Poetry World

Poetry — language organized for maximum expressive impact, often using rhythm, rhyme, and imagery — is humanity's oldest literary art. Ancient oral poetry (Homer, Vedic hymns, African praise songs) predates writing; the earliest written poem (the Epic of Gilgamesh) dates to 2100 BCE. Poetic traditions are universal — every civilization has valued the condensed power of verse. Major poetic traditions: Classical (Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Horace); Persian (Hafez, Rumi, Omar Khayyam); Chinese (Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei); Japanese (haiku — Bashō; tanka); Arabic (the Mu'allaqat odes); English (Chaucer, Shakespeare's sonnets, Donne, Milton, Keats, Wordsworth, Blake, Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot, Auden, Plath, Seamus Heaney); American (Whitman, Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Allen Ginsberg).