Portal:Poetry

The Divine Comedy (Italian: Divina Commedia) is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between c. 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan dialect, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

On the surface, the poem describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven; but at a deeper level, it represents, allegorically, the soul's journey towards God. At this deeper level, Dante draws on medieval Christian theology and philosophy, especially Thomistic philosophy and the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. Consequently, the Divine Comedy has been called "the Summa in verse". (Full article...)

Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali pronunciation: [rəˈbindrəˈnɑt ˈtɑɡɔr] ^ⓘ), also written Rabīndranātha Thākura (pronounced [rəˈbindrəˈnɑtə ˈtɑkʊrə]), (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. Tagore introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. He was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of the modern Indian subcontinent, being highly commemorated in India and Bangladesh, as well as in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan. (Full article...)

• ... that author, poet and Arabian horse breeder Wilfrid Scawen Blunt chose to be buried without a coffin at his house, Newbuildings Place?
• ... that one music critic said that despite being "noisy, banal, fundamentally insincere", Dmitri Shostakovich's symphonic poem October was nonetheless "enjoyable trash"?
• ... that the 1980 bibliography The Old French Tristan Poems was praised for indexing the fragments of Tristan, a 12th-century poem?
• ... that Mihai Eminescu's poem "Out of All the Masts", which Eminescu himself never intended to publish, has won posthumous praise as a "perfect combination of words"?
• ... that Leon Schidlowsky wrote the Misa sine nomine in memory of Víctor Jara for speaker, choirs, organ and percussion, juxtaposing mass texts with contemporary poetry and Torah verses?
• ... that Yoko Ono took the first verse of her 1970 song "Who Has Seen the Wind?" from a 19th century poem written by Christina Rossetti?

Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves    Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves,    And the mome raths outgrabe. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!    The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun    The frumious Bandersnatch!" He took his vorpal sword in hand:    Long time the manxome foe he sought-- So rested he by the Tumtum tree,    And stood awhile in thought. And as in uffish thought he stood,    The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,    And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through    The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head    He went galumphing back. "And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?    Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"    He chortled in his joy. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves    Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves,    And the mome raths outgrabe.

Full set of selected poems

More about the author