Portal:Poetry

A villanelle, also known as villanesque, is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third lines of the first tercet repeated alternately at the end of each subsequent stanza until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines. The villanelle is an example of a fixed verse form. The word derives from Latin, then Italian, and is related to the initial subject of the form being the pastoral.

The form started as a simple ballad-like song with no fixed form; this fixed quality would only come much later, from the poem "Villanelle (J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle)" (1606) by Jean Passerat. From this point, its evolution into the "fixed form" used in the present day is debated. Despite its French origins, the majority of villanelles have been written in English, a trend which began in the late nineteenth century. The villanelle has been noted as a form that frequently treats the subject of obsessions, and one which appeals to outsiders; its defining feature of repetition prevents it from having a conventional tone. (Full article...)

Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉, 1644 – 1694), born error: error: {{nihongo}}: Japanese or romaji text required (help): Japanese or romaji text required (help), then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa (松尾 忠右衛門 宗房), was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku (then called hokku). Matsuo Bashō's poetry is internationally renowned; and, in Japan, many of his poems are reproduced on monuments and traditional sites. Although Bashō is justifiably famous in the West for his hokku, he himself believed his best work lay in leading and participating in renku. He is quoted as saying, “Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses.”

Bashō was introduced to poetry young, and after integrating himself into the intellectual scene of Edo (modern Tokyo) he quickly became well known throughout Japan. He made a living as a teacher; but then renounced the social, urban life of the literary circles and was inclined to wander throughout the country, heading west, east, and far into the northern wilderness to gain inspiration for his writing. His poems were influenced by his firsthand experience of the world around him, often encapsulating the feeling of a scene in a few simple elements. (Full article...)

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• ... that in The Arraignment of Paris, poet Denis Glover stated Charles Allan Marris was the "arbiter of all our art and letters / presenting rotten apples to his betters"?
• ... that the seafaring poet D. I. Antoniou worked on a single poem for more than a decade and ended up publishing it over thirty years later?
• ... that in the Six Poems by Marina Tsvetayeva, Dmitri Shostakovich wanted to convey how he imagined the poet's voice, "husky, hefty, occluded in the smoke of homegrown tobacco"?
• ... that Peter Fallon, an Irish poet who translated Virgil's Georgics, also edited a 1970 beat-poetry magazine that featured works by John Lennon and Allen Ginsberg?