Talk:List of years in poetry

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[edit] Moved from User:Noroton's talk page

I moved the following comments from my talk page to here to make the discussion more accessible to anyone interested, and I've added my two cents' worth below. It seems to me this is a good spot for discussing most matters pertaining to the List of years in poetry pages, since it's the most central page.Noroton 17:56, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I see you moved Bridges' laureateship to the 'Awards' section in 1913 in poetry. To me this doesn't feel quyite right. The U.K. laureateship is only given when the old laureate dies, so it is not a regular thing like most awards. To me it seems more of a 'title' than an 'award' or a 'prize'. Because it only happens a few times a century it seems me to better categorized as an 'Event'. The other laureateships are all categorized as events. I guess we should agree on this, and then make all the years consistent. Cheers. Stumps 07:07, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I noted that some of these categories are labeled "Awards", some "Awards and Honors", and made this one the latter just so it would fit if we leave it there. I am neutral as to whether it goes under Awards and Honors or events, but do see the virtue in consistency. (I do think we should specify that this is British or English Poet Laureate, however, and not just indicate "Poet Laureate", as I note is sometimes done). Best, Sam 14:55, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree that consistency is a goal and I don't have a strong opinion on whether laureatships should go in 'Events' or 'Awards'.
Please keep in mind that in the United States the laureates generally serve only a year or two, which makes the American laureatship more like an award than an event -- overall, it feels more like an "honor" than either an "event" or "award", but that's just my feeling (not even an opinion).
I'd prefer to keep both American, British and any other laureatships that come up in the same section. I also feel (again, not even an opinion) that "Events" should be limited to nonrecurring events. What if we called the "Awards" section, "Awards and honors" and put laureates there? I think that's the best solution. Honors actually would go better with being named to the American Academy of Arts and Letters or the British or French equivalents (which I think we'll eventually have here as well). What do you say? Noroton 17:56, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm happy with "Awards and Hono(u)rs" and the British Poet Laureate going there. I simply used Poet Laureate without national qualification because the article is currently called that ... I guess it's a bit like Britain not putting their country name on their stamps :) ... but am happy with a national qualification in the Years in Poetry pages. Stumps 21:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I'll gradually change them all to "Awards and Honors" then. Noroton 03:38, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] To - Do List

I'm starting a done/to do list here, as I notice there are now at least four people periodically and systematically adding to the "years in poetry" pages. Sam 21:28, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DONE

[edit] In-Progress

[edit] To Do

[edit] Ancient

  • add poets from Sanskrit literature (Note: create millenium pages for early Vedas?)
  • add material from Epic poetry (need millenium pages for early works)

[edit] Early Middle Ages

[edit] Late Middle Ages

[edit] Early Modern and more recent

[edit] Useful source

For anyone contributing to these pages, I've found this to be a useful source for English-language poetry:

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/timeline/

Noroton 00:28, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Very useful. Someone there has a particular interest in early women poets and has given me some reading. Sam 02:35, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I've begun adding info for the Victorian Era (1833 on) from that time line and from the years in literature page, and will, little by little, close the gap to 1869. That should give us good templates to keep filling out for these years. Sam 18:58, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
That's great. The "What links here" toolbox function will become useful as I add links to years in poetry from other articles. I find I'm slowing down on editing years as I do some other poetry-article editing that leads to deepening of some of the 20th century years-in-poetry pages. You're doing great work here, and I'll be adding to those new 19th century pages, and eventually, I hope, to the 18th century ones and even late 17th. Noroton 17:51, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
By the way, "Awards" or "Awards and honors" don't really work as a section earlier than 1905 or so, do they? I don't know of any awards in existence or that we can get data for before about that time (I think the Nobel or Pulitzer in literature may be the earliest that we know of). Perhaps we should drop that section. Even if there were only one or two awards a year, that could be folded into "Events" I think. Any thoughts? Noroton 17:55, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I think I have yet to use that category; there should be some (like becoming an "Immortal" in France and some of the awards of the French Academy, or Poet Laureate, or some of the old court poets), though the information on them may be hard to come by, but putting them in Events should work. Shall we leave it out in anything pre-Nobel? Sam 21:07, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Let's leave it out then. Noroton 23:18, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Interesting source: Britannica Book of the Year

Last night I had an idea and opened up the first and last volumes in my collection of the "Britannica Book of the Year" books. I found them chock full of mentions of poetry published in each year and awards given out. I typed in this information into the 1957 in poetry and 1981 in poetry pages, which are now very long. I think all the information added to the articles is worthy of inclusion, although I always suspect we're adding some poetry that might best be forgotten as bad, hardly read even when it came out or both.

The longer lists in the '57 and '81 articles really beef up the non-English areas considerably, although those areas are still far from adequate to cover even the significant poetry from non-English literatures: There's no Indian, Arabic or Eastern European poetry in either article, I think, and Russian poetry is either absent or barely mentioned on the list of works. This is a reflection of the limitations of the Britannica Books and of our own time as contributors.

But we can expect the list to get even longer at some point. Much, much longer than even these two lengthened pages are now. And the lists in these years can give us a good idea of what much of these articles eventually will look like.

At some point it just might be worth bifurcating into separate year articles (a) English language poetry from (b) poetry in other languages, and it might even be worth thinking about now, before many links between articles on non-English poetry subjects are created to these pages. My initial preference is to keep it all together, but that's mostly for emotional reasons (I guess I like the feeling of cosmopolitan breadth in the broader subject, and I'm hoping that with all languages combined a reader might discover more fruitful connections). There's a good case to be made for separating the two subjects: Keeping them apart will make it a bit easier for people to scroll and find what they're looking for. I'm also not certain about how interested people are in poetry from languages other than their own, so all the foriegn language information could be distracting or, much worse, might obscure parts of the page that people would find very useful if they saw them sooner.

I'd appreciate thoughts from other contributors. Noroton 18:57, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

    • 1981 in poetry is still less than 10KB - I don't think they're reaching unmanagable size. I like seeing works and poets of many countries at once; it makes it easier to compare developments across cultures and languages. If we had to break something out, I'd probably favor breaking out awards rather than breaking by language or culture, but I think we're far from that point. (Also, great to see all this info from the non-English language poets!) Sam 19:22, 8 January 2007 (UTC)



[edit] What's important enough for the "Events" sections? Some ideas for discussion

I'm concerned about this item just put in the "Events" section at the 1994 in poetry page, and because my problem with it is an issue that affects all the pages, I decided to post this here:

  • Tony Curtis becomes Professor of Poetry at the University of Glamorgan.

It seems to me that we should have some minimal level of notability about an event and I'm doubtful this item meets it. I've also been tempted to add events very much like this one, and, of course, we haven't had any standards or guidelines for this, but I think we should start thinking about them. If Curtis is one of the very, very top poets in Britain or if his appointment led to some affect on a number of other poets who might also be at Glamorgan, then I think it would definitely be worth mentioning. But if we don't have some standards for this, then the Events section will be full of things that aren't noteworthy enough and just bore and get in the way of better information.

Here are some possible guidelines that may help lead us to a consensus on what to include in "Events":

  • 1 For the very top poets, widely recognized as the most important in each time period (Pound, Eliot, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Yeats, Plath, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens; there will be some guesswork on this, but perhaps the top 10 poets in English in each century — at least for the past three centuries — and some smaller number of recognized non-English poets) — any major life event that would have had some influence on their poetry.
  • 2 For other top poets (those who received, say, three or more major national poetry awards in America or Britain, I'm not sure what standard to use for other countries' poets) — the biggest few life events, particularly those that involve other poets (the more poets involved, the better).
  • 3 Essential events surrounding poetry movements, such as the Ginsberg Howl trial in San Francisco in the '50s, which made the Beats much better known. The idea here is that a number of poets are involved or affected by the event, or at least this event would have had some influence on the movement and thereby on a number of poets.
  • 4 Something very unusual or extremely interesting involving any poet (the less notable the poet, the more unusual should be the event)
  • 5 And of course, anything should be added whether or not it meets the above guidelines if there's some other reason to justify it — as long as it is useful or interesting to readers.

These are all value judgments, and having guidelines like this doesn't end disagreements about what should be included or not, but perhaps it can lead to a consensus and help us think about what belongs and what doesn't as we decide whether or not to contribute an item. I'd like to know what others think about all this. Noroton 23:44, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The notability guidelines drafted above look like a good starting point. Interestingly the page on Tony Curtis (Irish poet) doesn't even mention the appointment. If it did then "what links here" would dig it up. An alternative to relying on users to use "what links here" is to create specific subpages, in this case we could have Academic appointments in poetry in 1994, but I doubt if such a page is worth creating for now. My suggestion is that we put these draft guidelines somewhere in the Poetry Project pages and continue to refine them as new dubious cases arise. We could also move the Curtis appointment to his article and link to the year in poetry. Stumps 02:25, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
It's under Tony Curtis (Welsh poet)! It's going to be the rare academic appointment that ought to make the list in my mind. The criteria above are good ones; I'd look for notability here to mean something that would be emphasized in an article about the period (and not any one poet). An event ought to be something that has an influence on poetry generally or is representative of poetry generally. Note that this means I'd also question the "All I wanna do" entry for the same year.Sam 02:35, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
There are TWO Tony Curtis poets that aren't the actor who put olive oil in his hair? That's amazing! I learn something every few minutes here. I agree that the "All I wanna do" thing is probably below the notability bar. Stumps 12:31, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I quite take the point. My reasoning on the Tony Curtis front was that there aren't all that many Professors of Poetry in the UK (or world for that matter). I'm not actually sure whether this was a first for the University of Glamorgan, I'd have to check on that. Obviously, if he'd been appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford, it would have been more noteworthy. Deb 12:38, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Suddenly it sounds more interesting -- I know that in my small college in the US, we always maintained at least enough poets and poetry critics on or around campus in one capacity or another so that we could have poetry turf wars, but the bulk of them were in visiting or other tenuous capacities. Was this the launch of a significant creative writing program in Wales or did it have some similar kind of significance? Has he mentored younger Welsh poets in this capacity? Sometimes it just needs an added phrase or two to take on significance. I don't know his work, but it sounds like he's a respected poet, and certainly I trust your judgment as well. Sam 14:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm also fascinated that there are three (or more?) notable Tony Curtises. In America, I've noticed (from reading so many Wikipedia poet biographies) that creative writing posts at universities are what often provide the poets with their income. If there was something truly rare about a poetry professorship, and if that could be explained in that item, that would help a lot. I do suspect, however, that some other poets are essentially professors of poetry in all but name -- teaching only poetry courses and creative writing only about poetry.
Sam, I have to disagree about the "All I wanna do" song! I think when poetry plays a big part in a widely known pop tune (and I'm not talking about song lyrics of course) or a movie that it should be mentioned. When poetry is brought before mass audiences that don't normally read it, it prods more people to read poetry. For that reason alone I think it's important. Also, any reader who comes across one of these types of items in the Events lists could say, "Oh, THAT was the poet or poem mentioned (or read) in that movie I saw. I was curious about that at the time; why don't I click on the link and learn more." I think we'll always have two kinds of readers on these year pages: students or people who are interested in serious research who are using this as a starting point to explore within and beyond Wikipedia; and browsers looking for something interesting. It seems to me that it's especially important for the students to provide accurate, serious content and especially important for the browsers to provide the most interesting items that are out there. Noroton 18:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
You see, I fully credit many, probably even most, lyrics with being poetry (I'll leave qualitative calls to others), and would also contend that the line between musical and poetic use of our voice is entirely arbitrary. I wouldn't have anything against adding a fair number of musical additions to the "works" category, though it would likely duplicate information that could be covered better on other timelines. However, I don't see that particular use as notable enough to bring it from just another work out there to an "event". I'd instead look for the influential - for example, the rise of rap strikes me as highly notable to the poetry world, and highlighting some of the major works and events there (I long ago added "The Message" to the article on Poetry, for example). The rise of the folk song army in both the 30s and the 60s or the influence of Patti Smith (who had many imitators, followers and idolizers in the music world) would be notable crossovers in my mind. Still, in these pages, I'd rather we erred on the inclusive side, especially as we build this. Sam 14:47, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Now I'm confused: I thought that you were questioning whether or not Wyn Cooper's poem providing the lyrics to Crowe's song should be an item at all. It seems to me that's a separate issue from whether or not song lyrics that begin as song lyrics should be included here.

Yes, there is a gray area, certainly in the past (the Iliad and Odyssey and, later, ballads are examples of what is now poetry that were originally sung). Theoretically a modern song lyric could be a great poem. But practically, not much has been written that would approach the quality of most poems, and inevitably people with favorite song lyrics would be including them here and we'd get deluged with bad poetry (with more pop music fans out there than poetry fans, these pages would just be overwhelmed). Besides, as you say, songs could better be included in other timelines. So again, are you really opposed to the Wyn Cooper item?

Incidentally, since my original post above, I've been fascinated with the idea of who are the greatest Poets in the English language and elsewhere, and how an encyclopedia like Wikipedia, striving for NPOV, might come up with judgments like that in order to provide extra focus on the most important figures (this question comes up when there's limited space in some way -- an English course for example might want to focus adequately on the best writers (although other considerations come into play) and in our years-in-poetry pages we should provide more emphasis on the very best writers and less emphasis on the worst. It seems to me that the way to do this is to cite a number of anthologies or similar sources and see what they emphasize. Well, Charles Murray has already done so in his On Human Accomplishment and he has an interesting list (lists, actually). He writes that of the 8-10 sources he uses for "Western Literature" (Japanese, Chinese and Indian are on separate lists), they agree with each other the vast majority of the time. It might be worth some kind of article in Wikipedia that would mention Murray's list and include information from other anthologies or lists of "the greatest". It would certainly be interesting. Noroton 16:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

It's the use of that particular pop song in the event category. Here's my take: certainly Wyn Cooper's first book of poetry should go on the list of "works" for 1987, with a note that the poem "Fun" was used for the hit song "All I Wanna Do" by Cheryl Crow several years later; (for more on Cooper, see [1]). Should the Sheryl Crow song go in the "works" section for 1994? To me, that one's a close call, but I'd err on the inclusion side if someone wants to add it. Should it go in the "Events" category? There I think not, since it just doesn't strike me as that much of an Event - I don't think it influenced other poets or poetry, since it was a fairly innocuous and traditional use of a poem. I'm always willing to be persuaded otherwise. But I do think that there are events in music that belong in the Events category, such as the ones noted above.Sam 16:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


Oh, Murray's top 10 lists are already on Wikipedia. This will now be "Noroton's First Rule of Wikipedia Researching: Always assume Wikipedia already has an article on it." Here it is Human Accomplishment, scroll down for the Western Literature list. Noroton 16:06, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. Can't see any of the Tony Curtises ever making it onto that list.
Just one more comment on the "professors of poetry" point. I've just realised that "Professor" means something different in the UK from what it means in other countries. A professor in Britain is a high-powered academic, not just any old lecturer. Deb 18:28, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
To wit, I see Oxford Professor of Poetry. Notable? Looks so to me. Event? Honor/Award? I have learned something here. Sam 19:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I don't know, Deb. One Tony Curtis is a great poet. Here, take a look:

APART FROM MY WIFE, JILL

By Tony Curtis

Apart from my wife, Jill,
Marilyn was the great love of my life.
Forget that quote "Kissing Marilyn was like kissing Hitler".
I never said it. The studio made it up
After we made:

Some Like It Hot

together.
When we met,
She was trying to get a contract at Universal,
She was 20 and we gravitated
to each other.
We had an affair for a couple
of months. We were very close.
But I knew
that as soon as she got started in movies
and I was getting started in movies
that our careers would take over.
There was nothing permanent about it.

I think this makes him part of the "Confessional" school of poetry. Noroton 20:28, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, the other two had better look out! Deb 23:19, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
OK, now I see what you mean, Sam. As I said, my position would be that the "Events" section should include incidents in which poetry or poets are brought before a mass audience in unusual ways, such as movies that prominently mention poets. I wouldn't even mind mentions of prominent movies or books that use lines of poetry for their titles (although the only examples I can think of now involve Shakespeare and the Bible, but it'll come to me). And again, if we put that song in "Works published" I think eventually we'll be overwhelmed with (inferior) song lyrics. I say stick the original book in "Works published" even with a phrase indicating Crow used the lyrics later. I think the Oxford professorship in poetry should be in the "Awards and honors" section as a perfect example of an "honor". Noroton 20:39, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
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