the.com/poetry
language with the boring parts surgically removed and the soul left intact
means Poetry is writing that uses rhythm, sound, imagery, and compressed language to evoke meaning and feeling more intensely than ordinary speech.
from From Greek 'poiēsis,' meaning 'a making' or 'creating,' built on the verb 'poiein,' 'to make.' To the Greeks a poet was literally a 'maker' — someone who builds something out of words. It traveled through Latin 'poeta' and 'poetria' into Old French 'poetrie,' and reached English in the late Middle Ages. The lovely buried idea: every poem is a thing crafted, not just spoken — language assembled like an object you can turn over in your hands.
- oldest poem
- Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh predates the alphabet's spread
- brain effect
- reading verse activates the brain's reward and memory circuits
- laureate pay
- UK poet laureate historically received a barrel of sherry
- war weapon
- WWI trench poets shaped how nations mourned the dead
the waste land — t.s. eliot's 433-line modernist poem published in 1922
paradise lost — john milton's epic poem about satan and adam & eve, published 1667
leaves of grass — walt whitman's collection of 154 poems celebrating american democracy, first edition 1855