but rather that poetry is an attempt to render the beautiful or sublime without the burden of engaging the logical or narrative thought-process. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic "negative capability".[30] This "romantic" approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic. This approach remained influential into the 20th century.[31]
During the 18th and 19th centuries, there was also substantially more interaction among the various poetic traditions, in part due to the spread of European colonialism and the attendant rise in global trade.[32] In addition to a boom in translation, during the Romantic period numerous ancient works were rediscovered.[33]
20th-century and 21st-century disputes[edit]
Archibald MacLeish
Some 20th-century literary theorists rely less on the ostensible opposition of prose and poetry, instead focusing on the poet as simply one who creates using language, and poetry as what the poet creates.[34] The underlying concept of the poet as creator is not uncommon, and some modernist poets essentially do not distinguish between the creation of a poem with words, and creative acts in other media. Other modernists challenge the very attempt to define poetry as misguided.[35]
The rejection of traditional forms and structures for poetry that began in the first half of the 20th century coincided with a questioning of the purpose and meaning of traditional definitions of poetry and of distinctions between poetry and prose, particularly given examples of poetic prose and prosaic poetry. Numerous modernist poets have written in non-traditional forms or in what traditionally would have been considered prose, although their writing was generally infused with poetic diction and often with rhythm and tone established by non-metrical means. While there was a substantial formalist reaction within the modernist schools to the breakdown of structure, this reaction focused as much on the development of new formal structures and syntheses as on the revival of older forms and structures.[36]
Postmodernism goes beyond modernism's emphasis on the creative role of the poet, to emphasize the role of the reader of a text (hermeneutics), and to highlight the complex cultural web within which a poem is read.[37] Today, throughout the world, poetry often incorporates poetic form and diction from other cultures and from the past, further confounding attempts at definition and classification that once made sense within a tradition such as the Western canon.[38]
The early 21st-century poetic tradition appears to continue to strongly orient itself to earlier precursor poetic traditions such as those initiated by Whitman, Emerson, and Wordsworth. The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman (1929–2016) used the phrase "the anxiety of demand" to describe the contemporary response to older poetic traditions as "being fearful that the fact no longer has a form",[39] building on a trope introduced by Emerson. Emerson had maintained that in the debate concerning poetic structure where either "form" or "fact" could predominate, that one need simply "Ask the fact for the form." This has been challenged at various levels by other literary scholars such as Harold Bloom (1930–2019), who has stated: "The generation of poets who stand together now, mature and ready to write the major American verse of the twenty-first century, may yet be seen as what Stevens called 'a great shadow's last embellishment,' the shadow being Emerson's."[40]
Elements[edit]
Prosody[edit]
Main article: Meter (poetry)
Prosody is the study of the meter, rhythm, and intonation of a poem. Rhythm and meter are different, although closely related.[41] Meter is the definitive pattern established for a verse (such as iambic pentameter), while rhythm is the actual sound that results from a line of poetry. Prosody also may be used more specifically to refer to the scanning of poetic lines to show meter.[42]
Rhythm[edit]
Main articles: Timing (linguistics), tone (linguistics), and Pitch accent
Robinson Jeffers
The methods for creating poetic rhythm vary across languages and between poetic traditions. Languages are often described as having timing set primarily by accents, syllables, or moras, depending on how rhythm is established, although a language can be influenced by multiple approaches. Japanese is a mora-timed language. Latin, Catalan, French, Leonese, Galician and Spanish are called syllable-timed languages. Stress-timed languages include English, Russian and, generally, German.[43] Varying intonation also affects how rhythm is perceived. Languages can rely on either pitch or tone. Some languages with a pitch accent are Vedic Sanskrit or Ancient Greek. Tonal languages include Chinese, Vietnamese and most Subsaharan languages.[44]
Metrical rhythm generally involves precise arrangements of stresses or syllables into repeated patterns called feet within a line. In Modern English verse the pattern of stresses primarily differentiate feet, so rhythm based on meter in Modern English is most often founded on the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (alone or elided).[45] In the classical languages, on the other hand, while the metrical units are similar, vowel length rather than stresses define the meter.[46] Old English poetry used a metrical pattern involving varied numbers of syllables but a fixed number of strong stresses in each line.[47]
Marianne Moore
The chief device of ancient Hebrew Biblical poetry, including many of the psalms, was parallelism, a rhetorical structure in which successive lines reflected each other in grammatical structure, sound structure, notional content, or all three. Parallelism lent itself to antiphonal or call-and-response performance, which could also be reinforced by intonation. Thus, Biblical poetry relies much less on metrical feet to create rhythm, but instead creates rhythm based on much larger sound units of lines, phrases and sentences.[48] Some classical poetry forms, such as Venpa of the Tamil language, had rigid grammars (to the point that they could be expressed as a context-free grammar) which ensured a rhythm.[49]
Classical Chinese poetics, based on the tone system of Middle Chinese, recognized two kinds of tones: the level (平 píng) tone and the oblique (仄 zè) tones, a category consisting of the rising (上 sháng) tone, the departing (去 qù) tone and the entering (入 rù) tone. Certain forms of poetry placed constraints on which syllables were required to be level and which oblique.
The formal patterns of meter used in Modern English verse to create rhythm no longer dominate contemporary English poetry. In the case of free verse, rhythm is often organized based on looser units of cadence rather than a regular meter. Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams are three notable poets who reject the idea that regular accentual meter is critical to English poetry.[50] Jeffers experimented with sprung rhythm as an alternative to accentual rhythm.[51]
Meter[edit]
Main article: Scansion
Attic red-figure kathalos painting of Sappho from c. 470 BCE[52]
In the Western poetic tradition, meters are customarily grouped according to a characteristic metrical foot and the number of feet per line.[53] The number of metrical feet in a line are described using Greek terminology: tetrameter for four feet and hexameter for six feet, for example.[54] Thus, "iambic pentameter" is a meter comprising five feet per line, in which the predominant kind of foot is the "iamb". This metric system originated in ancient Greek poetry, and was used by poets such as Pindar and Sappho, and by the great tragedians of Athens. Similarly, "dactylic hexameter", comprises six feet per line, of which the dominant kind of foot is the "dactyl". Dactylic hexameter was the traditional meter of Greek epic poetry, the earliest extant examples of which are the works of Homer and Hesiod.[55] Iambic pentameter and dactylic hexameter were later used by a number of poets, including William Shakespeare and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, respectively.[56] The most common metrical feet in English are:[57]
Homer: Roman bust, based on Greek original[58]
iamb – one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (e.g. des-cribe, in-clude, re-tract)
trochee—one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (e.g. pic-ture, flow-er)
dactyl – one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (e.g. an-no-tate, sim-i-lar)
anapaest—two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable (e.g. com-pre-hend)
spondee—two stressed syllables together (e.g. heart-beat, four-teen)
pyrrhic—two unstressed syllables together (rare, usually used to end dactylic hexameter)
There are a wide range of names for other types of feet, right up to a choriamb, a four syllable metric foot with a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables and closing with a stressed syllable. The choriamb is derived from some ancient Greek and Latin poetry.[55] Languages which use vowel length or intonation rather than or in addition to syllabic accents in determining meter, such as Ottoman Turkish or Vedic, often have concepts similar to the iamb and dactyl to describe common combinations of long and short sounds.[59]
Each of these types of feet has a certain "feel," whether alone or in combination with other feet. The iamb, for example, is the most natural form of rhythm in the English language, and generally produces a subtle but stable verse.[60] Scanning meter can often show the basic or fundamental pattern underlying a verse, but does not show the varying degrees of stress, as well as the differing pitches and lengths of syllables.[61]
There is debate over how useful a multiplicity of different "feet" is in describing meter. For example, Robert Pinsky has argued that while dactyls are important in classical verse, English dactylic verse uses dactyls very irregularly and can be better described based on patterns of iambs and anapests, feet which he considers natural to the language.[62] Actual rhythm is significantly more complex than the basic scanned meter described above, and many scholars have sought to develop systems that would scan such complexity. Vladimir Nabokov noted that overlaid on top of the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse was a separate pattern of accents resulting from the natural pitch of the spoken words, and suggested that the term "scud" be used to distinguish an unaccented stress from an accented stress.[63]
Metrical patterns[edit]
Main article: Meter (poetry)
Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876) is mainly in anapestic tetrameter.
Different traditions and genres of poetry tend to use different meters, ranging from the Shakespearean iambic pentameter and the Homeric dactylic hexameter to the anapestic tetrameter used in many nursery rhymes. However, a number of variations to the established meter are common, both to provide emphasis or attention to a given foot or line and to avoid boring repetition. For example, the stress in a foot may be inverted, a caesura (or pause) may be added (sometimes in place of a foot or stress), or the final foot in a line may be given a feminine ending to soften it or be replaced by a spondee to emphasize it and create a hard stop. Some patterns (such as iambic pentameter) tend to be fairly regular, while other patterns, such as dactylic hexameter, tend to be highly irregular.[64] Regularity can vary between language. In addition, different patterns often develop distinctively in different languages, so that, for example, iambic tetrameter in Russian will generally reflect a regularity in the use of accents to reinforce the meter, which does not occur, or occurs to a much lesser extent, in English.[65]
Alexander Pushkin
Some common metrical patterns, with notable examples of poets and poems who use them, include:
Iambic pentameter (John Milton, Paradise Lost; William Shakespeare, Sonnets)[66]
Dactylic hexameter (Homer, Iliad; Virgil, Aeneid)[67]
Iambic tetrameter (Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"; Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin; Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening)[68]
Trochaic octameter (Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven")[69]
Trochaic tetrameter (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha; the Finnish national epic, The Kalevala, is also in trochaic tetrameter, the natural rhythm of Finnish and Estonian)
Alexandrin (Jean Racine, Phèdre)[70]
Rhyme, alliteration, assonance[edit]
Main articles: Rhyme, Alliterative verse, and Assonance
The Old English epic poem Beowulf is in alliterative verse.
Rhyme, alliteration, assonance and consonance are ways of creating repetitive patterns of sound. They may be used as an independent structural element in a poem, to reinforce rhythmic patterns, or as an ornamental element.[71] They can also carry a meaning separate from the repetitive sound patterns created. For example, Chaucer used heavy alliteration to mock Old English verse and to paint a character as archaic.[72]
Rhyme consists of identical ("hard-rhyme") or similar ("soft-rhyme") sounds placed at the ends of lines or at locations within lines ("internal rhyme"). Languages vary in the richness of their rhyming structures; Italian, for example, has a rich rhyming structure permitting maintenance of a limited set of rhymes throughout a lengthy poem. The richness results from word endings that follow regular forms. English, with its irregular word endings adopted from other languages, is less rich in rhyme.[73] The degree of richness of a language's rhyming structures plays a substantial role in determining what poetic forms are commonly used in that language.[74]
Alliteration is the repetition of letters or letter-sounds at the beginning of two or more words immediately succeeding each other, or at short intervals; or the recurrence of the same letter in accented parts of words. Alliteration and assonance played a key role in structuring early Germanic, Norse and Old English forms of poetry. The alliterative patterns of early Germanic poetry interweave meter and alliteration as a key part of their structure, so that the metrical pattern determines when the listener expects instances of alliteration to occur. This can be compared to an ornamental use of alliteration in most Modern European poetry, where alliterative patterns are not formal or carried through full stanzas. Alliteration is particularly useful in languages with less rich rhyming structures.
Assonance, where the use of similar vowel sounds within a word rather than similar sounds at the beginning or end of a word, was widely used in skaldic poetry but goes back to the Homeric epic.[75] Because verbs carry much of the pitch in the English language, assonance can loosely evoke the tonal elements of Chinese poetry and so is useful in translating Chinese poetry.[76] Consonance occurs where a consonant sound is repeated throughout a sentence without putting the sound only at the front of a word. Consonance provokes a more subtle effect than alliteration and so is less useful as a structural element.[74]
Rhyming schemes[edit]
Main article: Rhyme scheme
Divine Comedy: Dante and Beatrice see God as a point of light.
In many languages, including Arabic and modern European languages, poets use rhyme in set patterns as a structural element for specific poetic forms, such as ballads, sonnets and rhyming couplets. However, the use of structural rhyme is not universal even within the European tradition. Much modern poetry avoids traditional rhyme schemes. Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme.[77] Rhyme entered European poetry in the High Middle Ages, due to the influence of the Arabic language in Al Andalus.[78] Arabic language poets used rhyme extensively not only with the development of literary Arabic in the sixth century, but also with the much older oral poetry, as in their long, rhyming qasidas.[79] Some rhyming schemes have become associated with a specific language, culture or period, while other rhyming schemes have achieved use across languages, cultures or time periods. Some forms of poetry carry a consistent and well-defined rhyming scheme, such as the chant royal or the rubaiyat, while other poetic forms have variable rhyme schemes.[80]
Most rhyme schemes are described using letters that correspond to sets of rhymes, so if the first, second and fourth lines of a quatrain rhyme with each other and the third line do not rhyme, the quatrain is said to have an AA BA rhyme scheme. This rhyme scheme is the one used, for example, in the rubaiyat form.[81] Similarly, an A BB A quatrain (what is known as "enclosed rhyme") is used in such forms as the Petrarchan sonnet.[82] Some types of more complicated rhyming schemes have developed names of their own, separate from the "a-bc" convention, such as the ottava rima and terza rima.[83] The types and use of differing rhyming schemes are discussed further in the main article.
Form in poetry[edit]
Poetic form is more flexible in modernist and post-modernist poetry and continues to be less structured than in previous literary eras. Many modern poets eschew recognizable structures or forms and write in free verse. Free verse is, however, not "formless" but composed of a series of more subtle, more flexible prosodic elements.[84] Thus poetry remains, in all its styles, distinguished from prose by form;[85] some regard for basic formal structures of poetry will be found in all varieties of free verse, however much such structures may appear to have been ignored.[86] Similarly, in the best poetry written in classic styles there will be departures from strict form for emphasis or effect.[87]
Among major structural elements used in poetry are the line, the stanza or verse paragraph, and larger combinations of stanzas or lines such as cantos. Also sometimes used are broader visual presentations of words and calligraphy. These basic units of poetic form are often combined into larger structures, called poetic forms or poetic modes (see the following section), as in the sonnet.
Lines and stanzas[edit]
Main articles: Line (poetry) and Stanza
Poetry is often separated into lines on a page, in a process known as lineation. These lines may be based on the number of metrical feet or may emphasize a rhyming pattern at the ends of lines. Lines may serve other functions, particularly where the poem is not written in a formal metrical pattern. Lines can separate, compare or contrast thoughts expressed in different units, or can highlight a change in tone.[88] See the article on line breaks for information about the division between lines.
Lines of poems are often organized into stanzas, which are denominated by the number of lines included. Thus a collection of two lines is a couplet (or distich), three lines a triplet (or tercet), four lines a quatrain, and so on. These lines may or may not relate to each other by rhyme or rhythm. For example, a couplet may be two lines with identical meters which rhyme or two lines held together by a common meter alone.[89]
Blok's Russian poem, "Noch, ulitsa, fonar, apteka" ("Night, street, lamp, drugstore"), on a wall in Leiden
Other poems may be organized into verse paragraphs, in which regular rhymes with established rhythms are not used, but the poetic tone is instead established by a collection of rhythms, alliterations, and rhymes established in paragraph form.[90] Many medieval poems were written in verse paragraphs, even where regular rhymes and rhythms were used.[91]
In many forms of poetry, stanzas are interlocking, so that the rhyming scheme or other structural elements of one stanza determine those of succeeding stanzas. Examples of such interlocking stanzas include, for example, the ghazal and the villanelle, where a refrain (or, in the case of the villanelle, refrains) is established in the first stanza which then repeats in subsequent stanzas. Related to the use of interlocking stanzas is their use to separate thematic parts of a poem. For example, the strophe, antistrophe and epode of the ode form are often separated into one or more stanzas.[92]
In some cases, particularly lengthier formal poetry such as some forms of epic poetry, stanzas themselves are constructed according to strict rules and then combined. In skaldic poetry, the dróttkvætt stanza had eight lines, each having three "lifts" produced with alliteration or assonance. In addition to two or three alliterations, the odd-numbered lines had partial rhyme of consonants with dissimilar vowels, not necessarily at the beginning of the word; the even lines contained internal rhyme in set syllables (not necessarily at the end of the word). Each half-line had exactly six syllables, and each line ended in a trochee. The arrangement of dróttkvætts followed far less rigid rules than the construction of the individual dróttkvætts.[93]
Visual presentation[edit]
Main article: Visual poetry
Even before the advent of printing, the visual appearance of poetry often added meaning or depth. Acrostic poems conveyed meanings in the initial letters of lines or in letters at other specific places in a poem.[94] In Arabic, Hebrew and Chinese poetry, the visual presentation of finely calligraphed poems has played an important part in the overall effect of many poems.[95]
With the advent of printing, poets gained greater control over the mass-produced visual presentations of their work. Visual elements have become an important part of the poet's toolbox, and many poets have sought to use visual presentation for a wide range of purposes. Some Modernist poets have made the placement of individual lines or groups of lines on the page an integral part of the poem's composition. At times, this complements the poem's rhythm through visual caesuras of various lengths, or creates juxtapositions so as to accentuate meaning, ambiguity or irony, or simply to create an aesthetically pleasing form. In its most extreme form, this can lead to concrete poetry or asemic writing.[96][97]
Diction[edit]
Main article: Poetic diction
Poetic diction treats the manner in which language is used, and refers not only to the sound but also to the underlying meaning and its interaction with sound and form.[98] Many languages and poetic forms have very specific poetic dictions, to the point where distinct grammars and dialects are used specifically for poetry.[99][100] Registers in poetry can range from strict employment of ordinary speech patterns, as favoured in much late-20th-century prosody,[101] through to highly ornate uses of language, as in medieval and Renaissance poetry.[102]
Poetic diction can include rhetorical devices such as simile and metaphor, as well as tones of voice, such as irony. Aristotle wrote in the Poetics that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor."[103] Since the rise of Modernism, some poets have opted for a poetic diction that de-emphasizes rhetorical devices, attempting instead the direct presentation of things and experiences and the exploration of tone.[104] On the other hand, Surrealists have pushed rhetorical devices to their limits, making frequent use of catachresis.[105]
Allegorical stories are central to the poetic diction of many cultures, and were prominent in the West during classical times, the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Aesop's Fables, repeatedly rendered in both verse and prose since first being recorded about 500 BCE, are perhaps the richest single source of allegorical poetry through the ages.[106] Other notables examples include the Roman de la Rose, a 13th-century French poem, William Langland's Piers Ploughman in the 14th century, and Jean de la Fontaine's Fables (influenced by Aesop's) in the 17th century. Rather than being fully allegorical, however, a poem may contain symbols or allusions that deepen the meaning or effect of its words without constructing a full allegory.[107]
Another element of poetic diction can be the use of vivid imagery for effect. The juxtaposition of unexpected or impossible images is, for example, a particularly strong element in surrealist poetry and haiku.[108] Vivid images are often endowed with symbolism or metaphor. Many poetic dictions use repetitive phrases for effect, either a short phrase (such as Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" or "the wine-dark sea") or a longer refrain. Such repetition can add a somber tone to a poem, or can be laced with irony as the context of the words changes.[109]
Forms[edit]
See also: Category: Poetic forms
Statue of runic singer Petri Shemeikka at Kolmikulmanpuisto Park in Sortavala, Karelia
Specific poetic forms have been developed by many cultures. In more developed, closed or "received" poetic forms, the rhyming scheme, meter and other elements of a poem are based on sets of rules, ranging from the relatively loose rules that govern the construction of an elegy to the highly formalized structure of the ghazal or villanelle.[110] Described below are some common forms of poetry widely used across a number of languages. Additional forms of poetry may be found in the discussions of the poetry of particular cultures or periods and in the glossary.
Sonnet[edit]
Main article: Sonnet
William Shakespeare
Among the most common forms of poetry, popular from the Late Middle Ages on, is the sonnet, which by the 13th century had become standardized as fourteen lines following a set rhyme scheme and logical structure. By the 14th century and the Italian Renaissance, the form had further crystallized under the pen of Petrarch, whose sonnets were translated in the 16th century by Sir Thomas Wyatt, who is credited with introducing the sonnet form into English literature.[111] A traditional Italian or Petrarchan sonnet follows the rhyme scheme ABBA, ABBA, CDECDE, though some variation, perhaps the most common being CDCDCD, especially within the final six lines (or sestet), is common.[112] The English (or Shakespearean) sonnet follows the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, introducing a third quatrain (grouping of four lines), a final couplet, and a greater amount of variety in rhyme than is usually found in its Italian predecessors. By convention, sonnets in English typically use iambic pentameter, while in the Romance languages, the hendecasyllable and Alexandrine are the most widely used meters.
Sonnets of all types often make use of a volta, or "turn," a point in the poem at which an idea is turned on its head, a question is answered (or introduced), or the subject matter is further complicated. This volta can often take the form of a "but" statement contradicting or complicating the content of the earlier lines. In the Petrarchan sonnet, the turn tends to fall around the division between the first two quatrains and the sestet, while English sonnets usually place it at or near the beginning of the closing couplet.
Carol Ann Duffy
Sonnets are particularly associated with high poetic diction, vivid imagery, and romantic love, largely due to the influence of Petrarch as well as of early English practitioners such as Edmund Spenser (who gave his name to the Spenserian sonnet), Michael Drayton, and Shakespeare, whose sonnets are among the most famous in English poetry, with twenty being included in the Oxford Book of English Verse.[113] However, the twists and turns associated with the volta allow for a logical flexibility applicable to many subjects.[114] Poets from the earliest centuries of the sonnet to the present have used the form to address topics related to politics (John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Claude McKay), theology (John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins), war (Wilfred Owen, e.e. cummings), and gender and sexuality (Carol Ann Duffy). Further, postmodern authors such as Ted Berrigan and John Berryman have challenged the traditional definitions of the sonnet form, rendering entire sequences of "sonnets" that often lack rhyme, a clear logical progression, or even a consistent count of fourteen lines.
Shi[edit]
Main article: Shi (poetry)
Du Fu, "On Visiting the Temple of Laozi"
Shi (simplified Chinese: 诗; traditional Chinese: 詩; pinyin: shī; Wade–Giles: shih) Is the main type of Classical Chinese poetry.[115] Within this form of poetry the most important variations are "folk song" styled verse (yuefu), "old style" verse (gushi), "modern style" verse (jintishi). In all cases, rhyming is obligatory. The Yuefu is a folk ballad or a poem written in the folk ballad style, and the number of lines and the length of the lines could be irregular. For the other variations of shi poetry, generally either a four line (quatrain, or jueju) or else an eight-line poem is normal; either way with the even numbered lines rhyming. The line length is scanned by an according number of characters (according to the convention that one character equals one syllable), and are predominantly either five or seven characters long, with a caesura before the final three syllables. The lines are generally end-stopped, considered as a series of couplets, and exhibit verbal parallelism as a key poetic device.[116] The "old style" verse (Gushi) is less formally strict than the jintishi, or regulated verse, which, despite the name "new style" verse actually had its theoretical basis laid as far back as Shen Yue (441–513 CE), although not considered to have reached its full development until the time of Chen Zi'ang (661–702 CE).[117] A good example of a poet known for his Gushi poems is Li Bai (701–762 CE). Among its other rules, the jintishi rules regulate the tonal variations within a poem, including the use of set patterns of the four tones of Middle Chinese. The basic form of jintishi (sushi) has eight lines in four couplets, with parallelism between the lines in the second and third couplets. The couplets with parallel lines contain contrasting content but an identical grammatical relationship between words. Jintishi often have a rich poetic diction, full of allusion, and can have a wide range of subject, including history and politics.[118][119] One of the masters of the form was Du Fu (712–770 CE), who wrote during the Tang Dynasty (8th century).[120]
Villanelle[edit]
Main article: Villanelle
W. H. Auden
The villanelle is a nineteen-line poem made up of five triplets with a closing quatrain; the poem is characterized by having two refrains, initially used in the first and third lines of the first stanza, and then alternately used at the close of each subsequent stanza until the final quatrain, which is concluded by the two refrains. The remaining lines of the poem have an AB alternating rhyme.[121] The villanelle has been used regularly in the English language since the late 19th century by such poets as Dylan Thomas,[122] W. H. Auden,[123] and Elizabeth Bishop.[124]
Limerick[edit]
Main article: Limerick (poetry)
A limerick is a poem that consists of five lines and is often humorous. Rhythm is very important in limericks for the first, second and fifth lines must have seven to ten syllables. However, the third and fourth lines only need five to seven. Lines 1, 2 and 5 rhyme with each other, and lines 3 and 4 rhyme with each other. Practitioners of the limerick included Edward Lear, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson.[125]
Tanka[edit]
Main article: Tanka
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Tanka is a form of unrhymed Japanese poetry, with five sections totalling 31 on (phonological units identical to morae), structured in a 5–7–5–7–7 pattern.[126] There is generally a shift in tone and subject matter between the upper 5–7–5 phrase and the lower 7–7 phrase. Tanka were written as early as the Asuka period by such poets as Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (fl. late 7th century), at a time when Japan was emerging from a period where much of its poetry followed Chinese form.[127] Tanka was originally the shorter form of Japanese formal poetry (which was generally referred to as "waka"), and was used more heavily to explore personal rather than public themes. By the tenth century, tanka had become the dominant form of Japanese poetry, to the point where the originally general term waka ("Japanese poetry") came to be used exclusively for tanka. Tanka are still widely written today.[128]
Haiku[edit]
Main article: Haiku
Haiku is a popular form of unrhymed Japanese poetry, which evolved in the 17th century from the hokku, or opening verse of a renku.[129] Generally written in a single vertical line, the haiku contains three sections totalling 17 on (morae), structured in a 5–7–5 pattern. Traditionally, haiku contain a kireji, or cutting word, usually placed at the end of one of the poem's three sections, and a kigo, or season-word.[130] The most famous exponent of the haiku was Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694). An example of his writing:[131]
富士の風や扇にのせて江戸土産
fuji no kaze ya oogi ni nosete Edo miyage
the wind of Mt. Fuji
I've brought on my fan!
a gift from Edo
Khlong[edit]
Main article: Thai poetry
The khlong (โคลง, [kʰlōːŋ]) is among the oldest Thai poetic forms. This is reflected in its requirements on the tone markings of certain syllables, which must be marked with mai ek (ไม้เอก, Thai pronunciation: [máj èːk], ◌่) or mai tho (ไม้โท, [máj tʰōː], ◌้). This was likely derived from when the Thai language had three tones (as opposed to today's five, a split which occurred during the Ayutthaya Kingdom period), two of which corresponded directly to the aforementioned marks. It is usually regarded as an advanced and sophisticated poetic form.[132]
In khlong, a stanza (bot, บท, Thai pronunciation: [bòt]) has a number of lines (bat, บาท, Thai pronunciation: [bàːt], from Pali and Sanskrit pāda), depending on the type. The bat are subdivided into two wak (วรรค, Thai pronunciation: [wák], from Sanskrit varga).[note 2] The first wak has five syllables, the second has a variable number, also depending on the type, and may be optional. The type of khlong is named by the number of bat in a stanza; it may also be divided into two main types: khlong suphap (โคลงสุภาพ, [kʰlōːŋ sù.pʰâːp]) and khlong dan (โคลงดั้น, [kʰlōːŋ dân]). The two differ in the number of syllables in the second wak of the final bat and inter-stanza rhyming rules.[132]
Khlong si suphap[edit]
The khlong si suphap (โคลงสี่สุภาพ, [kʰlōːŋ sìː sù.pʰâːp]) is the most common form still currently employed. It has four bat per stanza (si translates as four). The first wak of each bat has five syllables. The second wak has two or four syllables in the first and third bat, two syllables in the second, and four syllables in the fourth. Mai ek is required for seven syllables and Mai tho is required for four, as shown below. "Dead word" syllables are allowed in place of syllables which require mai ek, and changing the spelling of words to satisfy the criteria is usually acceptable.
Ode[edit]
Main article: Ode
Horace
Odes were first developed by poets writing in ancient Greek, such as Pindar, and Latin, such as Horace. Forms of odes appear in many of the cultures that were influenced by the Greeks and Latins.[133] The ode generally has three parts: a strophe, an antistrophe, and an epode. The strophe and the antistrophe of the ode possess similar metrical structures and, depending on the tradition, similar rhyme structures. In contrast, the epode is written with a different scheme and structure. Odes have a formal poetic diction and generally deal with a serious subject. The strophe and antistrophe look at the subject from different, often conflicting, perspectives, with the epode moving to a higher level to either view or resolve the underlying issues. Odes are often intended to be recited or sung by two choruses (or individuals), with the first reciting the strophe, the second the antistrophe, and both together the epode.[134] Over time, differing forms for odes have developed with considerable variations in form and structure, but generally showing the original influence of the Pindaric or Horatian ode. One non-Western form which resembles the ode is the qasida in Arabic poetry.[135]
Ghazal[edit]
Main article: Ghazal
The ghazal (also ghazel, gazel, gazal, or gozol) is a form of poetry common in Arabic, Bengali, Persian and Urdu. In classic form, the ghazal has from five to fifteen rhyming couplets that share a refrain at the end of the second line. This refrain may be of one or several syllables and is preceded by a rhyme. Each line has an identical meter and is of the same length.[136] The ghazal often reflects on a theme of unattainable love or divinity.[137]
As with other forms with a long history in many languages, many variations have been developed, including forms with a quasi-musical poetic diction in Urdu.[138] Ghazals have a classical affinity with Sufism, and a number of major Sufi religious works are written in ghazal form. The relatively steady meter and the use of the refrain produce an incantatory effect, which complements Sufi mystical themes well.[139] Among the masters of the form are Rumi, the celebrated 13th-century Persian poet,[140] and his equally famous near-contemporary Hafez. Hafez uses the ghazal to expose hypocrisy and the pitfalls of worldliness, but also expertly exploits the form to express the divine depths and secular subtleties of love; creating translations that meaningfully capture such complexities of content and form is immensely challenging, but lauded attempts to do so in English include Gertrude Bell's Poems from the Divan of Hafiz[141] and Beloved: 81 poems from Hafez (Bloodaxe Books) whose Preface addresses in detail the problematic nature of translating ghazals and whose versions (according to Fatemeh Keshavarz, Roshan Institute for Persian Studies) preserve "that audacious and multilayered richness one finds in the originals".[142] Indeed, Hafez's ghazals have been the subject of much analysis, commentary and interpretation, influencing post-fourteenth century Persian writing more than any other author.[143][144] The West-östlicher Diwan of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a collection of lyrical poems, is inspired by the Persian poet Hafez.[145][146][147]
Genres[edit]
In addition to specific forms of poems, poetry is often thought of in terms of different genres and subgenres. A poetic genre is generally a tradition or classification of poetry based on the subject matter, style, or other broader literary characteristics.[148] Some commentators view genres as natural forms of literature. Others view the study of genres as the study of how different works relate and refer to other works.[149]
Narrative poetry[edit]
Chaucer
Main article: Narrative poetry
Narrative poetry is a genre of poetry that tells a story. Broadly it subsumes epic poetry, but the term "narrative poetry" is often reserved for smaller works, generally with more appeal to human interest. Narrative poetry may be the oldest type of poetry. Many scholars of Homer have concluded that his Iliad and Odyssey were composed of compilations of shorter narrative poems that related individual episodes. Much narrative poetry—such as Scottish and English ballads, and Baltic and Slavic heroic poems—is performance poetry with roots in a preliterate oral tradition. It has been speculated that some features that distinguish poetry from prose, such as meter, alliteration and kennings, once served as memory aids for bards who recited traditional tales.[150]
Notable narrative poets have included Ovid, Dante, Juan Ruiz, William Langland, Chaucer, Fernando de Rojas, Luís de Camões, Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Robert Burns, Adam Mickiewicz, Alexander Pushkin, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Edgar Allan Poe, Alfred Tennyson, and Anne Carson.
Lyric poetry[edit]
Christine de Pizan (left)
Main article: Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre that, unlike epic and dramatic poetry, does not attempt to tell a story but instead is of a more personal nature. Poems in this genre tend to be shorter, melodic, and contemplative. Rather than depicting characters and actions, it portrays the poet's own feelings, states of mind, and perceptions.[151] Notable poets in this genre include Christine de Pizan, John Donne, Charles Baudelaire, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Antonio Machado, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Epic poetry[edit]
Main article: Epic poetry
Camões
Epic poetry is a genre of poetry, and a major form of narrative literature. This genre is often defined as lengthy poems concerning events of a heroic or important nature to the culture of the time. It recounts, in a continuous narrative, the life and works of a heroic or mythological person or group of persons.[152] Examples of epic poems are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, the Nibelungenlied, Luís de Camões' Os Lusíadas, the Cantar de Mio Cid, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Mahabharata, Lönnrot's Kalevala, Valmiki's Ramayana, Ferdowsi's Shahnama, Nizami (or Nezami)'s Khamse (Five Books), and the Epic of King Gesar. While the composition of epic poetry, and of long poems generally, became less common in the west after the early 20th century, some notable epics have continued to be written. The Cantos by Ezra Pound, Helen in Egypt by H.D., and Paterson by William Carlos Williams are examples of modern epics. Derek Walcott won a Nobel prize in 1992 to a great extent on the basis of his epic, Omeros.[153]
Satirical poetry[edit]
John Wilmot
Poetry can be a powerful vehicle for satire. The Romans had a strong tradition of satirical poetry, often written for political purposes. A notable example is the Roman poet Juvenal's satires.[154]
The same is true of the English satirical tradition. John Dryden (a Tory), the first Poet Laureate, produced in 1682 Mac Flecknoe, subtitled "A Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S." (a reference to Thomas Shadwell).[155] Satirical poets outside England include Poland's Ignacy Krasicki, Azerbaijan's Sabir, Portugal's Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage, and Korea's Kim Kirim, especially noted for his Gisangdo.
Elegy[edit]
Main article: Elegy
Thomas Gray
An elegy is a mournful, melancholy or plaintive poem, especially a lament for the dead or a funeral song. The term "elegy," which originally denoted a type of poetic meter (elegiac meter), commonly describes a poem of mourning. An elegy may also reflect something that seems to the author to be strange or mysterious. The elegy, as a reflection on a death, on a sorrow more generally, or on something mysterious, may be classified as a form of lyric poetry.[156][157]
Notable practitioners of elegiac poetry have included Propertius, Jorge Manrique, Jan Kochanowski, Chidiock Tichborne, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, John Milton, Thomas Gray, Charlotte Smith, William Cullen Bryant, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Evgeny Baratynsky, Alfred Tennyson, Walt Whitman, Antonio Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, William Butler Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Virginia Woolf.
Verse fable[edit]
Krasicki
Main article: Fable
The fable is an ancient literary genre, often (though not invariably) set in verse. It is a succinct story that features anthropomorphised animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that illustrate a moral lesson (a "moral"). Verse fables have used a variety of meter and rhyme patterns.[158]
Notable verse fabulists have included Aesop, Vishnu Sarma, Phaedrus, Marie de France, Robert Henryson, Biernat of Lublin, Jean de La Fontaine, Ignacy Krasicki, Félix María de Samaniego, Tomás de Iriarte, Ivan Krylov and Ambrose Bierce.
Dramatic poetry[edit]
Goethe
Main articles: Verse drama and dramatic verse, Theatre of ancient Greece, Sanskrit drama, Chinese Opera, and Noh
Dramatic poetry is drama written in verse to be spoken or sung, and appears in varying, sometimes related forms in many cultures. Greek tragedy in verse dates to the 6th century B.C., and may have been an influence on the development of Sanskrit drama,[159] just as Indian drama in turn appears to have influenced the development of the bianwen verse dramas in China, forerunners of Chinese Opera.[160] East Asian verse dramas also include Japanese Noh. Examples of dramatic poetry in Persian literature include Nizami's two famous dramatic works, Layla and Majnun and Khosrow and Shirin, Ferdowsi's tragedies such as Rostam and Sohrab, Rumi's Masnavi, Gorgani's tragedy of Vis and Ramin, and Vahshi's tragedy of Farhad. American poets of 20th century revive dramatic poetry, including Ezra Pound in "Sestina: Altaforte,"[161] T.S. Eliot with "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".[162][163]
Speculative poetry[edit]
Main article: Speculative poetry
Poe
Speculative poetry, also known as fantastic poetry (of which weird or macabre poetry is a major sub-classification), is a poetic genre which deals thematically with subjects which are "beyond reality", whether via extrapolation as in science fiction or via weird and horrific themes as in horror fiction. Such poetry appears regularly in modern science fiction and horror fiction magazines. Edgar Allan Poe is sometimes seen as the "father of speculative poetry".[164] Poe's most remarkable achievement in the genre was his anticipation, by three-quarters of a century, of the Big Bang theory of the universe's origin, in his then much-derided 1848 essay (which, due to its very speculative nature, he termed a "prose poem"), Eureka: A Prose Poem.[165][166]
Prose poetry[edit]
Main article: Prose poetry
Baudelaire
Prose poetry is a hybrid genre that shows attributes of both prose and poetry. It may be indistinguishable from the micro-story (a.k.a. the "short short story", "flash fiction"). While some examples of earlier prose strike modern readers as poetic, prose poetry is commonly regarded as having originated in 19th-century France, where its practitioners included Aloysius Bertrand, Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Arthur Rimbaud.[167] Since the late 1980s especially, prose poetry has gained increasing popularity, with entire journals, such as The Prose Poem: An International Journal,[168] Contemporary Haibun Online,[169] and Haibun Today[170] devoted to that genre and its hybrids. Latin American poets of the 20th century who wrote prose poems include Octavio Paz and Alejandra Pizarnik.
Light poetry[edit]
Main article: Light poetry
Lewis Carroll
Light poetry, or light verse, is poetry that attempts to be humorous. Poems considered "light" are usually brief, and can be on a frivolous or serious subject, and often feature word play, including puns, adventurous rhyme and heavy alliteration. Although a few free verse poets have excelled at light verse outside the formal verse tradition, light verse in English usually obeys at least some formal conventions. Common forms include the limerick, the clerihew, and the double dactyl.
While light poetry is sometimes condemned as doggerel, or thought of as poetry composed casually, humor often makes a serious point in a subtle or subversive way. Many of the most renowned "serious" poets have also excelled at light verse. Notable writers of light poetry include Lewis Carroll, Ogden Nash, X. J. Kennedy, Willard R. Espy, Shel Silverstein, Gavin Ewart and Wendy Cope.
Slam poetry[edit]
Main article: Poetry slam
Smith
Slam poetry as a genre originated in 1986 in Chicago, Illinois, when Marc Kelly Smith organized the first slam.[171][172] Slam performers comment emotively, aloud before an audience, on personal, social, or other matters. Slam focuses on the aesthetics of word play, intonation, and voice inflection. Slam poetry is often competitive, at dedicated "poetry slam" contests.[173]
Performance poetry[edit]
Main article: Performance poetry
Performance poetry, similar to slam in that it occurs before an audience, is a genre of poetry that may fuse a variety of disciplines in a performance of a text, such as dance, music, and other aspects of performance art.[174][175]
Language happenings[edit]
The term happening was popularized by the avant-garde movements in the 1950s and regard spontaneous, site-specific performances.[176] Language happenings, termed from the poetics collective OBJECT:PARADISE in 2018, are events which focus less on poetry as a prescriptive literary genre, but more as a descriptive linguistic act and performance, often incorporating broader forms of performance art while poetry is read or created in that moment.[177][178]
See also[edit]
Poetry portal
Anti-poetry
Digital poetry
Glossary of poetry terms
Improvisation
List of poetry groups and movements
Oral poetry
Outline of poetry
Persona poetry
Phonestheme
Phono-semantic matching
Poetry reading
Rhapsode
Semantic differential
Spoken word
Notes[edit]
^ The word "verse" functions here as a synecdoche which takes the poetic element of verse as representative of the entire art form. The word "verse" is often so used when comparing poetry to prose.
^ In literary studies, line in western poetry is translated as bat. However, in some forms, the unit is more equivalent to wak. To avoid confusion, this article will refer to wak and bat instead of line, which may refer to either.
References[edit]
Citations[edit]
^ "Poetry". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. 2013. Archived from the original on 18 June 2013. poetry [...] Literary work in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature.
^ "Poetry". Merriam-Webster. 2013. poetry [...] 2 : writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm
^ "Poetry". Dictionary.com. 2013. poetry [...] 1 the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts.
^ Ruth Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa, Open Book Publishers, 2012.
^ Strachan, John R.; Terry, Richard G. (2000). Poetry: an introduction. Edinburgh University Press. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-8147-9797-6.
^ Eliot, T. S. (1999) [1923]. "The Function of Criticism". Selected Essays. Faber & Faber. pp. 13–34. ISBN 978-0-15-180387-3.
^ Longenbach, James (1997). Modern Poetry After Modernism. Oxford University Press. p. 9, 103. ISBN 978-0-19-510178-2.
^ Schmidt, Michael, ed. (1999). The Harvill Book of Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Harvill Press. pp. xxvii–xxxiii. ISBN 978-1-86046-735-6.
^ Höivik, Susan; Luger, Kurt (3 June 2009). "Folk Media for Biodiversity Conservation: A Pilot Project from the Himalaya-Hindu Kush". International Communication Gazette. 71 (4): 321–346. doi:10.1177/1748048509102184. S2CID 143947520.
^ Goody, Jack (1987). The Interface Between the Written and the Oral. Cambridge University Press. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-521-33794-6. [...] poetry, tales, recitations of various kinds existed long before writing was introduced and these oral forms continued in modified 'oral' forms, even after the establishment of a written literature.
^ a b Goody, Jack (1987). The Interface Between the Written and the Oral. Cambridge University Press. p. 98. ISBN 978-0-521-33794-6.
^ The Epic of Gilgamesh. Translated by Sanders, N. K. (Revised ed.). Penguin Books. 1972. pp. 7–8.
^ Mark, Joshua J. (13 August 2014). "The World's Oldest Love Poem". '[...] What I held in my hand was one of the oldest love songs written down by the hand of man [...].'
^ Arsu, Şebnem (14 February 2006). "Oldest Line in the World". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 May 2015. A small tablet in a special display this month in the Istanbul Museum of the Ancient Orient is thought to be the oldest love poem ever found, the words of a lover from more than 4,000 years ago.
^ Chyla, Julia; Rosińska-Balik, Karolina; Debowska-Ludwin, Joanna (2017). Current Research in Egyptology 17. Oxbow Books. pp. 159–161. ISBN 978-1-78570-603-5.
^ Ahl, Frederick; Roisman, Hanna M. (1996). The Odyssey Re-Formed. Cornell University Press. pp. 1–26. ISBN 978-0-8014-8335-6..
^ Ebrey, Patricia (1993). Chinese Civilisation: A Sourcebook (2nd ed.). The Free Press. pp. 11–13. ISBN 978-0-02-908752-7.
^ Cai, Zong-qi (July 1999). "In Quest of Harmony: Plato and Confucius on Poetry". Philosophy East and West. 49 (3): 317–345. doi:10.2307/1399898. JSTOR 1399898.
^ Abondolo, Daniel (2001). A poetics handbook: verbal art in the European tradition. Curzon. pp. 52–53. ISBN 978-0-7007-1223-6.
^ Gentz, Joachim (2008). "Ritual Meaning of Textual Form: Evidence from Early Commentaries of the Historiographic and Ritual Traditions". In Kern, Martin (ed.). Text and Ritual in Early China. University of Washington Press. pp. 124–148. ISBN 978-0-295-98787-3.
^ Habib, Rafey (2005). A history of literary criticism. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 607–609, 620. ISBN 978-0-631-23200-1.
^ JARRETT A. LOBELL (April 2022). "Poetic License". www.archaeology.org.
^ Alison Flood (September 2021). "'I don't care': text shows modern poetry began much earlier than believed". www.theguardian.com.
^ Tim Whitmarsh (August 2021). "Less Care, More Stress: A Rythmyic Poem From the Romas Empire". The Cambridge Classical Journal. 67: 135–163. doi:10.1017/S1750270521000051. S2CID 242230189.
^ Heath, Malcolm, ed. (1997). Aristotle's Poetics. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-044636-4.
^ Frow, John (2007). Genre (Reprint ed.). Routledge. pp. 57–59. ISBN 978-0-415-28063-1.
^ Boggess, William F. (1968). "'Hermannus Alemannus' Latin Anthology of Arabic Poetry". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 88 (4): 657–670. doi:10.2307/598112. JSTOR 598112. Burnett, Charles (2001). "Learned Knowledge of Arabic Poetry, Rhymed Prose, and Didactic Verse from Petrus Alfonsi to Petrarch". Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: A Festschrift for Peter Dronke. Brill Academic Publishers. pp. 29–62. ISBN 978-90-04-11964-2.
^ Grendler, Paul F. (2004). The Universities of the Italian Renaissance. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 239. ISBN 978-0-8018-8055-1.
^ Kant, Immanuel (1914). Critique of Judgment. Translated by Bernard, J. H. Macmillan. p. 131. Kant argues that the nature of poetry as a self-consciously abstract and beautiful form raises it to the highest level among the verbal arts, with tone or music following it, and only after that the more logical and narrative prose.
^ Ou, Li (2009). Keats and negative capability. Continuum. pp. 1–3. ISBN 978-1-4411-4724-0.
^ Watten, Barrett (2003). The constructivist moment: from material text to cultural poetics. Wesleyan University Press. pp. 17–19. ISBN 978-0-8195-6610-2.
^ Abu-Mahfouz, Ahmad (2008). "Translation as a Blending of Cultures". Journal of Translation. 4 (1): 1–5. doi:10.54395/jot-x8fne.
^ Highet, Gilbert (1985). The classical tradition: Greek and Roman influences on western literature (Reissued ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 355, 360, 479. ISBN 978-0-19-500206-5.
^ Wimsatt, William K. Jr.; Brooks, Cleanth (1957). Literary Criticism: A Short History. Vintage Books. p. 374.
^ Johnson, Jeannine (2007). Why write poetry?: modern poets defending their art. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. p. 148. ISBN 978-0-8386-4105-7.
^ Jenkins, Lee M.; Davis, Alex, eds. (2007). The Cambridge companion to modernist poetry. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–7, 38, 156. ISBN 978-0-521-61815-1.
^ Barthes, Roland (1978). "Death of the Author". Image-Music-Text. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. pp. 142–148.
^ Connor, Steven (1997). Postmodernist culture: an introduction to theories of the contemporary (2nd ed.). Blackwell. pp. 123–28. ISBN 978-0-631-20052-9.
^ Preminger, Alex (1975). Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and Poetics (enlarged ed.). London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. p. 919. ISBN 978-1349156177.
^
Bloom, Harold (2010) [1986]. "Introduction". In Bloom, Harold (ed.). Contemporary Poets. Bloom's modern critical views (revised ed.). New York: Infobase Publishing. p. 7. ISBN 978-1604135886. Retrieved 7 May 2019. The generation of poets who stand together now, mature and ready to write the major American verse of the twenty-first century, may yet be seen as what Stevens called 'a great shadow's last embellishment,' the shadow being Emerson's.
^ Pinsky 1998, p. 52
^ Fussell 1965, pp. 20–21
^ Schülter, Julia (2005). Rhythmic Grammar. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 24, 304, 332.
^ Yip, Moira (2002). Tone. Cambridge textbooks in linguistics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–4, 130. ISBN 978-0-521-77314-0.
^ Fussell 1965, p. 12
^ Jorgens, Elise Bickford (1982). The well-tun'd word : musical interpretations of English poetry, 1597–1651. University of Minnesota Press. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-8166-1029-7.
^ Fussell 1965, pp. 75–76
^ Walker-Jones, Arthur (2003). Hebrew for biblical interpretation. Society of Biblical Literature. pp. 211–213. ISBN 978-1-58983-086-8.
^ Bala Sundara Raman, L.; Ishwar, S.; Kumar Ravindranath, Sanjeeth (2003). "Context Free Grammar for Natural Language Constructs: An implementation for Venpa Class of Tamil Poetry". Tamil Internet: 128–136. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.3.7738.
^ Hartman, Charles O. (1980). Free Verse An Essay on Prosody. Northwestern University Press. pp. 24, 44, 47. ISBN 978-0-8101-1316-9.
^ Hollander 1981, p. 22
^ McClure, Laura K. (2002), Sexuality and Gender in the Classical World: Readings and Sources, Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers, p. 38, ISBN 978-0-631-22589-8
^ Corn 1997, p. 24
^ Corn 1997, pp. 25, 34
^ a b Annis, William S. (January 2006). "Introduction to Greek Meter" (PDF). Aoidoi. pp. 1–15.
^ "Examples of English metrical systems" (PDF). Fondazione Universitaria in provincia di Belluno. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 March 2012. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
^ Fussell 1965, pp. 23–24
^ "Portrait Bust". britishmuseum.org. The British Museum.
^ Kiparsky, Paul (September 1975). "Stress, Syntax, and Meter". Language. 51 (3): 576–616. doi:10.2307/412889. JSTOR 412889.
^ Thompson, John (1961). The Founding of English Meter. Columbia University Press. p. 36.
^ Pinsky 1998, pp. 11–24
^ Pinsky 1998, p. 66
^ Nabokov, Vladimir (1964). Notes on Prosody. Bollingen Foundation. pp. 9–13. ISBN 978-0-691-01760-0.
^ Fussell 1965, pp. 36–71
^ Nabokov, Vladimir (1964). Notes on Prosody. Bollingen Foundation. pp. 46–47. ISBN 978-0-691-01760-0.
^ Adams 1997, p. 206
^ Adams 1997, p. 63
^ "What is Tetrameter?". tetrameter.com. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
^ Adams 1997, p. 60
^ James, E. D.; Jondorf, G. (1994). Racine: Phèdre. Cambridge University Press. pp. 32–34. ISBN 978-0-521-39721-6.
^ Corn 1997, p. 65
^ Osberg, Richard H. (2001). "'I kan nat geeste': Chaucer's Artful Alliteration". In Gaylord, Alan T. (ed.). Essays on the art of Chaucer's Verse. Routledge. pp. 195–228. ISBN 978-0-8153-2951-0.
^ Alighieri, Dante (1994). "Introduction". The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation. Translated by Pinsky, Robert. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-17674-7.
^ a b Kiparsky, Paul (Summer 1973). "The Role of Linguistics in a Theory of Poetry". Daedalus. 102 (3): 231–44.
^ Russom, Geoffrey (1998). Beowulf and old Germanic metre. Cambridge University Press. pp. 64–86. ISBN 978-0-521-59340-3.
^ Liu, James J. Y. (1990). Art of Chinese Poetry. University of Chicago Press. pp. 21–22. ISBN 978-0-226-48687-1.
^ Wesling, Donald (1980). The chances of rhyme. University of California Press. pp. x–xi, 38–42. ISBN 978-0-520-03861-5.
^ Menocal, María Rosa (2003). The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History. University of Pennsylvania. p. 88. ISBN 978-0-8122-1324-9.
^ Sperl, Stefan, ed. (1996). Qasida poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa. Brill. p. 49. ISBN 978-90-04-10387-0.
^ Adams 1997, pp. 71–104
^ Fussell 1965, p. 27
^ Adams 1997, pp. 88–91
^ Corn 1997, pp. 81–82, 85
^ "FREE VERSE". 25 May 2015. Retrieved 22 May 2021.
^ "Forms of verse: Free verse [Victoria and Albert Museum]". 4 July 2011. Retrieved 22 May 2021.
^ Whitworth, Michael H. (2010). Reading modernist poetry. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-4051-6731-4.
^ Hollander 1981, pp. 50–51
^ Corn 1997, pp. 7–13
^ Corn 1997, pp. 78–82
^ Corn 1997, p. 78
^ Dalrymple, Roger, ed. (2004). Middle English Literature: a guide to criticism. Blackwell Publishing. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-631-23290-2.
^ Corn 1997, pp. 78–79
^ McTurk, Rory, ed. (2004). Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture. Blackwell. pp. 269–280. ISBN 978-1-4051-3738-6.
^ Freedman, David Noel (July 1972). "Acrostics and Metrics in Hebrew Poetry". Harvard Theological Review. 65 (3): 367–392. doi:10.1017/s0017816000001620. S2CID 162853305.
^ Kampf, Robert (2010). Reading the Visual – 17th century poetry and visual culture. GRIN Verlag. pp. 4–6. ISBN 978-3-640-60011-3.
^ Bohn, Willard (1993). The aesthetics of visual poetry. University of Chicago Press. pp. 1–8. ISBN 978-0-226-06325-6.
^ Sterling, Bruce (13 July 2009). "Web Semantics: Asemic writing". Wired. Archived from the original on 27 October 2009. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
^ Barfield, Owen (1987). Poetic diction: a study in meaning (2nd ed.). Wesleyan University Press. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-8195-6026-1.
^ Sheets, George A. (Spring 1981). "The Dialect Gloss, Hellenistic Poetics and Livius Andronicus". American Journal of Philology. 102 (1): 58–78. doi:10.2307/294154. JSTOR 294154.
^ Blank, Paula (1996). Broken English: dialects and the politics of language in Renaissance writings. Routledge. pp. 29–31. ISBN 978-0-415-13779-9.
^ Perloff, Marjorie (2002). 21st-century modernism: the new poetics. Blackwell Publishers. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-631-21970-5.
^ Paden, William D., ed. (2000). Medieval lyric: genres in historical context. University of Illinois Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-252-02536-5.
^ The Poetics of Aristotle. Gutenberg. 1974. p. 22.
^ Davis, Alex; Jenkins, Lee M., eds. (2007). The Cambridge companion to modernist poetry. Cambridge University Press. pp. 90–96. ISBN 978-0-521-61815-1.
^ San Juan, E. Jr. (2004). Working through the contradictions from cultural theory to critical practice. Bucknell University Press. pp. 124–125. ISBN 978-0-8387-5570-9.
^ Treip, Mindele Anne (1994). Allegorical poetics and the epic: the Renaissance tradition to Paradise Lost. University Press of Kentucky. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-8131-1831-4.
^ Crisp, P. (1 November 2005). "Allegory and symbol – a fundamental opposition?". Language and Literature. 14 (4): 323–338. doi:10.1177/0963947005051287. S2CID 170517936.
^ Gilbert, Richard (2004). "The Disjunctive Dragonfly". Modern Haiku. 35 (2): 21–44.
^ Hollander 1981, pp. 37–46
^ Fussell 1965, pp. 160–165
^ Corn 1997, p. 94
^ Minta, Stephen (1980). Petrarch and Petrarchism. Manchester University Press. pp. 15–17. ISBN 978-0-7190-0748-4.
^ Quiller-Couch, Arthur, ed. (1900). Oxford Book of English Verse. Oxford University Press.
^ Fussell 1965, pp. 119–133
^ Watson, Burton (1971). Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century. (New York: Columbia University Press). ISBN 0-231-03464-4, 1
^ Watson, Burton (1971). Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century. (New York: Columbia University Press). ISBN 0-231-03464-4, 1–2 and 15–18
^ Watson, Burton (1971). Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century. (New York: Columbia University Press). ISBN 0-231-03464-4, 111 and 115
^ Faurot, Jeannette L (1998). Drinking with the moon. China Books & Periodicals. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-8351-2639-7.
^ Wang, Yugen (1 June 2004). "Shige: The Popular Poetics of Regulated Verse". T'ang Studies. 2004 (22): 81–125. doi:10.1179/073750304788913221. S2CID 163239068.
^ Schirokauer, Conrad (1989). A brief history of Chinese and Japanese civilizations (2nd ed.). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-15-505569-8.
^ Kumin, Maxine (2002). "Gymnastics: The Villanelle". In Varnes, Kathrine (ed.). An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. University of Michigan Press. p. 314. ISBN 978-0-472-06725-1.
^ "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" in Thomas, Dylan (1952). In Country Sleep and Other Poems. New Directions Publications. p. 18.
^ "Villanelle", in Auden, W. H. (1945). Collected Poems. Random House.
^ "One Art", in Bishop, Elizabeth (1976). Geography III. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
^ Poets, Academy of American. "Limerick | Academy of American Poets". poets.org. Retrieved 10 October 2020. Limericks can be found in the work of Lord Alfred Tennyson, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson
^ Samy Alim, H.; Ibrahim, Awad; Pennycook, Alastair, eds. (2009). Global linguistic flows. Taylor & Francis. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-8058-6283-6.
^ Brower, Robert H.; Miner, Earl (1988). Japanese court poetry. Stanford University Press. pp. 86–92. ISBN 978-0-8047-1524-9.
^ McCllintock, Michael; Ness, Pamela Miller; Kacian, Jim, eds. (2003). The tanka anthology: tanka in English from around the world. Red Moon Press. pp. xxx–xlviii. ISBN 978-1-893959-40-8.
^ Corn 1997, p. 117
^ Ross, Bruce, ed. (1993). Haiku moment: an anthology of contemporary North American haiku. Charles E. Tuttle Co. p. xiii. ISBN 978-0-8048-1820-9.
^ Yanagibori, Etsuko. "Basho's Haiku on the theme of Mt. Fuji". The personal notebook of Etsuko Yanagibori. Archived from the original on 28 May 2007.
^ a b "โคลง Khloong". Thai Language Audio Resource Center. Thammasat University. Retrieved 6 March 2012. Reproduced form Hudak, Thomas John (1990). The indigenization of Pali meters in Thai poetry. Monographs in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies. ISBN 978-0-89680-159-2.
^ Gray, Thomas (2000). English lyrics from Dryden to Burns. Elibron. pp. 155–56. ISBN 978-1-4021-0064-2.
^ Gayley, Charles Mills; Young, Clement C. (2005). English Poetry (Reprint ed.). Kessinger Publishing. p. lxxxv. ISBN 978-1-4179-0086-2.
^ Kuiper, Kathleen, ed. (2011). Poetry and drama literary terms and concepts. Britannica Educational Pub. in association with Rosen Educational Services. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-61530-539-1.
^ "Ghazal - glossary on poets.org". Retrieved 18 July 2023.
^ Campo, Juan E. (2009). Encyclopedia of Islam. Infobase. p. 260. ISBN 978-0-8160-5454-1.
^ Qureshi, Regula Burckhardt (Autumn 1990). "Musical Gesture and Extra-Musical Meaning: Words and Music in the Urdu Ghazal". Journal of the American Musicological Society. 43 (3): 457–497. doi:10.1525/jams.1990.43.3.03a00040.
^ Sequeira, Isaac (1 June 1981). "The Mystique of the Mushaira". The Journal of Popular Culture. 15 (1): 1–8. doi:10.1111/j.0022-3840.1981.4745121.x.
^ Schimmel, Annemarie (Spring 1988). "Mystical Poetry in Islam: The Case of Maulana Jalaladdin Rumi". Religion & Literature. 20 (1): 67–80.
^ Hafez (1897). Poems from the Divan of Hafiz. Translated by Bell, Gertrude. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ "Beloved: 81 poems from Hafez". Bloodaxe Books. 2018.
^ Yarshater. Retrieved 25 July 2010.
^ Hafiz and the Place of Iranian Culture in the World Archived 3 May 2009 at the Wayback Machine by Aga Khan III, 9 November 1936 London.
^ Shamel, Shafiq (2013). Goethe and Hafiz. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3-0343-0881-6. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
^ "Goethe and Hafiz". Archived from the original on 29 October 2014. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
^ "GOETHE". Archived from the original on 5 September 2015. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
^ Chandler, Daniel. "Introduction to Genre Theory". Aberystwyth University. Archived from the original on 9 May 2015. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
^ Schafer, Jorgen; Gendolla, Peter, eds. (2010). Beyond the screen: transformations of literary structures, interfaces and genres. Verlag. pp. 16, 391–402. ISBN 978-3-8376-1258-5.
^ Kirk, G. S. (2010). Homer and the Oral Tradition (reprint ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 22–45. ISBN 978-0-521-13671-6.
^ Blasing, Mutlu Konuk (2006). Lyric poetry : the pain and the pleasure of words. Princeton University Press. pp. 1–22. ISBN 978-0-691-12682-1.
^ Hainsworth, J. B. (1989). Traditions of heroic and epic poetry. Modern Humanities Research Association. pp. 171–175. ISBN 978-0-947623-19-7.
^ "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1992: Derek Walcott". Swedish Academy. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
^ Dominik, William J.; Wehrle, T. (1999). Roman verse satire: Lucilius to Juvenal. Bolchazy-Carducci. pp. 1–3. ISBN 978-0-86516-442-0.
^ Black, Joseph, ed. (2011). Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Vol. 1. Broadview Press. p. 1056. ISBN 978-1-55481-048-2.
^ Pigman, G. W. (1985). Grief and English Renaissance elegy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 40–47. ISBN 978-0-521-26871-4.
^ Kennedy, David (2007). Elegy. Routledge. pp. 10–34. ISBN 978-1-134-20906-4.
^ Harpham, Geoffrey Galt; Abrams, M. H. (2011). A glossary of literary terms (10th ed.). Wadsworth Cengage Learning. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-495-89802-3.
^ Keith, Arthur Berriedale (1992). Sanskrit Drama in its origin, development, theory and practice. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 57–58. ISBN 978-81-208-0977-2.
^ Dolby, William (1983). "Early Chinese Plays and Theatre". In Mackerras, Colin (ed.). Chinese Theater: From Its Origins to the Present Day. University of Hawaii Press. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-8248-1220-1.
^ Giordano, Mathew (2004). Dramatic Poetics and American Poetic Culture, 1865–1904, Doctoral Dissertation. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State. Dramatic poetry: Pound's 'Sestina: Altaforte' or Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Proufrock'.
^ Eliot, T. S. (1951). "Poetry and Drama". tseliot.com. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
^ "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock | Modern American Poetry". www.modernamericanpoetry.org. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
^ Allen, Mike (2005). Dutcher, Roger (ed.). The alchemy of stars. Science Fiction Poetry Association. pp. 11–17. ISBN 978-0-8095-1162-4.
^ Rombeck, Terry (22 January 2005). "Poe's little-known science book reprinted". Lawrence Journal-World & News.
^ Robinson, Marilynne, "On Edgar Allan Poe", The New York Review of Books, vol. LXII, no. 2 (5 February 2015), pp. 4, 6.
^ Monte, Steven (2000). Invisible fences: prose poetry as a genre in French and American literature. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 4–9. ISBN 978-0-8032-3211-2.
^ "The Prose Poem: An International Journal". Providence College. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
^ "Contemporary Haibun Online". Retrieved 10 December 2011.
^ "Haibun Today: A Haibun & Tanka Prose Journal". haibuntoday.com.
^ "Honoring Marc Kelly Smith and International Poetry Slam Movement". Mary Hutchings Reed. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
^ "A Brief Guide to Slam Poetry". Academy of American Poets. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
^ "5 Tips on Spoken Word". Power Poetry. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
^ Wheeler, Lesley (2008). Voicing American Poetry: Sound and Performance from the 1920s to the Present. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0801446689.
^ Seavon, Fernanda (March 2022). "Instantní Nostalgie". A2 (5/2022): 11.
^ Bigsby, Christopher W. (1985). A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama: Volume 3 Beyond Broadway. Cambridge University Press. p. 45. ISBN 978-0521278966. Retrieved 5 September 2012.
^ Gironès, Cristina (16 February 2022). "Object Paradise, el colectivo artístico que quiere devolver la vida y la voz al barrio de Žižkov". Radio Prague International. Retrieved 21 March 2022.
^ "obtydeník živé literatury". Tvar (7). July 2022. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
Bibliography[edit]
Adams, Stephen J. (1997). Poetic designs: an introduction to meters, verse forms and figures of speech. Broadview. ISBN 978-1-55111-129-2.
Corn, Alfred (1997). The Poem's Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody. Storyline Press. ISBN 978-1-885266-40-8.
Fussell, Paul (1965). Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. Random House.
Hollander, John (1981). Rhyme's Reason. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-02740-2.
Pinsky, Robert (1998). The Sounds of Poetry. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-26695-0.
Further reading[edit]
Wikiquote has quotations related to Poetry.
Wikisource has original works on the topic: Poetry
Look up poetry in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Poetry.
Encyclopedias
Greene, Roland; et al., eds. (2012). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (4th rev. ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15491-6.
Other critics
Brooks, Cleanth (1947). The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. Harcourt Brace & Company. ISBN 978-0156957052.
Finch, Annie (2011). A Poet's Ear: A Handbook of Meter and Form. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-05066-6.
Fry, Stephen (2007). The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within. Arrow Books. ISBN 978-0-09-950934-9.
Gosse, Edmund William (1911). "Verse" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 27 (11th ed.). pp. 1041–1047.
Pound, Ezra (1951). ABC of Reading. Faber.
Poetry, Music and Narrative – The Science of Art.
Tatarkiewicz, Władysław, "The Concept of Poetry", Dialectics and Humanism: The Polish Philosophical Quarterly, vol. II, no. 2 (spring 1975), pp. 13–24.
Anthologies
Main article: List of poetry anthologies
Ferguson, Margaret; Salter, Mary Jo; Stallworthy, Jon, eds. (1996). The Norton Anthology of Poetry (4th ed.). W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 978-0-393-96820-0.
Gardner, Helen, ed. (1972). New Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1950. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-812136-7.
Larkin, Philip, ed. (1973). The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse. Oxford University Press.
Ricks, Christopher, ed. (1999). The Oxford Book of English Verse. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-214182-8.
Yeats, W. B., ed. (1936). Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892–1935. Oxford University Press.
vteHumanitiesDisciplines
Anthropology
Archaeology
Classical studies
Education
History
Language arts
Literature
Poetry
Rhetoric
Law
Performing arts
Dance
Music
Theatre
Philosophy
Religious studies
Visual arts
Filmmaking
Painting
Sculpture
Interdisciplinary fields
Digital
Environmental
Health
Medical
Public
Themes
Abductive reasoning
Aesthetics
Antipositivism
The arts
Beauty
Belles-lettres
Bildung
Creativity
Critical theory
Criticism
Cultural literacy
Culture
High
General knowledge
Hermeneutics
Historicism
Historism
Human condition
Humanitas
Liberal arts education
Trivium
Quadrivium
Metaphysics
Ontology
Moral character
Self-realization
Self-reflection
Wisdom
Work of art
Journals
American Journal of Archaeology
Daedalus
History of Humanities
Humanitas
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Journal of Controversial Ideas
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
Leonardo
Nova Religio
Revue des Études Arméniennes
Teaching Philosophy
more...
Academia
Arts and Humanities Research Council
Human science
Geisteswissenschaft
Humanities, arts, and social sciences
Master of Humanities
Moscow University for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
National Humanities Medal
Related
Antihumanism
Philistinism
Criticism of mass culture
Educational essentialism
Humanities in the United States
List of people considered a founder in a Humanities field
Outline of the humanities
Renaissance humanism
Studia Humanitatis
vteSchools of poetry
Acmeism
Akhmatova's Orphans
Angry Penguins
Auden Group
The Beats
Black Arts Movement
Black Mountain poets
British Poetry Revival
Cairo poets
Castalian Band
Cavalier poets
Chhayavaad
Churchyard poets
Conceptismo
Confessionalists
Créolité
Cubo-Futurism
Culteranismo
Cyclic Poets
Dada
Deep image
Della Cruscans
Dolce Stil Novo
Dymock poets
Ecopoetry
Ego-Futurism
The poets of Elan
Flarf
Fugitives
Garip
Gay Saber
Generation of '27
Generation of the '30s
Generation of '98
Georgian poets
Goliard
The Group
Harlem Renaissance
Harvard Aesthetes
Hungry generation
Imaginism
Imagism
Informationist poetry
İkinci Yeni
Jindyworobaks
Lake Poets
Language poets
Marinism
Martian poetry
Metaphysical poets
Misty Poets
Modernist poetry
The Movement
Négritude
Neotericism
New American Poetry
New Apocalyptics
New Formalism
New York School
Objectivists
Others
Parnassian poets
La Pléiade
Précieuses
Rhymers' Club
San Francisco Renaissance
Scottish Renaissance
Sicilian School
Sons of Ben
Southern Agrarians
Spasmodic poets
Sung poetry
Surrealism
Symbolism
Uranian poetry
Zutiste
Poetry portal
vtePoetry of different cultures and languages
Afghan
Albanian
American
Anglo-Welsh
Arabic
Assamese
Australian
Bengali
Biblical
British
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Byzantine
Canadian
Chinese
Cantonese
Cornish
English
Estonian
Finnish
French
Greek
Guernésiais
Gujarati
Hindi
Hebrew
Indian
Indian epic
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Javanese
Jèrriais
Kannada
Kashmiri
Korean
Latin
Latin American
Latino
Manx
Marathi
Malayalam
Nepali
New Zealand
Old English
Old Norse
Ottoman
Pakistani
Pashto
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Punjabi
Rajasthani
Russian
Sanskrit
Classical
Vedic
Scottish
Serbian
Serbian epic
Sindhi
Slovak
Spanish
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Turkish
Urdu
Vietnamese
Welsh
Poetry portal
Authority control databases International
FAST
National
Spain
France
BnF data
Israel
United States
Latvia
2
Japan
Czech Republic
Other
NARA
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Poetry&oldid=1212274576"
Categories: PoetryLiteratureAestheticsGenres of poetryPoetic formsSpoken wordHidden categories: CS1 maint: location missing publisherWebarchive template wayback linksArticles with short descriptionShort description is different from WikidataWikipedia pending changes protected pagesWikipedia indefinitely move-protected pagesUse dmy dates from March 2020Pages using sidebar with the child parameterArticles containing French-language textArticles containing simplified Chinese-language textArticles containing traditional Chinese-language textArticles containing Japanese-language textArticles containing Thai-language textPages with Thai IPACommons category link from WikidataWikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource referenceArticles with FAST identifiersArticles with BNE identifiersArticles with BNF identifiersArticles with BNFdata identifiersArticles with J9U identifiersArticles with LCCN identifiersArticles with LNB identifiersArticles with NDL identifiersArticles with NKC identifiersArticles with NARA identifiers
This page was last edited on 7 March 2024, at 00:45 (UTC).
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0;
additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Code of Conduct
Developers
Statistics
Cookie statement
Mobile view
Toggle limited content width
poets.org | Academy of American Poets
poets.org | Academy of American Poets
Skip to main content
Poets.org
mobileMenu
Poems
Poets
Poem-a-Day
National Poetry Month
Materials for Teachers
Academy of American Poets
American Poets Magazine
Main navigation
Poets.org
Academy of American Poets
National Poetry Month
American Poets Magazine
User account menu
Log in
Membership
Donate
Donate
Donate
Search
Submit
Poetry, at its best, has the unique ability both to help uncover pain and to heal it.
—Sharon Kennedy-Nolle, Poet Laureate Fellow, Sullivan County, New York
Page submenu block
find poems
find poets
poem-a-day
library (texts, books & more)
materials for teachers
poetry near you
Poem-a-day
This Too Shall Pass
about
About this Poem
“I’ve offered a bromide or two in the face of someone else’s grief, and one person’s response—born from pain, aimed toward me with rage—got me thinking about the ways we try to offer solace in heartbreaking circumstances and the inadequacy of our attempts. In writing this poem and trying to see things from that person’s perspective, I found myself more in sympathy with it when I considered the facile consolations of certain religious beliefs. Maybe silence and presence are the best we can offer. Time, one way or another, will take care of the rest.”—Kim Addonizio
Load audio player
Academy of American Poets · Kim Addonizio: "This Too Shall Pass"
was no consolation to the woman whose husband was strung out on opioids.
Gone to a better place: useless and suspect intel for the couple at their daughter’s funeral
though there are better places to be than a freezing church in February, standing
before a casket with a princess motif. Some moments can’t be eased
and it’s no good offering clichés like stale meat to a tiger with a taste for human suffering.
When I hear the word miracle I want to throw up on a platter of deviled eggs. Everything happens
for a reason: more good tidings someone will try to trepan your skull to insert. When fire
inhales your house, you don’t care what the haiku says about seeing the rising moon. You want
an avalanche to bury you. You want to lie down under a slab of snow, dumb as a jarred
sideshow embryo. What a circus. The tents dismantled, the train moving on,
always moving, starting slow and gaining speed, taking you where you never wanted to go.
Copyright © 2024 by Kim Addonizio. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 12, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
read the rest
Kim Addonizio
Photo credit: Elizabeth Sanderson
Add to anthology
×
Sign up for Poem-a-Day
* indicates required
Email Address *
Poems
15640 poems
In The Matter Of Two Men
One does such work as one will not, And well each knows the right;Though the white storm howls, or the sun is hot, The black must serve the white.And it’s, oh, for the white man’s softening flesh, While the black man’s muscles grow!Well I know which grows the mightier,
James D. Corrothers
1922
Compensation
O, rich young lord, thou ridest byWith looks of high disdain;It chafes me not thy title high,Thy blood of oldest strain.The lady riding at thy sideIs but in name thy promised bride. Ride on, young lord, ride on!
James Edwin Campbell
1922
A Poem for My Wife
I’m in my room writing
speaking in myself
& I hear you
move down the hallway
to water your plants
I write truth on the page
I strike the word over & over
yet I worry you’ll pour too much water on the plants
& the water will overflow onto the books
ruining them
If I can’t speak out of myself
how can I tell you I don’t care about the plants?
how can I tell you I don’t care if the books get wet?
David Meltzer
2005
I Have Folded My Sorrows
I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,
Assigning each brief storm its allotted space in time,
Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes.
And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,
And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,
And in the imaginary forest, the shingled hippo becomes the gray unicorn.
No, my traffic is not with addled keepers of yesterday’s disasters,
Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday’s pains.
Bob Kaufman
1965
Poets
4159 poets
Photo credit: Anna Min
Danez Smith
Danez Smith is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017) and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014).
Read more about
Danez Smith
>
Jackie Wang
Jackie Wang is the author of the poetry collection The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void (Nightboat, 2021), which was longlisted for the National Book Award.
Read more about
Jackie Wang
>
Photo credit: Nancy Wong
Janice Mirikitani
Janice Mirikitani was born on February 4, 1941, in Stockton, California.
Read more about
Janice Mirikitani
>
Photo credit: Paula Champagne
Chen Chen
Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017).
Read more about
Chen Chen
>
Meg Day
Meg Day grew up in California’s Bay Area and received a BA from the University of California, San Diego, an MFA from Mills College, and a PhD from
Read more about
Meg Day
>
Features
March 2024 Poem-a-Day Guest Editor Kendra DeColo
Interview
Listen to a short Q&A where Kendra DeColo discusses her curatorial process for Poem-a-Day.
Poet Laureate Fellow Interview: Sharon Kennedy-Nolle
An interview with Sharon Kennedy-Nolle, 2023 Poet Laureate Fellow and poet laureate of Sullivan County, New York.
The Academy of American Poets Presents its 2023–24 Fall–Winter Season
Events
New York, NY (October 12, 2023)—The Academy of American Poets announces its Fall and Winter season of in-person, virtual, and hybrid readings and c
Announcements
March 11, 2024New York, NY (March 11, 2024)—The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in collaboration with the Academy of American Poets, welcomes Meg Day as the Poet-in-Residence for 2024.Read more
March 7, 2024Academy of American Poets is one of 1,000+ cultural organizations across NYC to receiving support as part of the City's $52.2 million Cultural Development FundRead more
February 22, 2024New York, NY (February 22, 2024)—The Academy of American Poets, a leading champion of poets and poetry in the nation, is pleased to announce that Sheryl Woodruff has been named its new DRead more
Awards
American Poets Magazine
Produced exclusively for our members, the Spring–Summer issue features cover art by Childe Hassam; essays by Eunsong Kim, Joseph Drew Lanham, and Norman Minnick. Become a member to receive your digital and physical copy of the most recent issue of American Poets.
… and much more
Become a member
to receive your copy of American Poets twice a year.
Newsletter Sign Up
Academy of American Poets Newsletter
Academy of American Poets Educator Newsletter
Teach This Poem
Poem-a-Day
Email Address
Support Us
Become a Member
Donate Now
Get Involved
Make a Bequest
Advertise with Us
Poets Shop
Follow Us
Tumblr
SoundCloud
YouTube
Footer
poets.org
Find Poems
Find Poets
Poetry Near You
Jobs for Poets
Read Stanza
Privacy Policy
Press Center
Advertise
academy of american poets
About Us
Programs
Prizes
First Book Award
James Laughlin Award
Ambroggio Prize
Chancellors
Staff
national poetry month
Poetry & the Creative Mind
Dear Poet Project
Poster
30 Ways to Celebrate
Sponsorship
american poets
Books Noted
Essays
Advertise
© Academy of American Poets, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038
poets
.org
T. S. Eliot | Poetry Foundation
T. S. Eliot | Poetry Foundation
agendaangle-downangle-leftangleRightarrow-downarrowRightbarscalendarcaret-downcartchildrenhighlightlearningResourceslistmapMarkeropenBookp1pinpoetry-magazineprintquoteLeftquoteRightslideshowtagAudiotagVideoteenstrash-o
Skip to Content
Show Menu
Poetry Foundation
Poems & Poets
Poems Home
Poem Guides
Poets Home
Poem of the Day
Collections
Harriet
Harriet Books
Featured Blogger
All Posts
Articles
Articles Home
Essays
Interviews
Profiles
All Articles
Video
Video Home
All Videos
Podcasts
Podcasts Home
All Podcasts
Learn
Learn Home
Children
Teens
Adults
Educators
Glossary of Poetic Terms
Poetry Out Loud
Events
Upcoming Events
All Past Events
Exhibitions
Poetry Magazine
Poetry Magazine Home
Current Issue
Poetry Magazine Archive
Subscriptions
About the Magazine
How to Submit
Advertise with Us
About Us
About Us Home
Visit
Library
Foundation News
Awards & Grants
Media Partnerships
People
Press Releases
Contact Us
Newsletter
Subscribe
Search
Search
About Us
About Us Home
Visit
Library
Foundation News
Awards & Grants
Media Partnerships
People
Press Releases
Contact Us
Newsletters
Subscribe
Poetry Foundation
Poems & Poets
Poems Home
Poem Guides
Poets Home
Poem of the Day
Collections
Harriet
Harriet Books
Featured Blogger
All Posts
Articles
Articles Home
Essays
Interviews
Profiles
All Articles
Video
Video Home
All Videos
Podcasts
Podcasts Home
All Podcasts
Learn
Learn Home
Children
Teens
Adults
Educators
Glossary of Poetic Terms
Poetry Out Loud
Events
Upcoming Events
All Past Events
Exhibitions
Poetry Magazine
Poetry Magazine Home
Current Issue
Poetry Magazine Archive
Subscriptions
About the Magazine
How to Submit
Advertise with Us
Back to Previous
T. S. Eliot
1888–1965
https://tseliot.com/
Share on Twitter
Share on Facebook
Print this page
Email this page
Keystone Pictures USA / Alamy Stock Photo
The 1948 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, T.S. Eliot is highly distinguished as a poet, a literary critic, a dramatist, an editor, and a publisher. In 1910 and 1911, while still a college student, he wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” published in Poetry magazine, and other poems that are landmarks in the history of modern literature. Eliot’s most notable works include The Waste Land (1922), Four Quartets (1943), and the play Murder in the Cathedral (1935). Eliot’s awards and honors include the British Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature. His play The Cocktail Party won the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play. In 1964, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats was famously adapted in 1981 into the musical Cats, which won seven Tony Awards. Despite his enduring popularity, Eliot and his work have been criticized as having prejudiced views, particularly anti-Semitism.
T.S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot) was born September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri. He was educated at Smith Academy in St. Louis (1898–1905); Milton Academy in Massachusetts (1905–1906); Harvard University (BA, June 1909; MA, February 1911; PhD courses, October 1911–May 1914); University of Paris-Sorbonne (October 1910–June 1911); and Merton College, Oxford University (October 1914–May 1915). He devoted a further year (1915–1916) to a doctoral dissertation on the philosophy of F.H. Bradley, eventually published in 1964.
In 1927, T.S. Eliot became a British citizen. In 1915, he married his first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Vivienne Eliot). The marriage was thought to have influenced Eliot’s bleak masterpiece The Waste Land. After 1933, Vivienne suffered from mental illness, and the two lived separately until she died in 1947. In 1957, at the age of 68, Eliot married Esmé Valerie Fletcher (Valerie Eliot), his secretary at Faber & Faber since 1950—she was almost 40 years his junior. Valerie Eliot preserved her husband’s literary legacy until she passed away in 2012 at the age of 86.
Eliot was almost as renowned a literary critic as he was a poet. From 1916 through 1921, he contributed approximately 100 reviews and articles to various periodicals. He also made significant contributions as an editor and a publisher. From 1922 to 1939, Eliot edited a major journal, the Criterion, and from 1925 to 1965, he was an editor and a director in the publishing house of Faber & Faber.
Several of Eliot’s earliest poems were published first in association with the college literary magazine the Harvard Advocate. At least one of Eliot’s lifelong friendships, that with fellow poet Conrad Aiken, was formed in this nursery of writers and poets.
Eliot’s career as a poet can be reasonably organized into three periods—the first coincided with his studies in Boston and Paris, culminating in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in 1911. The second coincided with World War I and the financial and marital stress of his early years in London, culminating in The Waste Land in 1922. The third coincided with Eliot’s angst at the economic depression and the rise of Nazism, culminating in the wartime Four Quartets in 1943. The poems of the first period were preceded by only a few exercises published in school magazines, but in 1910 and 1911, he wrote four poems that introduced themes to which, with variation and development, he returned time and again: “Portrait of a Lady,” “Preludes,” “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
Between the poems of 1910–1911 and The Waste Land in 1922, Eliot lived through several experiences crucial in understanding his development as a poet. His decision to put down roots or to discover roots in Europe stands, together with his first marriage to Vivienne Eliot and his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism, as the most important of his life. His Harvard friend Aiken, who had met Ezra Pound and showed him a copy of “Prufrock,” preceded Eliot in London. He called on Pound September 22, 1914, and Pound immediately adopted Eliot as a cause, promoting his poetry and introducing him to William Butler Yeats and other artists.
Both T.S. Eliot and his mentor Ezra Pound espoused biased and harmful views in their poetry; Pound was a known fascist, and Eliot’s poetry contains anti-Semitic language. Critics including Anthony Julius have read Eliot and his work as degrading of Jewish people and culture, citing “Gerontion” and Eliot’s lectures as primary sources.
In 1915, Pound arranged for the publication of “Prufrock” in Poetry magazine. In 1917, Pound facilitated the publication by Egoist Press of Prufrock and Other Observations. He continued to play a central role in Eliot’s life and work through the early 1920s. Pound influenced the form and content of Eliot’s next group of poems, the quatrains in Poems (1919). More famously, he changed the shape of The Waste Land by urging Eliot to cut several long passages.
T.S. Eliot died in 1965.
Poems by T. S. Eliot
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
Aunt Helen
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
The Boston Evening Transcript
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
Observations: Conversation Galante
See All Poems by T. S. Eliot
Related Content
Related Collections
Poems about Loneliness and Solitude
Common Core State Standards Text Exemplars
Modernism
Better Craftsmen, Not Gods
Related Blog Posts
The Waste Land at 100
Related Podcasts
Ashley M. Jones and Jacqueline Allen Trimble in Conversation
Evie Shockley vs Gathering
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Waste Land: The App
Related Articles
Detective Work
Dig It Up Again
Flow
Following the Impulse of the Brush
“Harriet Monroe, Poet, Friend of Poets!”
Related Authors
Valerie Eliot
See All Related Content
More About this Poet
Region:
England
School/Period:
Modern
Related Content
Poems by This Poet
Prose by this Poet
Related
Bibliography
Poems by This Poet
Prose by This Poet
Related
Bibliography
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
Aunt Helen
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
The Boston Evening Transcript
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
Observations: Conversation Galante
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
Cousin Nancy
Gerontion
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
Honeymoon, Tr. by Barry Goldensohn
Hysteria
La Figlia che Piange
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
from Observations: La Figlia che Piange
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
from Observations: Morning at the Window
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
from Observations: Mr. Apollinax
Portrait of a Lady
Preludes
Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Sweeney among the Nightingales
The Waste Land
Whispers of Immortality
Show More
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
Ezra Pound
Hamlet
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
A Letter from T. S. Eliot
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
The Poets' Translation Series I-VI
Tradition and the Individual Talent
collection
Poems about Loneliness and Solitude
By The Editors
Poetry offers solace for the lonely and a positive perspective on being alone.
Read More
collection
Common Core State Standards Text Exemplars
By The Editors
Poems to integrate into your English Language Arts classroom.
Read More
collection
Modernism
By The Editors
An introduction to the monumental artistic movement that changed poetry forever.
Read More
collection
Better Craftsmen, Not Gods
By Tyler Malone & Robert Eric Shoemaker
An Online Exhibit on the Editing of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land
Read More
Archive Editor's Note
The Waste Land at 100
By Robert Eric Shoemaker
October 12, 2022
The Waste Land’s afterlife was a self-fulfilling prophecy strategically crafted by Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, two writers who sought to meaningfully connect with what they thought of as the...
Read More
Audio
Play Episode
Ashley M. Jones and Jacqueline Allen Trimble in Conversation
From The Poetry Magazine Podcast
August 2021
When Ashley M. Jones first heard the poetry of Jacqueline Allen Trimble, Jones says she heard something “Southern, unapologetically Black, fierce, sweet, and strong.” This week, Jones and Trimble talk...
Read More
Interview
Detective Work
By Catherine Halley
Susan Howe on Dickinson, being a lost Modernist, and the acoustic force of every letter.
Read More
Essay
Dig It Up Again
By Ryan Ruby
A century of The Waste Land.
Read More
author
Valerie Eliot
Esmé Valerie Eliot, née Fletcher, was born in Leeds, England, on August 17, 1926. Better known as Valerie Eliot, she was educated at Queen Anne’s School. Her father, an insurance...
Read More
Audio
Play Episode
Evie Shockley vs Gathering
From VS
August 2021
Evie Shockley is ready to bring us together. The poet, critic, and professor breaks down how she builds spaces to gather and exchange in her poems, the lineages she pulls...
Read More
Learning Prompt
Flow
By Megan Fernandes
October 18, 2023
In college, I would count the syllables in my sentences. Turns out, I run between 18 and 22 syllables per sentence unconsciously. Didn’t matter if the paper was about evolutionary...
Read More
Interview
Following the Impulse of the Brush
By Arthur Sze
A conversation with Kimiko Hahn, winner of the 2023 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
Read More
Essay
“Harriet Monroe, Poet, Friend of Poets!”
By Melissa Bradshaw & Srikanth Reddy
The Business of Poetry
Read More
Poem Guide
The Hearers to Collection: T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land
By Tyler Malone
Who are all these people? Where is this waste land they inhabit? What is this chaos of impressions we are privy to? Wherefore such madness?
Read More
Essay
I Wanted the Impossible
By Heather Clark
Amy Clampitt's poetry career began late, but as a new biography attests, she was always a writer of deep ambition and erotic intensity.
Read More
Essay
The Imaginative Man
By Laura C. Mallonee
C.S. Lewis’s first love was poetry, and it enabled him to write the prose for which he is remembered.
Read More
Prose from Poetry Magazine
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
Interior Music
By Clive James
The poetry of the plainspoken.
Read More
Audio
Play Episode
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
From Audio Poem of the Day
April 2023
by T.S. Eliot
Read More
Essay
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Turns 100
By The Editors
The famous poem was nearly not published.
Read More
Prose from Poetry Magazine
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
Mental Orgasm
By Yasmine Shamma
Collected Poems by Ron Padgett
Read More
Essay
One’s Own Evidence
By Declan Ryan
On the life and work of Saskia Hamilton.
Read More
Essay
Ours Is No Bedtime Story
By Ed Pavlić
Pauli Murray’s Dark Testament reintroduces a major Black poet.
Read More
Essay
Reader Discretion Advised
By Claire Luchette
On profanity and the sublime in poetry.
Read More
Essay
Riding High
By Andrew McMillan
With Gravity and Center, Henri Cole finds a home in the sonnet’s mix of freedom and constraint.
Read More
Essay
The Rise of Veronica Forrest-Thomson
By Adrienne Raphel
A literary cult figure who died decades ago is more relevant than ever.
Read More
Essay
Their Living Names
By Austin Allen
Elegies in the letters of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.
Read More
Essay
Therapy Waste Land
By Cliff Doerksen
T.S. Eliot’s Tony Award–winning play revisited by a politically minded Chicago theater.
Read More
Prose from Poetry Magazine
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
Undead Eliot: How “The Waste Land” Sounds Now
By Lesley Wheeler
Read More
Prose from Poetry Magazine
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
The Unified Dance
By Anne Stevenson
Read More
Essay
Waiting for Form
By Tyler Malone
How Robert Frost made poetry modern.
Read More
Prose from Poetry Magazine
Appeared in Poetry Magazine
Walking on Knives
By Ange Mlinko
The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov, ed. by Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey
Read More
Audio
Play Episode
The Waste Land: The App
From Poetry Off the Shelf
October 2011
T.S. Eliot's Modernist masterpiece meets modern technology.
Read More
Essay
Wrong Poets Society
By Joyelle McSweeney
Rachel Zucker considers literary wrongness—from John Keats to confessional poetry—in a book that has the energy of a manifesto.
Read More
Show More
Bibliography
POETRY
Prufrock, and Other Observations (contains 11 poems and a prose piece, Hysteria; the title poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, was first published in Poetry, June, 1915; five other poems were originally published in Catholic Anthology, edited by Ezra Pound, 1915), The Egoist (London), 1917.
Poems by T. S. Eliot, Hogarth, 1919.
Ara Vus Prec (includes Poems by T. S. Eliot, above), Ovid Press (London), 1920, published in America as Poems, Knopf, 1920.
The Waste Land (first published in Criterion, first issue, October, 1922), Boni & Liveright, 1922.
Poems, 1909-1925 (contains all works cited above and The Hollow Men; earlier drafts and sections of "The Hollow Men" appeared in Chapbook, Commerce, Criterion, and Dial, 1924-25), Faber, 1925.
Journey of the Magi (one of the "Ariel Poems"), Faber, 1927.
Animula (one of the "Ariel Poems"), Faber, 1929.
Ash-Wednesday (first 3 parts originally published in French, American, and English magazines, respectively; Part 2, first published as Salutation in Saturday Review of Literature, was intended as another of the "Ariel Poems" and as a complement to Journey of the Magi the publisher also intended to issue this part separately as a Christmas card), Putnam, 1930.
Marina (one of the "Ariel Poems"), Faber, 1930.
Triumphal March, Faber, 1931.
The Waste Land, and Other Poems, Harcourt, 1934.
Words for Music, [Bryn Mawr], 1935.
Collected Poems, 1909-1935, Harcourt, 1936.
A Song for Simeon (written in the 1920 's; one of the "Ariel Poems"), Faber, 1938.
(With Geoffrey Faber, Frank Morley, and John Hayward) Noctes Binanianae(limited edition of 25 copies for the authors and friends; never reprinted), privately printed (London), 1939.
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, Harcourt, 1939.
East Coker, Faber, 1940.
Burnt Norton, Faber, 1941.
The Dry Salvages, Faber, 1941.
Later Poems, 1925-1935, Faber 1941.
Little Gidding, Faber, 1942.
Four Quartets (consists of Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding), Harcourt, 1943.
A Practical Possum, Harvard Printing Office, 1947.
Selected Poems, Penguin, 1948, Harcourt, 1967.
The Undergraduate Poems, Harvard Advocate (unauthorized reprint of poems originally published in the Advocate), 1949.
Poems Written in Early Youth, privately printed by Bonniers (Stockholm), 1950, new edition prepared by Valerie Eliot and John Hayward, Farrar, Straus, 1967.
The Cultivation of Christmas Trees (one of the "Ariel Poems"), Faber, 1954, Farrar, Straus, 1956.
Collected Poems, 1909-1962, Harcourt, 1963.
The Waste Land: A Facsimile of the Original Drafts, Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound, edited and with introduction by Valerie Eliot, Harcourt, 1971.
Inventions of the March Hare: Poems, 1909-1917, edited by Christopher Ricks, Harcourt, 1997.
Eliot: Poems and Prose (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets), edited by Peter Washington, Random House, 1998.
Painted Shadow: The Life of Vivienne Eliot, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2002.
The Poems of T. S. Eliot: Collected and Uncollected Poems (Volume 1), Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.
The Poems of T. S. Eliot: Practical Cats and Further Verses (Volume 2), Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.
Poetry also represented in anthologies.
PLAYS
Fragment of a Prologue, [London], 1926.
Fragment of the Agon, [London], 1927.
Sweeney Agonistes: Fragments of an Aristophanic Melodrama (provisionally titled Wanna Go Home, Baby? during composition; consists of two fragments cited above; first produced in New York at Cherry Lane Theater, March 2, 1952), Faber, 1932.
The Rock: A Pageant Play (a revue with scenario by E. Martin Browne and music by Martin Shaw; first produced in London at Sadler Wells Theatre, May 9, 1934), Faber, 1934.
Murder in the Cathedral (provisionally titled Fear in the Way during composition; first produced in an abbreviated form for the Canterbury Festival in the Chapter House of Canterbury Cathedral, June, 1935; produced in London at Mercury Theatre, November 1, 1935; first produced in America at Yale University, January, 1936; first produced in New York at Manhattan Theater, March 20, 1936), Harcourt, 1935.
The Family Reunion (often cited as a rewriting of the unfinished Sweeney Agonistes; first produced in London at Westminster Theatre, March 21, 1939; produced in New York at Phoenix Theater, October 20, 1958), Harcourt, 1939.
The Cocktail Party (provisionally titled One-Eyed Riley during composition; first produced for the Edinburgh Festival, Scotland, August, 1949; produced in New York at Henry Miller's Theater, January 21, 1950), Harcourt, 1950.
The Confidential Clerk (first produced for the Edinburgh Festival, August, 1953; produced in London at Lyric Theatre, September 16, 1953; produced in New York at Morosco Theater, February 11, 1954), Harcourt, 1954.
The Elder Statesman (first produced for the Edinburgh Festival, August, 1958; produced in London at Cambridge Theatre, September 25, 1958), Farrar, Straus, 1959.
Collected Plays, Faber, 1962.
Plays also represented in anthologies.
PROSE
Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry (published anonymously) Knopf, 1917.
The Sacred Wood (essays on poetry and criticism), Methuen, 1920, 7th edition, 1950, Barnes & Noble, 1960.
Homage to John Dryden (three essays on 17th-century poetry), L. and V. Woolf at Hogarth Press, 1924, Doubleday, 1928.
Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (an address), Oxford University Press, for the Shakespeare Association, 1927.
For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order, Faber, 1928, Doubleday, 1929.
Thoughts After Lambeth, (a criticism of the Report of the Lambeth Conference, 1930), Faber, 1931.
Charles Whibley: A Memoir, Oxford University Press, for the English Association, 1931.
Selected Essays, 1917-1932, Harcourt, 1932, 2nd edition published as Selected Essays, Harcourt, 1950, 3rd edition, Faber, 1951.
John Dryden, the Poet, the Dramatist, the Critic (three essays), T. & Elsa Holiday (New York), 1932.
The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England (the Charles Eliot Norton lectures), Harvard University Press, 1933, 2nd edition, Faber, 1964.
Elizabethan Essays (includes Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca), Faber, 1934, Haskell House, 1964.
After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy (the Page-Barbour lectures), Harcourt, 1934.
Essays, Ancient and Modern (first published in part as For Lancelot Andrewes), Harcourt, 1936.
The Idea of a Christian Society (three lectures), Faber, 1939, Harcourt, 1940.
Christianity and Culture (contains The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture), Harcourt, 1940.
Points of View (selected criticism), edited by John Hayward, Faber, 1941.
The Classics and the Man of Letters (an address), Oxford University Press, 1942.
The Music of Poetry (lecture), Jackson (Glasgow), 1942.
Reunion by Destruction: Reflections on a Scheme for Church Union in South India (an address), Pax House (London), 1943.
What Is a Classic? (an address), Faber, 1945.
Die Einheit der europaischen Kultur, Carl Havel, 1946.
On Poetry, [Concord], 1947.
A Sermon, [Cambridge], 1948.
From Poe to Valery (first published in Hudson Review, 1948), privately printed for friends by Harcourt, 1948.
Milton (lecture), Cumberlege (London), 1948.
Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (seven essays; a few copies erroneously stamped Notes Towards a Definition of Culture), Harcourt, 1949.
The Aims of Poetic Drama, Galleon, 1949.
The Value and Use of Cathedrals in England Today, [Chichester], 195?.
Poetry by T. S. Eliot: An NBC Radio Discussion, [Chicago], 1950.
Poetry and Drama (the Theodore Spencer lecture), Harvard University Press, 1951.
American Literature and the American Language (an address and an appendix entitled The Eliot Family and St. Louis, the latter prepared by the English Department at Washington University), Washington University Press, 1953.
The Three Voices of Poetry (lecture), Cambridge University Press, for the National Book League, 1953, Cambridge University Press (New York), 1954.
Selected Prose, edited by John Hayward, Penguin, 1953.
Religious Drama, House of Books (New York), 1954.
The Literature of Politics (lecture), foreword by Sir Anthony Eden, Conservative Political Centre, 1955.
The Frontiers of Criticism (lecture), University of Minnesota, 1956.
Essays on Elizabethan Drama (contains nine of the eleven essays originally published as Elizabethan Essays), Harcourt, 1956.
On Poetry and Poets (essays), Farrar, Straus, 1957.
Essays on Poetry and Criticism, introduction and notes in Japanese by Kazumi Yano, Shohakusha (Tokyo), 1959.
William Collin Brooks (an address), The Statist (London), 1959.
Geoffrey Faber, 1889-1961, Faber, 1961.
George Herbert, Longmans, Green, for the British Council and the National Book League, 1962.
Elizabethan Dramatists, Faber, 1963.
Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley (doctoral dissertation), Farrar, Straus, 1964.
To Criticize the Critic, and Other Writings (contains From Poe to Valery; American Literature and the American Language;The Literature of Politics; The Classics and the Man of Letters; Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry; and new essays), Farrar, Straus, 1965.
Prose also represented in anthologies.
OMNIBUS VOLUMES
The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950, Harcourt, 1952.
The Letters of T. S. Eliot, 6 volumes, Yale University Press.
CONTRIBUTOR
A Dialogue on Poetic Drama, in Of Dramatic Poesie (edition of an essay by John Dryden), Etchells & Macdonald (London), 1928.
The Place of Pater, in The Eighteen-Eighties: Essays by Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature (Eliot did not, however, hold the title F.R.S.L.), edited by Walter de la Mare, [Cambridge], 1930.
Donne in Our Time, in A Garland for John Donne, edited by Theodore Spencer, Harvard University Press, 1931.
Religion and Literature, in The Faith That Illuminates, edited by V. A. Demant, Centenary (London), 1935.
Byron, in From Anne to Victoria: Essays by Various Hands, edited by Bonamy Dobree, Cassell, 1937.
(Author of text) Britain at War (pictorial essay), Museum of Modern Art (New York), 1941.
Henry James, in The Shock of Recognition, edited by Edmund Wilson, Doubleday, 1943, reprinted as On Henry James, in The Question of Henry James, edited by F. W. Dupee, Wingate, 1947.
Peter Russell, editor, Examination of Ezra Pound, New Directions, 1950 (published in England as Ezra Pound: A Collection of Essays, Nevill, 1950).
Andrew Marvell, in Gedichte (an edition of Marvell's poems), Karl H. Henssel Verlag, 1962.
George Herbert, in British Writers and Their Work (periodical), number 4, University of Nebraska Press, 1964.
AUTHOR OF INTRODUCTION
Charlotte Chauncey Eliot, Savonarola (dramatic poem), R. Cobden Sanderson, 1926.
Seneca His Tenne Tragedies, Knopf, 1927, introduction reprinted as Seneca in Elizabethan Translation, in Eliot's Selected Essays.
Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (novel), Oxford University Press, 1928.
James B. Connolly, Fishermen of the Banks, Faber, 1928.
Edgar Ansel Mowrer, This American World, Faber, 1928.
Ezra Pound, Selected Poems, Faber, 1928.
Samuel Johnson, London, a Poem [and] The Vanity of Human Wishes, Etchells & Macdonald, 1930, introduction reprinted as Johnson's London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, in English Critical Essays: Twentieth Century, edited by Phyllis M. Jones, Oxford University Press, 1933.
G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire: Essays in Interpretation of Shakespeare's Sombre Tragedies, Oxford University Press, 1930.
Charles Baudelaire, Intimate Journals, translated by Christopher Isherwood, Random House, 1930, introduction reprinted as Baudelaire, in Eliot's Selected Essays.
Pascal's Pensees, translated by W. F. Trotter, Dutton, 1931, introduction reprinted as The Pensees of Pascal, in Eliot's Selected Essays.
Marianne Moore, Selected Poems, Macmillan, 1935.
Poems of Tennyson, Nelson, 1936, introduction reprinted as In Memoriam, in Eliot's Selected Essays.
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (novel), Harcourt, 1937, 2nd edition, Faber, 1950.
(And compiler) A Choice of Kipling's Verse, Faber, 1941.
Charles-Louis Philippe, Bubu of Montparnasse, English translation by Laurence Vail and others, 2nd edition (not associated with first edition), Avalon, 1945.
Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, Putnam, 1952.
Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, New Directions, 1954.
Opada bhul (Oriya translation of some of Eliot's poems), P. C. Das, c. 1957.
Stanislaus Joyce, My Brother's Keeper, edited by Richard Ellmann, Viking, 1958.
Paul Valery, The Art of Poetry, translated by Denise Folliot, Pantheon, 1958.
Ezra Pound Kabita (Oriya translation of Pound's Selected Poems), translated by Jnanindra Barma, P. C. Das, 1958.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Poems and Verse Plays, edited by Michael Hamburger, Pantheon, 1961.
David Jones, In Parenthesis (novel), Viking, 1961.
John Davidson: A Selection of His Poems, edited by Maurice Lindsay, Hutchinson, 1961.
(And editor) Introducing James Joyce (selected prose), Faber, 1962.
Also author, between 1930 and 1941, of introductions to books of poems by Harry Crosby and Abraham Cowley; author, prior to 1952, of introduction to an edition of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
OTHER
(Translator) St. John Perse (pseudonym of Alexis Saint-Leger Leger) Anabasis (poem; published in a bilingual edition with the original French), Faber, 1930, revised edition, Harcourt, 1949.
(With George Hoellering) Murder in the Cathedral (screenplay based on Eliot's play), Harcourt, 1952.
The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922, Harcourt, 1988.
Mr. Mistoffelees; with Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer, Faber, 1990, Harcourt, 1991.
The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry: The Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1926, and the Turnbull Lectures at the Johns Hopkins University, 1933, Harcourt Brace (New York, NY), 1994.
Also lyricist for songs "For An Old Man," [New York], 1951, and "The Greater Light," [London], released in 1956, with music by David Diamond and Martine Shaw. A complete run of Eliot's periodical, Criterion (1922-1939), was published by Barnes & Noble, 1967. Also author under pseudonyms Charles Augustus Conybeare, Reverend Charles James Grimble, Gus Krutzch, Muriel A. Schwartz, J. A. D. Spence, and Helen B. Trundlett. Editor of the Harvard Advocate, 1909-1910. Member of the editorial boards of New English Weekly, Inventario, Christian News-Letter, and other periodicals. Contributor to periodicals.
Poems
All Poems
Poem Guides
Audio Poems
Collections
Poets
All Poets
Articles
Essays
Interviews
Profiles
All Articles
Video
All Video
Podcasts
All Podcasts
Audio Poem of the Day
Learn
Children
Teens
Adults
Educators
Glossary of Poetic Terms
Poetry Out Loud
Events
All Past Events
Exhibitions
Poetry Magazine
Current Issue
Poetry Magazine Archive
Subscriptions
About the Magazine
How to Submit
Advertise with Us
About Us
Give
Visit
Library
Foundation News
Awards & Grants
Media Partnerships
People
Press Releases
Contact Us
Jobs
Find us on Twitter
Find us on Facebook
Find us on Instagram
Find us on Facebook
Poetry Foundation Children
Find us on Twitter
Poetry Magazine
Contact Us
Newsletters
Press
Privacy Policy
Terms of Use
Poetry Mobile App
61 West Superior Street, Chicago, IL 60654
© 2024 Poetry Foundation
See a problem on this page?