Poem
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A Poem is a text document that uses aesthetics and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke emotions, convey ideas, and create a sensory experience through words.
- Context:
- It can (typically) be composed of Poetic Lines, arranged in a specific structure such as stanzas.
- It can (often) utilize literary devices such as metaphor, simile, alliteration, and imagery to enhance meaning and create deeper emotional impact.
- It can (often) be performed or recited aloud, emphasizing its rhythmic qualities and sometimes its musicality, such as in spoken word poetry or slam poetry.
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- It can range from being a Short Poem to being a Long Poem, depending on the theme or the structure chosen by the poet.
- It can range from being a Narrative Poem that tells a story, to being a Lyrical Poem that expresses personal emotions or thoughts.
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- It can be generated by a Poet or a Poem Generation System.
- It can include various forms such as Sonnets, Haikus, Free Verse, Ballads, and Epic Poems.
- It can be found across cultures and languages, with each tradition developing its own distinct poetic forms, styles, and conventions.
- It can explore themes such as love, nature, death, identity, and society, often reflecting the human condition through condensed and evocative language.
- It can serve both artistic and cultural functions, from personal expression to ceremonial and religious uses in ancient and modern cultures.
- It can be generated by a Poet or a Poem Generation System, with increasing interest in the use of AI in poetry creation.
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- Example(s):
- Ancient Epic Poems, such as:
- The Epic of Gilgamesh (circa 2100 BCE), an ancient Mesopotamian narrative exploring themes of friendship, mortality, and the quest for immortality.
- The Iliad (circa 8th century BCE), attributed to Homer, recounts key events of the Trojan War.
- The Odyssey (circa 8th century BCE), also attributed to Homer, follows the journey of the hero Odysseus as he attempts to return home from Troy.
- The Ramayana (circa 500 BCE), by Valmiki, narrating the life and heroic adventures of the prince Rama.
- The Mahabharata (circa 400 BCE to 400 CE), which includes the revered text, the Bhagavad Gita.
- Medieval and Renaissance Epic Poems, such as:
- Dante's Divine Comedy (1320), an Italian epic poem by Dante Alighieri, describing a journey through the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
- Ancient Poetry Collections, such as:
- The Book of Songs (circa 11th to 7th centuries BCE), also known as Shijing, one of the oldest collections of Chinese poetry.
- The Man'yōshū (compiled circa 8th century CE), the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry, comprising waka poems.
- The Book of the Dead (circa 1550 BCE), an ancient Egyptian collection of funerary texts, many of which are written in poetic form.
- Narrative Poems, such as: The Raven (1845), by Edgar Allan Poe, exemplifying a strong rhythmic and rhyming structure in the form of a Gothic narrative.
- Sonnets, such as: Sonnet 18 (1609), by William Shakespeare, reflecting on beauty and immortality.
- Odes, such as: Ode to a Nightingale (1819), by John Keats, reflecting on life, death, and the nature of artistic immortality.
- Modernist Poems, such as: The Waste Land (1922), by T. S. Eliot, representing post-World War I disillusionment through fragmented structure and rich literary allusions.
- Free Verse Poems, such as: Leaves of Grass (1855), by Walt Whitman, which celebrates individualism and the American experience.
- Haiku Poems, such as: Works of Matsuo Bashō (17th century), traditional Japanese haiku adhering to the 5-7-5 syllable structure.
- Villanelles, such as:
- Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night (1951), by Dylan Thomas, a famous villanelle exploring themes of life, death, and resistance.
- Romantic Poems, such as: Kubla Khan (1816), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an unfinished romantic poem presenting a
- If- Poem ...
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- Ancient Epic Poems, such as:
- Counter-Example(s):
- Prose Novels such as Moby-Dick is not considered poetry, as it is written in prose form, lacking the formal elements of verse and meter.
- Scientific Treatises like The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin is not a poetic work, as it focuses on scientific explanation rather than creative expression.
- Prose, which typically lacks the structured rhythmic and metrical qualities of a poem and is written in ordinary language.
- Essay, which is more focused on logical arguments and exposition, rather than aesthetic or emotional language.
- Theatrical Plays, such as: ...
- Songs, such as: ...
- See: Story, Literature, Metre (Poetry), Prose.
References
2014
- (Wikipedia, 2014) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry Retrieved:2014-9-10.
- Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language — such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre — to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning. Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient 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 forms of writing. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a fundamental creative act employing language. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, or to evoke emotive responses. Devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve 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 create 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 specific 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 and Rumi may think of it as written in lines based on rhyme and regular meter; there are, however, traditions, such as Biblical poetry, that use other means to create rhythm and euphony. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing, among other things, the principle of euphony itself, sometimes altogether forgoing rhyme or set rhythm. In today's increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages.
1902
- (Rielke, 1902) ⇒ Rainer Maria Rilke. (1902). “Abend (Evening)"
Der Abend wechselt langsam die Gewänder, die ihm ein Rand von alten Bäumen hält; du schaust: und von dir scheiden sich die Länder, ein himmelfahrendes und eins, das fällt; und lassen dich, zu keinem ganz gehörend, nicht ganz so dunkel wie das Haus, das schweigt, nicht ganz so sicher Ewiges beschwörend wie das, was Stern wird jede Nacht und steigt - und lassen dir (unsäglich zu entwirrn) dein Leben bang und riesenhaft und reifend, so daß es, bald begrenzt und bald begreifend, abwechselnd Stein in dir wird und Gestirn.
Slowly the evening changes its garments held for it by a rim of ancient trees; you gaze: and the landscape divides and leaves you, one sinking and one rising toward the sky.
And you are left, to neither quite belonging, not quite so dark as the house sunk in silence, nor quite so surely pledged unto eternity as that which grows to star and climbs the night.
To you is left (unspeakably confused) your life, gigantic, ripening, full of fears, so that it, now hemmed in, now grasping all, is changed in you by turns to stone and stars.