Poet

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A poet is a person who writes poetry. This is usually influenced by a cultural and intellectual tradition. Some consider the best poetry to be, to some extent, timeless and universal, and to address issues common to all humanity; others are more absorbed by its particular, personal and ephemeral qualities.

In the English language, poets generally considered to be of the most influential and profound include Chaucer, John Milton, Lord Byron, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. American poet Walt Whitman was one of the first poets to write a kind of poetry now called free verse, though French poet Jules Laforgue was also writing in free verse around the same time as Whitman. Free verse differed from traditional verse because it was not bound by rhyme or meter. In the Western tradition, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Luís Vaz de Camões and Goethe round out a basic list. In Chinese, Li Bai, Du Fu and other Tang dynasty poets produced some of the oldest poetry in the world, which is still read today. Basho and Omar Khayyám complete one defensible canon.

[edit] Poets and society

Perhaps no other occupation demands so much thought for so little output. In the Japanese haiku tradition involves production of seventeen syllable poems. Even in other traditions including thousand-line poems, some poets have produced only one volume of poetry in their lifetime. For this reason, poets occupy a peculiar position in society, even when compared to other artists, tending to reside on the fringes of their culture. Even poets who have achieved prominence within their tradition can remain completely unknown in the world at large, especially when not commercially promoted.

In the past, bards of remarkable skill might be maintained by a lord or by royalty as part of the artistic coterie at court. Away from the refinement of court, wandering troubadours would have brought their romantic, bawdy chansons from town to town, supporting themselves by passing the hat.

In the east, some poets were similarly maintained by royal patronage, and those of high birth were expected to develop this skill alongside many others. Within the tradition of Japanese chivalry, bushido, Japanese knights, known as samurai, were expected to become poets only once: right before death. Thus, the tradition of love poems does not exist in Japan, but the quantity and quality of death poems is renowned. In China, the country with arguably the richest poetic heritage in the world, poetry is so much part of the culture that even the little educated know the most famous 1000 year old poems by heart.

[edit] Poets and death

Poets' graves are often the focus of literary pilgrimmages. The most famous resting places of dead poets include: Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts, USA, Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, the Protestant Cemetery, Rome and the English Cemetery, Florence.

[edit] See also