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. William Shakespeare ( baptised April 26, 1564 – died April 23, 1616) was an English poet and playwright widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language, as well as one of the greatest in Western literature, and the world's preeminent dramatist. He wrote about 38 plays and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems. Already a popular writer in his own lifetime, Shakespeare's reputation became increasingly celebrated after his death and his work adulated by numerous prominent cultural figures through the centuries. In addition, Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in the literature and history of the English-speaking world. He is often considered to be England's national poet and is sometimes referred to as the " Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard or the "Swan of Avon"). Title page to a 1620 printing of Doctor Faustus, a play in iambic pentameter, showing Faustus studying and a demon rising through a stage trap door. Alfred Edward Housman ( March 26, 1859 – April 30, 1936), usually known as A.E. Housman, was an English poet and classical scholar, now best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, the eldest of seven children of a country solicitor. His brother Laurence Housman and sister Clemence Housman also became writers. Housman was educated first at King Edward's School, then Bromsgrove School, where he acquired a strong academic grounding and won prizes for his poetry. In 1877 he won an open scholarship to St John's College, Oxford, where he studied classics. He was a brilliant student, gaining first class honours in classical moderations, but a withdrawn person whose only friends were his roommates Moses Jackson and A. W. Pollard. Housman fell in love with the handsome, athletic Jackson who, being heterosexual, rejected him, though the two remained friends. This experience, reflected in some of his poems, may be an explanation of Housman's unexpected failure in his final exams (the "Greats") in 1881. Housman took this failure very seriously but managed to take a pass degree the next year, after a brief period of teaching in Bromsgrove School. | by William Shakespeare | | Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.
| | “ | The business of poetry is to harmonise the sadness of the universe | ” | | —A. E. Housman | A syllable (Ancient Greek: συλλαβή) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. It is typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "building blocks" of words. They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic meter, its stress patterns, etc. A word that consists of a single syllable (like English cat) is called a monosyllable (such a word is monosyllabic), while a word consisting of two syllables (like monkey) is called a disyllable (such a word is disyllabic). A word consisting of three syllables (such as indigent) is called a trisyllable (the adjective form is trisyllabic). A word consisting of more than three syllables (such as intelligence) is called a polysyllable (and could be described as polysyllabic), although this term is often used to describe words of two syllables or more. | By culture, nationality or language | American, Anglo-Welsh, Arabic, Australian, Bengali, Biblical, British, Canadian, Chinese, Cornish, English, Old English, Finnish, French, Greek, Hebrew, Indian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Jèrriais, Kannada, Korean poetry, Latin American, Latino, Manx, Old Norse, Ottoman, Pakistani, Persian, Scottish, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Urdu, Welsh | | Lists of poets | Albanian, Afrikaans, Arabic, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, English, French, German, ancient Greek, modern 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, Alexandrian, 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, Fugitives, Garip, Generation of '98, Generation of '27, Georgekreis, Georgian poets, Goliard, The Group, Harvard Aesthetes, Imagism, 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, Years in poetry, Poetry stubs | - Help write articles for Shakespeare's Sonnets (click on any one on the template at the bottom of the page).
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