Poetry (derived from the Greek poiesis, “making”) 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, the prosaic ostensible meaning.
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The Parnassus (1511) by Raphael: famous poets recite alongside the nine Muses atop Mount Parnassus.
Iambic pentameter (/aɪˌæmbɪk pɛnˈtæmɪtər/) is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in that line; rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called “feet“. “Iambic” refers to the type of foot used, here the iamb, which in English indicates an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (as in a-bove). “Pentameter” indicates a line of five “feet”.
Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry; it is used in the major English poetic forms, including blank verse, the heroic couplet, and some of the traditionally rhymed stanza forms. It is used both in early forms of English poetry and in later forms; William Shakespeare famously used iambic pentameter in his plays and sonnets.[1]
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).
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry.[2]Emily DickinsonDaguerreotype taken at Mount Holyoke, December 1846 or early 1847; the only authenticated portrait of Dickinson after early childhood[1]BornDecember 10, 1830
Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.DiedMay 15, 1886(aged 55)
Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.OccupationPoetAlma materMount Holyoke Female SeminaryNotable worksList of poems
Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts into a prominent family with strong ties to its community. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—”Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart….Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
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).[41] In the classical languages, on the other hand, while the metrical units are similar, vowel length rather than stresses define the meter.[42]Old English poetry used a metrical pattern involving varied numbers of syllables but a fixed number of strong stresses in each line.[43]
Longfellow had become one of the first American celebrities and was popular in Europe. It was reported that 10,000 copies of The Courtship of Miles Standish sold in London in a single day.[141] Children adored him; “The Village Blacksmith”‘s “spreading chestnut-tree” was cut down and the children of Cambridge had it converted into an armchair which they presented to him.[142] In 1884, Longfellow became the first non-British writer for whom a commemorative bust was placed in Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey in London; he remains the only American poet represented with a bust.[143] In 1909, a statue of Longfellow was unveiled in Washington, DC, sculpted by William Couper. He was honored in March 2007 when the United States Postal Service issued a stamp commemorating him.
She was educated at home and tutored by Daniel McSwiney with her oldest brother.[7] She began writing verses at the age of four.[8] During the Hope End period, she was an intensely studious, precocious child.[9] She claimed that at the age of six she was reading novels, at eight entranced by Pope‘s translations of Homer, studying Greek at ten, and at eleven writing her own Homeric epic, The Battle of Marathon: A Poem.[4]
In 1820 Mr Barrett privately published The Battle of Marathon, an epic-style poem, though all copies remained within the family.[8] Her mother compiled the child’s poetry into collections of “Poems by Elizabeth B. Barrett”. Her father called her the “Poet Laureate of Hope End” and encouraged her work. The result is one of the largest collections of juvenilia of any English writer. Mary Russell Mitforddescribed the young Elizabeth at this time, as having “a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face; large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam.”
At about this time, Elizabeth began to battle with illness, which the medical science of the time was unable to diagnose.[4] All three sisters came down with the syndrome although it lasted only with Elizabeth. She had intense head and spinal pain with loss of mobility. Various biographies link this to a riding accident at the time (she fell while trying to dismount a horse), but there is no evidence to support the link. Sent to recover at the Gloucester spa, she was treated – in the absence of symptoms supporting another diagnosis – for a spinal problem.[6] Though this illness continued for the rest of her life, it is believed to be unrelated to the lung disease which she developed in 1837.[4]
She began to take opiates for the pain, laudanum (an opium concoction) followed by morphine, then commonly prescribed. She would become dependent on them for much of her adulthood; the use from an early age may well have contributed to her frail health. Biographers such as Alethea Hayter have suggested this may also have contributed to the wild vividness of her imagination and the poetry that it produced.[4][10]
The English Wikipedia is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It was founded on 15 January 2001 as Wikipedia’s first edition and, as of June 2021, has the most articles of any edition, at 6,364,670.[2] As of August 2021, 11% of articles in all Wikipedias belong to the English-language edition. This share has gradually declined from more than 50 percent in 2003, due to the growth of Wikipedias in other languages.[3][4] The edition’s one-billionth edit was made on 13 January 2021.[5] The English Wikipedia has received praise for its enablement of democratization of knowledge and extent of coverage.[6]
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-
No- yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever- or else swoon to death. John Keats
