Poetry (from the Greek "ποίησις," poiesis, a "making" or "creating") is an art form in which language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, notional and semantic content. Poetry has a long history, and early attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the various uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Contemporary poets, such as Dylan Thomas, often identify poetry not as a literary genre within a set of genres, but as a fundamental creative act using language. Poetry often uses condensed forms and conventions to reinforce or expand the meaning of the underlying words or to invoke emotional or sensual experiences in the reader, as well as using devices such as assonance, alliteration and rhythm to achieve musical or incantatory effects.
The Gettysburg Address is the most famous speech of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and one of the most quoted speeches in United States history. It was delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 19, 1863, during the American Civil War, four and a half months after the Battle of Gettysburg.
Lincoln's carefully crafted address, secondary to other presentations that day, came to be regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history. In fewer than 300 words delivered in just over two minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as "a new birth of freedom" that would bring true equality to all of its citizens.
Beginning with the now-iconic phrase "Four score and seven years ago," Lincoln referred to the events of the American Revolution and described the ceremony at Gettysburg as an opportunity not only to dedicate the grounds of a cemetery, but also to consecrate the living in the struggle to ensure that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Li Po reciting a poem. Ink on paper, by Liang K'ai (13th century).
| Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service by T.S. Eliot |
|
POLYPHILOPROGENITIVE
The sapient sutlers of the Lord
Drift across the window-panes.
In the beginning was the Word.
In the beginning was the Word.
Superfetation of το ευ,
And at the mensual turn of time
Produced enervate Origen.
A painter of the Umbrian school
Designed upon a gesso ground
The nimbus of the Baptized God.
The wilderness is cracked and browned
But through the water pale and thin
Still shine the unoffending feet
And there above the painter set
The Father and the Paraclete.
The sable presbyters approach
The avenue of penitence;
The young are red and pustular
Clutching piaculative pence.
Under the penitential gates
Sustained by staring Seraphim
Where the souls of the devout
Burn invisible and dim.
Along the garden-wall the bees
With hairy bellies pass between
The staminate and pistilate,
Blest office of the epicene.
Sweeney shifts from ham to ham
Stirring the water in his bath.
The masters of the subtle schools
Are controversial, polymath.
|
| “ |
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. |
” |
|
—Robert Frost
|
The word thou (pronounced IPA [ðaʊ]) is mostly archaic, functioning as the second person singular pronoun in English and having been replaced in almost all contexts by you. Thou is the nominative form; the oblique/objective form is thee (functioning as both accusative and dative), and the possesive is thy or thine. Almost all verbs following "thou" have the endings -st or -est; e.g., "thou goest". In Middle English, thou was sometimes abbreviated by writing a Wynn-shaped letter Thorn with a small u above it.
Originally, "thou" was simply the singular counterpart to the plural pronoun "ye," descended from an ancient Indo-European root. In imitation of the French practice, "thou" was later used to express intimacy, familiarity, or even disrespect while another pronoun, "you" was used for formal circumstances. See French "vous" and Dutch "U". After "thou" fell out of fashion, it was primarily retained in fixed rituals, so that it eventually came to connote formality and solemnity. "Thou" persists, sometimes in altered form, in regional dialects of England and Scotland.
| By culture, nationality or language |
American poetry, Anglo-Welsh poetry, Arabic poetry, Australian Poetry, Bengali poetry, Biblical poetry, British poetry, Canadian poetry, Chinese poetry, Cornish poetry, English poetry, Old English poetry, Finnish poetry, French poetry, Greek poetry, Guernésiais, Hebrew poetry, Indian poetry, Irish poetry, Italian poetry, Japanese poetry, Javanese poetry, Jèrriais poetry, Kannada (Indian) poetry, Korean poetry, Latino poetry, Manx poetry, Old Norse poetry, Ottoman poetry, Pakistani poetry, Persian poetry, Scottish poetry, Serbian epic poetry, Slovak poetry, Spanish American poetry, Spanish poetry, Urdu poetry, Welsh poetry |
| Lists of poets |
Albanian, Afrikaans, Arabic, Belorusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Indian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Maltese, Persian, Polish, Portugese, Punjabi, Pushtu, Romanian, Russian, Slovakian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkic, Urdu, Welsh, Yiddish |
| Schools of poetry |
Akhmatova's Orphans, The Beats, Black Arts Movement, Black Mountain poets, British Poetry Revival, Cairo poets, Cavalier poets, Churchyard poets, Confessionalists, Cyclic Poets, Dadaism, Deep image, Della Cruscans, Dolce Stil Novo, Dymock poets, The poets of Elan, Flarf poetry, Free Academy, Fugitives, Garip, Generation of '98, Generation of '27, Georgekreis, Georgian poets, Goliard, The Group, Harvard Aesthetes, Imagism, Kimo, Lake Poets, Language poets, Martian poetry, Metaphysical poets, Misty Poets, Modernist poetry, The Movement, Négritude, New Apocalyptics, New Formalism, New York School, Objectivists, Others group of artists, Parnassian poets, La Pléiade, Rhymer's Club, Rochester Poets, San Francisco Renaissance, Scottish Renaissance, Sicilian School, Sons of Ben, Southern Agrarians, Spasmodic poets, Sung poetry, Surrealism, Symbolism, Uranian poetry |
| Categories |
Poetry by nation or language, Ethnopoetics, Modernist poetry in English, Poems, Poetic form, Poetry awards, Poetry collections, Prosody, Spoken word, World War I poetry, Years in poetry, Poetry stubs |
- Requests: Alan Jenkins, Paul Hyland, Penelope Shuttle, Ted Walker, Richard Wilbur Award, Arabic Poetics, More...
- Help write articles for Shakespeare's Sonnets (click on any one on the template at the bottom of the page).
edit
Associated Wikimedia
|
