Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Poetry/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Formation

I don't know how many poets are around but you've been doing a lot of good work in this area... how about starting a Wikipedia:WikiProject Poetry to bring it altogether? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:53, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

How? What's involved? Bmills 13:14, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Well, fool that I am, I've made an attempt to start this. Now I really need help. A one-person Wikiproject is not going to get very far. Bmills 14:16, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Is there any objection to this proposed WikiProject Poetry boilerplate text or to the suggested placing of it?

Please consider adding the following boilerplate text at the end of your articles and the top of their Talk page.

This article is part of WikiProject Poetry. Please read the guidelines set out there before editing the page.

In general, I'd prefer these notices to go on the talk page, not as boilerplate. They're a bit too "meta" to be inline info in the article text. --Delirium 09:33, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)


Discussion

I changed the boilerplate because I felt the old wording made it sound that people were required to read these guidelines before they were allowed to edit poetry-related pages, something which I'm sure will put people off editing. I'm sure it wasn't anybody's intention to put that message across, but it will come across like that to some readers. It could be worded differently to how I have it, of course, but anything along the lines of "read X before editing Y" is really not on.

I also removed the suggestion that the boilerplate might be put on the article page. I don't think these things should be put on article pages in general, because, well, they're not part of the article - they're about the organisation of editors and resources more than they are to do with poetry per se. Putting them on the talk page is enough, I think, and I think that's what is done with other WikiProject boilerplates.

Good luck to everybody writing poetry related stuff, by the way - it's certainly a bit of an under-covered area at the moment. --Camembert

I'm happy to go with these changes. Bmills 09:40, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Nice and cool idea! BTW, why not a section also on "individual poems"? I cannot help quoting myself and asking for that to be improved. Pfortuny 19:26, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hi. I'm a complete noob. I read a good bit of Wikipedia policy, created an account, and looked at Philip Whalen. I saw a list of works; I thought I'd update it to include his favorite works. However, I saw the policy against original research, which is of course perfectly logical. But how does one handle oral sources? If a couple of Philip's friends tell me which of his own books he preferred, is that original research on my part? Thanks very much. BoredomMan 26 July 2005

Funny that the talk page of List of poets from the United States still says what Camembert recommends against. I guess I'll change it. --Cromwellt|Talk 00:02, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

The House On The Hill (poem)

Just to help you notice, your example poem The House On The Hill (poem) is currently on Wikipedia:vfd for Feb 6. Jamesday 02:41, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Template:SampleWikiProject

help from me at a much later date

I am a student of poetry, as one would say. Sadly, I do not currently have the extra time to assist in building this project. I hope that at a later date I can be of service to this great endeavor. Kingturtle 19:43, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Citing poetry style guide somewhere ?

I'm often looking for a style guide page when adding a sample poem in biography articles. I.e see Li Bai. I don't know how to emphazise the title, where to write infos (as date and translator). I saw in Jonathan Swift that the font used is fixed and wonder if its usefull (and beautifull) in this case. I'd like to have a page where common usage is described. If I referer to my poetry book (most are edited in French and the presentation may differ), title is capitalized, text is "normal" but often "quoted" (like using blockquote tag), and references (name of the book, chapter) are italic and aligned on the right.

Could be this way :

LE SERPENT QUI DANSE
Que j'aime voir, chère indolente,
De ton corps si beau,
Comme une étoffe vacillante,
Miroiter la peau!
Sur ta chevelure profonde
Aux âcres parfums,
Mer odorante et vagabonde
Aux flots bleus et bruns,
Comme un navire qui s'éveille
Au vent du matin,
Mon âme rêveuse appareille
Pour un ciel lointain.
Tes yeux, où rien ne se révèle
De doux ni d'amer,
Sont deux bijoux froids où se mêle
L'or avec le fer.
Les Fleurs du Mal, Spleen et Ideal, Charles Baudelaire


Continued : I had this answer when asking on his talk page why Markalexander removed the sample poem in Li Po's page :

Hi, I cut it because we generally Don't_include_copies_of_primary_sources. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Poetry#Individual_Poets recommends linking to online texts, but not including copies. Markalexander100 04:11, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
(My answer is) Well... I don't fully understand why an article on Li Po shouldn't give an example of it's most famous poems and only give a link on a list of links that may contain some... If I understand well the spirit of the "no primary text" rule, It's intended to avoid long texts without any "secondary" encyclopedic content. But, i suppose an article on free verse should give examples of free verses (now it's not the case but...), and an article on Haikus should give examples and it does. Why should it be different with Li Bo ? I agree that giving only a rough example without any context is not encyclopedic, but when the article says something like "He wrote many poems about nature and liked to drink with friend the moon", then give one "primary source" showing how he wrote that seem to be relevant (for me, at least). I will try to get attention on this question in Poetry project. gbog 05:25, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

So I'd like to know if there is debate on this topic (facing a skull; adding or not adding few sample poems on poets biography pages).

My points are : Poems (here) are intended to be short and representative. They should illustrate the article (exactly like a picture does). If one says that a crane is a large, long-legged and long-necked bird blabla, I suppose that to give a picture of a crane doesn't kill anybody and is a very powerfull mean to help the reader to understand. If one says that François Villon was a poor guy writing bawdy poems in ancient French blabla, its semms to be very usefull to give a sample showing this ancient French he wrote in, and the kind of themes he liked. gbog 05:25, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

From the POV of someone not involved in the Wikisources project, I would think that the Wikipedia prohibition against including complete primary texts is mainly one of practicality, in order to keep Wikipedia more like an encyclopedia and less like a library, while still providing links to that library. (That and the "fair use" limitations.) But poems are not books, so quoting a modest one in an encylopedia article seems quite reasonable. -- Jeff Q 19:32, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
There are some major issues about the visual formatting of poetry and other non-paragraphical text that don't appear to be getting any real attention from Wikidom. As a single example, the ongoing conflict over the new multiple-choice Wiki skins (stylesheets) and per-user style customization have exposed flaws in using indentation for poetry, song lyric excerpts, dialogs, and other unconventionally-formatted text. Perhaps this is a good place to bring the issues of formatting these special text forms to the forefront for serious consideration and debate. My quick overview of WikiProject:Poetry suggests that this issue is not currently on the table here. Does this debate make sense to the current Poetry denizens? -- Jeff Q 19:32, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I've tended to use poems to illustrate forms like Sonnet and Haiku where it is easy to find examples that are out of copyright. Not so easy with Free verse or most of the 20th century poets and movements I've focused on. With articles like English poetry, extracts would make the pages too big, I think. I'm still trying to work out why the Pope extract was added to Poetry: at least it needs a lot of explication. Bmills 10:11, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Poet's biographies

I'd be interested in helping with some of the poets' biographies. I've made a tentative start with a few stubs, but I'd like to echo the question in an earlier section. Can someone who's been working on this project or similar ones suggest an example of a biog for me to use as a format template? There seem to be a range of different styles among existing biogs but rather than guessing which to adopt I'd be happier to try and aim for something that matches current thinking on how participants would like to see it done. Mazzy 08:55, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

My own preference is for a division along the lines of: intro/early life and work/middle period/late works (the 3 part thing seems to work for most writers) and to include major publications, any movement or groups, influences on the poet, others they may have influenced plys an external links section and a list of further reading, where appropriate. A recent one I've done is Thomas Kinsella. I'd also suggest adding a category or two like [[Category:Irish poets|Lastname, Firstname]], [[Category:Poets|Lastname, Firstname]], [[Category:Britishpoets|Lastname, Firstname]], [[Category:Imagists|Lastname, Firstname]] or whatever.
As for the question of including poems, remember the laws of copyright. Most free verse, for example (see above) is not yet available.
Bmills 09:10, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for these pieces of advice. I'll try to spend some time on a few of these in coming weeks. One specific thing that I was wondering about was the approach to including bibliographies, particularly where writers have worked in a variety of different forms. It seems to me that in many of the biographies works are explicitly listed by type, eg Derek Walcott. Sometimes lists are comprehensive, sometimes they are selections of a writers output. Sometimes titles are incorporated in the biographical details to set them within the chronology of the writer's life, sometimes they are listed separately, with or without publication dates. Any thoughts/guidelines as to preferences? Mazzy 12:27, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I'd generally only list the most important works myself unless the total number of books published is small, I think it's a judgement call case-by-case. I'm currently trying to improve Samuel Beckett and will definitely subdivide the bibliography there because he did important work in multiple genres. Seems a bit like overkill for Walcott as there are only 2 books that are not poetry. Bmills 12:46, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Pictures

What's the feeling on using pictures? In the case of single poets obviously a picture of them would be good. But many are not avialable to use freely. In that case would it be good to have a picture of one of their books? As I understand it (and my knowledge of this is very limited) we can use pictures of books freely. I think a picture of a book makes an article look nicer, so I am in favour. But in truth they add virtually no information at all. So there is certainly room for discussion.

In the case of articles about specific books, anthologies, and movements a picture of the book concerned would seem relevant. Does anyone have any objection to the inclusion of pictures of book jackets in articles?

That being said I have never tried to include a picture in an article, or upload one, but it can't be that difficult. Am I right in thinking that pictures of book jackets can be used? (From a copyright point of view?)

Also, I don't want to start adding pictures if the general consesus is that they add little or detract from pages. What do people think? Monk Bretton 21:26, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I believe we can use book covers under Fair use. I used on one Louis Zukofsky and believe it adds something. Filiocht 08:29, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Examples

I have updated these lists, using featured articles where possible. Filiocht | Blarneyman 13:32, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

Edgar Allan Poe

Hi! Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most important poets of the 19th century, and his article is currently being worked on to try to raise it to FA standard. If you are interested in helping improve this article once more, see here. Harro5 07:16, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-Class and good B-Class articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles on Poerty The Edgar Allan Poe article looks like a good article. Please post your sugestions here. Cheers!--Shanel 23:27, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

A few suggestions: Du Fu, the page about the great Chinese Poet, has achieved FA status and is very good; as is the Turkish literature page. The William Blake pages are good but unfinished; note on Blake that it is most useful if all the pages on William Blake's mythology are included; similarly, the William Shakespeare page has many related pages for his works, including an effort now to develop a page for each of Shakespeare's sonnets. Shakespeare is undergoing a lot of work at present, and hopefully will be up to snuff by summer's end. Alliterative verse is a wonderful page (and FA), and the set of articles on national poetries has achieved FA status for English poetry, Irish poetry and Poetry of the United States. The set of articles on Modernist poetry, including the Imagists and Objectivists do a good job of handling a group of major English language schools of poetry at mid-century. Sam 14:34, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Performance poetry

This article is currently almost entirely about modern American poetry (inc explicit stuff about getting grants). Yes, there is obviously an active and important culture of Performance Poetry in the US. However, the term "performance poetry" covers an enormous oral tradition, the brief mention of which drowns in this long article.

Read narrative poetry and then follow the link to PP, to see the difficulty. And I'd like to start an article on a form of African poetry - Praise poetry - but though an ancient and still living form of PP, it wouldn't comfortably link there.

My suggestion would be to rehash the current PP article to be more general (pulling on egs from all over), and then have a section dedicated to the modern US movement (and other specific movements). Alternatively, spin the substantial US material off into its own article.

Even worse, I don't feel competent to do this myself - certainly not unsupervised - so I'm going to suggest some more knowledgeable person do the hard grind. Oh dear, how to make friends... And you're the lovely people I'll be turning to when if I ever get going on that Praise poetry thing... Yours very contritely, JackyR 16:29, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm no expert on Performance Poetry ... why don't you make a start on some changes, adding a few things you think are missing ... remember to be bold. Sorry to take so long in posting a reply. — Stumps 07:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Problem is, I'm the world's biggest ignoramus on poetry, never mind American performance poetry. I can approach it from an editorial point of view, rehashing the existing material. But I'd need a knowledgeable reader to check I hadn't inadvertently introduced falsehoods. I may go ahead and do this, but not soon (my ToDo list grows ever more hideous...), Might ask for your guidance then, if you know anything about the subject? Cheers, JackyR 15:44, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
The problem I think is that Performance Poetry as a term refers specifically to a US movement that began in the sixties that was an attempt to take the influence of oral tradition and combine it with postmodern innovations in form and content. That poetry was at one time in history primarily transmitted orally seems to me like something that the main Poetry article would cover rather than confusing the issue about the Performance Poetry movement. Although perhaps the problem could also be solved by creating a new article along the naming convention of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets and Black Mountain poets called Performance poets to cover the information about the US movement, and then move to make Performance Poetry a more general article. JFQ 21:58, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Yup, the article was clearly written about the US movement, with occasional refs to oral poetry (which is not only "at one time in history"! African praise poetry existed and continues to exist without the slightest ref to US poetic traditions, and often fits the dic-def and this article's def of performance poetry). Sounds like you know your onions, and any sensible disambiguation would be fine. I won't be getting to this any time soon, so no hurry... cheers, JackyR 23:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Lists of Magazines

Should we use the categories mechanism for this? The downside being that each magazine would have to be noteworthy enough to deserve an article. Dedicated list pages might be better, but for this to be useful to writers the amount of information required .. editor's name, address, how long it's been running, external link to magazine's website etc.. would be quite large. Any ideas? — Stumps 13:15, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Blake

Anyone else keen on William Blake? The Blake mythology is a very good fit to Wikipedia structures - no reason not to have a page per character. But it probably also needs good support from someone who knows the prophetic books as texts reasonably well (or is prepared to text-search them!), and some reputable critical literature, so that pages aren't just rambling on about 'symbolism', but might actually be helpful. Just a few pages in Category:William Blake's mythology so far. Charles Matthews 13:53, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've made a slow start by giving Grodna his own page, but had to do a bit of housekeeping to do with the city Hrodna on the way. — Stumps 15:14, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I've beefed this up a bit. I have the S. Foster Damon Blake Dictionary to hand, which may be somewhat old-fashioned (well, not the right word). I can add things based on that which don't seem too tendentious. Charles Matthews 17:38, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Jacopone da Todi

One of the red links in the Italian Poets Category has gone blue! I've done it in haste so there must be quite a few errors, can you please give it a look? Ciao ;-) --Wikipedius 20:29, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedius has started an article on Jacopone da Todi. Anyone else want to collaborate on this? — Stumps 10:42, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Comments

Great idea having a wikiproject on this. I'd like to help, but I'm currently working on a few other things. Shouldn't the page "List of American poets" be rather List of poets from the United States, since the US is only one part of America? Then the first page should either become a list of all poets of the American continents, or should be deleted. Otherwise, it looks rather US-centric. Also, the same change should be made to other things like List of American authors (currently a problematic redir). --Cromwellt|Talk 23:51, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Because I'm referencing it from Spanish Wiktionary and don't want to make two links, only one of them ever current, I'll make the change to List of American poets myself. Hope no one minds, but if they do, we can certainly talk about it. --Cromwellt|Talk 00:06, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Naming convention for poetry movements

A discussion has begun on the Language poets talk page about how various poetry movements should be named. This is pertinent to the discussion of Performance Poetry above. It strikes me that all of these various groups and movements should be named with a similar convention in mind, that is to say, is it right that Performance Poetry and New York School and Imagism are articles named after the style where as Language poets and Black Mountain poets are named for the practitioners? My suggestion would be to rename all of these articles after the style, as each is really a kind of ism in it's own right, and having an article nominally about a group of people seems to underplay the fact that what's being discussed is really more of an approach or a shared set of ideals belonging to those people. Does anyone else have any thoughts?JFQ 21:43, 7 April 2006 (UTC)


Red Links (well no link actually)

I have been going through most of the Canadian poets lists and organizations and lists of (country) Poets and removing ONLY the red dead links, not the names. I noticed on this main page that it should be a project and just wanted to let you know what I have been doing. There are some discussion on my Talk page concerning this Red Link. Some feel if there is no article there should be no name at all while others believe someone may come back and provide a relevent article on the poet etc. Comments? WayneRay 17:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)WayneRay

Red Dead Links Through consultation with other editors it was agreed that dead link names should be removed as well. I have been going through the various Lists of . . . and cleaning them up, with the exception of Afrikaans poets. The editor there assures me he is updating regularly. WayneRay 00:36, 1 May 2006 (UTC)WayneRay

I have reverted the red links with a note to the Talk or Discussil page of the individual lists of poets and made the suggestion that after the article is written, then they can put back the linked name on the main article page. It has been a couple of months since I began cleaning up the poetry lists and I see I will have to go back as there are more dead red links popping up. WayneRay 13:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)WayneRay


- FYI for all -- Good Wikipedia practice is to leave most redlinks (and to create new ones as necessary).

Wikipedia:Redlink -- "This page in a nutshell: Create red links to needed, unwritten topics. Removal of red links for nonexistent topics should not be done without careful consideration of their importance or relevance."

Redlinks tell users that new articles are needed. In addition, throughout Wikipedia there may be many redlinks linking to a given (needed) topic, which magically become working, useful links as soon as that article is created. (Redlinks are not usually "dead" but rather the opposite -- they are links which will someday "come to life".)

The exception is when you are fairly sure that a good independent Wikipedia article is never going to be created for a given redlink. For example, we probably don't need a separate article about the poet's wife's sister's cat.

-- Writtenonsand 13:14, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Poetry article archetype?

Hi everyone, I'd like to jump aboard the project. I scanned through the project page but I don't see an archetype listed for a page on a specific poem. Is this type of article within the scope of this project? I ask to see an example because I am dissatisfied with many poetry articles on WP. Many articles have exhausting, amateur, personal and unsupported interpretations of the poems. Is this something we want in an article on a poem? --Ryan Heuser 00:31, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I have to second this. Why is there no reccommended method for how to write articles on specific poems?Dev920 10:47, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree this needs to be done. The place to start looking for examples is Category:British poems. The article on The Waste Land is perhaps one of our best examples; the article discusses:

  • the writing of the poem
  • the history of the manuscripts
  • the editing of the poem
  • the publication history
  • structure
  • style
  • sources the poet used
  • critical reception
  • allusions in the poem

And aloso provides

  • a link to the WikiSource text of the poem
  • bibliography
  • additional Sources
  • further reading
  • footnotes for sources
  • external links

Also worth noting maybe are: This Be The Verse, an interesting example, it states:

  • when written
  • when and where first published
  • which collection it first appeared in
  • refers to sources of the poem
  • discusses the poem's reception by the public
  • discusses elements of how the poem works

Mr Bleaney similarly states:

  • when written
  • when and where first published
  • which collection it first appeared in
  • discusses elements of how the poem works
  • cites particular comments relevant to the poem

Other good articles to look at

  • In Memoriam A.H.H. - a slightly longer and more wide-ranging article
  • The Lady of Shalott - includes images of paintings related to the poem
  • To His Coy Mistress - interesting in that it quotes the poem in a box on the right of the page, although it is unfortunately centre-aligned

Let's work out some ideas here and then move to the project page. Stumps 11:06, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

WP:L&P and WP:NPS says that short poems should be included in their articles. So, while Paradise Lost probably isn't a good addition, adding smaller poems is a good idea, and is encoyrage by official policy (Ozymandias is quoted as an example). Is there a consensus to add this to the main project page? Dev920 22:13, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I say yes. After all, 154 Shakespeare Sonnets can't be wrong. Sam 22:43, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I've drawn up a notice that I would like to put on the talk pages of fledgling poetry articles - what do you think?:

This is an individual poem, which is covered by WikiProject Poetry. For articles of this type, our guidelines suggest that the following sections be added:

  • The text of the poem - if it's short. Otherwise, a link to the poem, preferably from WikiSource.
  • The publication history of the poem.
  • The critical response to the poem, and any critical analysis that is not original research.
  • The circumstances in which the poem was written.
  • The structure and style.
  • The poetic effects of the poem.
  • The references made in the poem.

This is only a guideline in order to help you edit this article. Feel free to add other information as you see fit.

Dev920 16:55, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I like it. My only suggestion is to perhaps specify how a short poem should be included in the page. Do we want to declare a style guideline for that? --Ryan Heuser 02:23, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
I've never actually edited a poem article except to copyedit so far - what do other people normally do?Dev920 09:01, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

may/not fit here but can't find wherelse: could we perhaps have a note on the project main page about titling conventions, ie italics fr book titles & single quotes for poem titles (or debate what these are 1st) these seem to be jumbled up all over the place in poetry/poet articles, & can be confusingBsnowball 16:00, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

An invitation to all members of this project

WikiProject Arts
Announcing the creation of WikiProject Arts, an effort to create a collaboration between all arts projects and artistically-minded Wikipedians in order to improve arts coverage. If you think you can help, please join us!

HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 18:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup of Poetry Article

Poetry: Evan Donovan posted a comment on 1 March 2006 on Talk:Poetry saying that he's going to start cleaning up the article ... maybe we should help.

I've refactored and rewritten this page in summary style; improvements, comments, cleanup, etc. would be very welcome. Sam 13:17, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Objectivists

I don't understand what an Objectivist poem must contain or exclude. Can anyone enlighten I? :-) (Sasquatchuk 04:48, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

As the article Objectivist poets says, they were a "loose-knit group" ... it goes on to say in the intro: "The basic tenets ... were to treat the poem as an object, and to emphasise sincerity, intelligence, and the poet's ability to look clearly at the world." So they weren't interested in rhetoric; as a sort of extension to Imagism, the emphasis was on seeing clearly. Does this help??? Stumps 06:06, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


Joining the Project

Hello, I'd like to join the project. I'm pretty new to Wikipedia. Anything in particular I should be assigned to do? I can go through the list of poets and take care of some of the red links if you like. --User:Hesperides


I'm a recent acquisition as well. There's been a lot of work of late on the Poetry article, but it still needs some help, especially on cites and on that "nature of poetry" section. If you go to Template:Schools of poetry you'll see a couple of us bemoaning the lack of more on non-Western schools on the talk page. I see a lot of work going on on the various Blake Mythology pieces, which are all new to me. And I think those red links are always in need of help. There's also a huge project just waiting on the "History of Poetry" page. That'll take many of us. Just some thoughts. (by the way - easiest way to sign these pages is with 4 tildes (~) Sam 01:33, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Sam! Hesperides 22:10, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipoetic Wikipriorities

I changed the priority list for copy edits to just the "Main Articles" and "See also" articles on the Poetry page; with the recent rewrite and refactor, the total blue links on the Poetry Page are overwhelming, and I'd found even the ones in the Intro hadn't even had a good copyedit.

It also looks like both Shakespeare and Gilgamesh are going to be the subject of impending article improvement drives, so I think we should add those as priorities in the short term. They're both pretty mediocre articles but pretty important subjects; I may take a short crack at Gilgamesh before the drive gets going to get a bit more of a framework around it.

What do ya'all think?Sam 21:24, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

FAC for Poetry

I've put up Poetry for featured article, and its clear that one criticism is that more in the way of footnoting and referencing is needed. Please help; it's your chance to add your favorite critics and commentators to the Reference section and develop a good bibliography. Sam 01:31, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

To Do List

It looks to me like work on Blake's Mythology is stalled and the work on Jacopone da Todi, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, the cleanup of Portal:Poetry and Poetry has in each case accomplished much of what was inteded. There is more activity on the sonnets, the timelines Stumps put up, and in other places. Should we be revisiting the to-do list? I'm ready to take off Todi, LANGUAGE and Poetry, put a pitch in for renewed vigor on Blake, add the timelines, change clean-up Portal to maintain Portal and what else?? Sam 13:18, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Poetry FA

Poetry is now an FA! While I've removed it from our to-do lists, I'm going to keep working on making sure all the poets and works cited in it are reflected in the List of years in poetry and will continue editing the main and see also articles, and invite other to do the same. Sam 00:21, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Userbox.

I noticed we didn't have a userbox, so I um, created one. It's fairly simple, because whenever I try something like this I get smacked down by other editors, but it serves its purpose:
This user is a member of

Wikiproject Poetry.




Dev920 22:57, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, What do other people think? Dev920 12:01, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

No article on Love poetry

Although the application of poetry for romance is mentioned in passing in the main poetry article there does not appear to be a section or article dedicated to this popular subject. Is there a reason for this? --Gmaxwell 02:19, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Poetry of the United States

Hi everyone. Poetry of the United States is currently undergoing a Featured article review. Please go here to leave comments and help us maintain its featured quality. Marskell 09:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

The Shield of Achilles needs polishing

Hi. At present, this article about Auden's 1955 poem seems more like a high-school essay than an encyclopedia article. Would someone with more ability to write articles about poems than I have (i.e., 99% of the people who read this page) like to improve the article? Please? Thanks in advance, CWC(talk) 01:38, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, this page is so primitive and mistaken in so many ways that it may be best simply to delete it. The poem is certainly important, but there at least a dozen poems by Auden that deserve to be treated before this one. Even after some fixes of obvious simplifications and errors, it still sounds much more like a high-school essay than an encyclopedia entry. Macspaunday 23:14, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
OK, I've gone back and rewritten the whole page from the start. The page probably should never have been created, but at least the description of the poem now makes sense. Macspaunday 23:35, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

  • User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
  • User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
  • User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 22:31, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now moved the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 14:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

No stub subcategories?

I was stunned to see that the only stub template seems to be "poetry-stub" ... no subcategories for nationality, nor for century, etc. As much as we all want NOT to have stubs, they are the starting place for virtually all Wikipedia articles, and having them effectively sorted is one key to getting people to work on them. The list "poetry stubs" is immense, but if we had even so simple an addition as separate stub categories for the most represented nationalities, that would start to make it more manageable for the newcomers. I got started as an editor because the language of a stub template invited me to do so, and because I knew I had some knowledge of that topic. Once a newcomer sees that stubs are categorized, often that person starts to look into the categories to see what looks do-able. I'll try to work up some stub-subcategory proposals, but here's an open invitation to others to beat me to it for their own specialties. Lawikitejana 18:53, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a good idea. Some suggestions ...
  • poetic-form-stub
  • poetry-movement-stub
  • poetry-collection-stub
  • poem-stub
  • poetry-award-stub
  • poetry-timeline-stub (for the 'year in poetry' articles)

That's a quick start ... I'll keep thinking about it. Stumps 08:40, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

If you are creating poetry stubs, make sure they will apply to at least 50 articles, or the stubs patrollers will CfD it, as I found out to my cost. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 08:58, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Userbox code?

Please add the {{Userbox code}}, if there is one, to the project page.

There isn't one. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 07:37, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Hav eadded one. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 08:31, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Nice job. Stumps 08:35, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Template for articles on poetic form

A while back I was using various articles to do with different aspects of poetic form, and found them pretty difficult to navigate. So I started working on this: User:James_Kemp/Template:Poetry. I didn't have time to do very much with it, and don't have much time now, but I think it could be useful. I based it on the "Marxism" template and a load of the entries for that template still need removing... --Jim (Talk) 02:46, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Looks useful, though it obviously still needs us all to chip in to help get it complete(though I think one or two Marxism references can always be kept). Sam 16:24, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Rosemary Tonks

Grateful if people would look at this article, please. I noted ages ago that she became involved with a fundamentalist Christian group, stopped writing and eventually disappeared. I cite excellent sources, including Andrew Motion. However, I have suddenly been challenged and the article is marked as disputed.--Poetlister 23:52, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

English poetry FAR

English poetry has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy (Talk) 22:13, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

This is another of the articles that User:Filiocht had a big role in that are up for FAR in part because of lack of citation (James Joyce was the last one). There's a lot of good stuff worth saving and building around in this article. I'll chip in to help build up the citations over the next couple of weeks, but the other comment that one of the reviewers has, that many of the paragraphs are too short and choppy, is also going to need some work.Sam 03:00, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Joyce Kilmer

I'm currently working on the Joyce Kilmer article with the intention of putting it up for GA before January 1st 2007, if not get it up to FA standards afterward. I would appreciate your feedback, encouragement, assistance, etc. —ExplorerCDT 03:09, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Joyce Kilmer

Please visit the talk page and review the recent edit-warring history for Joyce Kilmer and please comment on whether certain genealogical information (which I think is irrelevant and anti-policy) should be inserted into the article. —ExplorerCDT 00:17, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Poetry FAR

Poetry has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Poetry infobox

I proposed a poem infobox here; feel free to drop by and comment. GracenotesT § 00:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Poetry awards

Can anyone spare the time to glance at Kofi Anyidoho? My problem is with the international/non-Ghanaian awards. Which of them is really worth a mention?? The Langston Hughes Prize looked interesting but I suspect it's probably only the "Langston Hughes Award" from the Georgia Poetry Society[1]. And I can't see a good source about the BBC award that's mentioned. Any ideas? --VSerrata 10:36, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Os Lusíadas could use some work

Howdy poetry folks. The Portuguese national epic Os Lusíadas is considered to be "one of the most important literary works in the world". The en Wikipedia article could use some work. Much of the current article was translated from Portuguese Wikipedia and could use some rewriting and cites. -- (I'm also crossposting this note to other projects. If you know somewhere that this should be crossposted, please do so, but please leave this original here. Thanks.) -- Writtenonsand 12:42, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Poetry portal

It seems that whoever was taking care of the poetry portal has disappeared. It's sorely in need of some new content by someone with knowledge in that area, lest it be de-featured for lack of updates. Cheers. Planetneutral talk 11:11, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

The Sir Gawain and the Green Knight page has been recently added to the project. For its importance in literature, it has been largely ignored until recently. Please help it get better! Wrad 23:33, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

New European poet articles

New user:Klaus rabe has recently [Special:Contributions/Klaus_rabe|created]] a couple articles for European poets and artists with very little information. This has led to a somewhat difficult welcome to WP for him, for instance right now one of his articles, Serbian poet Zlatko Krasni, is up for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zlatko Krasni. If anyone here has any ideas, info, or citations about Krasni, it would be very helpful. Thanks, Smmurphy(Talk) 23:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

The Lais of Marie de France question

Parts of this message were previously posted to an individual's talk page. Hopefully my reposting it here won't be a violation of WP:CANVASS.

I've slowly been working on the various Lais of Marie de France. I hope that Wikipedia is inclusive enough to allow articles on each of the twelve poems in this collection. The poems are long enough that (several hundred lines each) that their text isn't included in the articles that I have written. The poems are written in the Anglo-Norman language, and currently I've only been linking to English translations when I find them. Is there any preference whether the translations should come from Wikisource or other sites? Currently there aren't any translations of these poems on Wikisource, and some of them don't seem to have online translations at all. In the (probably far) future, I might do my own translations, but don't get your hopes up. One more thing: are there any particularly good poetry articles you could mention as models to emulate? Thanks in advance for your feedback. --Kyoko 19:07, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

  • First of all, let me say, "cool!" I look forward to reading these. For models, I'd suggest you start to look at the four poems listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Poetry#Individual poems for a start (e.g., The Wasteland), BUT realize all these articles were written before Wikipedia became quite as earnest as it now is about citations. For citation format and approach, Mary Wollstonecraft is a recent featured article involving poetry. I like to see translations on Wikisource, myself, but I don't think it is a big deal, and it is hard to find translations for many things that are free of copyright so they can be uploaded on to Wikisource. I like most when the translation also shows the original language version, especially with poetry, but you do what you can. A lot of poetry articles will link to multiple translations. You may also want to look at the navigation templates on Shakespeare's Sonnets, another project that involves a series of related (by author) poems. Also, if you have a chance to add any Marie de France related dates to the List of years in poetry project while you're at it, I'd appreciate it. A Musing 19:34, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
    • If you could, could you please look at the individual poem articles that I have already done? A handy index is available on The Lais of Marie de France and also on my userpage as of 21 April 2007. I'm more than halfway through the list right now. One thing I was trying to figure out was the best way to cite the annotations for a given text. In some of the articles, I said something like "Marie de France, Les Lais de Marie de France, traduits et annotés par L. Harf-Lancner". After looking at how the Opera WikiProject cites CD liner notes, I decided to rework the citations, as seen in Guigemar. This way, the person who has written the supplementary text gets the credit as needed, rather than the poet. About your list of years in poetry, it's hard to answer your request because of the difficulty in assigning an exact date to such old compositions. Thanks for the suggestions. --Kyoko 19:52, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
      • You know, I'm not sure what the right way to do those citations is, and I've struggled with them before. But I think I know who to ask, and you'll see me post a question on User:SandyGeorgia's talk page shortly. I know well the problems with dates, and you if you look at something like 13th century in poetry, you'll see lots of European poetry summarized by century because dates are unavailable, while the Chinese and Arabic poetry we get solid dates for starting several centuries earlier. I'll be reading your articles as well, and will let you know if I have comments or thoughts.A Musing 20:06, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
      • Some thoughts: you may want to look at Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as one potential model; the poems on the project page are all more recent, so they have lots of real history about the drafts, what the poet was doing in the time period, etc., where Gawain and the Lais will be more comparable for available material. I don't really know the Lais, so I may be of limited help, but most of what you've got now are synopsis of the plot, which is a fine start, but I'd love to see more technical discussion of the poetry. For example, are the octosyllabic couplets varied at all or fully regular? Is it all Rime riche? Any other structure elements beyond meter and rhyme (e.g., alliteration)? Since we're in the relatively early days of rhyme in Europe here, what are the influences on its form, or what other poets of the period would use the form? Also, some of the historical view of their influence over time, and the publication history (hard to know when to put that in the article on the Lais and when in the individual articles on the poems, but there should be enough in each so they stand on their own). Also, you may want to see if User:Scribblingwoman or User:Awadewit have some thoughts - both know a lot about poetry by women and have been adding great stuff to Wikipedia. I hope this is useful. A Musing 20:48, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
        • Right now, I want to just get the plot synopses out of the way. As for the technical aspects, I will have to brush up on that before proceeding. One caveat is that my own understanding of Old French is limited, so I've ended up reading the poems partly in the original language but mostly in modern French translation. The medieval period in general is not my strong suit either. I also tend not to concentrate on any particular article, so I may have bursts of activity on something, then neglect it for a period of time, and then return back to it later. Thanks for prodding me to think about the structural aspects of the texts. --Kyoko 21:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
          • Well, I thought the synopses were all good; some of the later ones were a bit short, but I'll bet that's because you've just started. I have no meaningful Old French, but know a little bit about the period and the technical aspects of poetry in the period; will wiegh in as I feel competant. It's a good project.A Musing 21:24, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
            • Thanks. As I said before, I hope that Wikipedia is inclusive enough to accept articles on each poem.
            • What is Wikipedia's policy regarding how notable a poem has to be? Looking at a cross-section of poets, it seems that there are a lot of gaps in the coverage of individual poems, and I don't know if that's from neglect or design. --Kyoko 21:34, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
            • I don't know that I've seen it tested much. There was an attempt to delete some of the Shakespeare sonnets, based on two notions: that the individual poems weren't all notable and that the articles were mostly original research; it failed, by recollection, on both accounts (and many of those articles, especially for minor sonnets, are really just stubs at this point). So we know just about anything by Shakespeare, even a minor poem, is notable enough. I would certainly defend the Lais - after all, its part of a small body of work by a poet who has had a big surge of interest, and they are important both for historical and aesthetic reasons. A Musing 21:52, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

(resetting indent) My hope was that if a poet is considered notable enough for Wikipedia, then her work should also be considered notable. --Kyoko 04:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

New Wikiproject

There is a new Wikiproject up, related to this one: Wikipedia:WikiProject Shakespeare. Please take a look, join, give your input. The project deals with everything Shakespeare, including his poetry. Wrad 01:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Troilus: request for help from Chaucer/Shakespeare experts

I'm currently in the middle of an expansion of the article on Troilus to cover the developments from ancient to modern versions of his myth.

Themes still to be covered include the change in features of Troilus' romance and his character in Chaucer and Shakespeare (and possibly Dryden).

If anyone is interested in helping with either of those, then please let me know at Talk:Troilus. Thanks --Peter cohen 18:14, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Descriptive poetry

This stinketh mightily. --Steven J. Anderson 21:37, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


Template?!

Some comments at Template_talk:WPPoetry. In sum, however, I'm not sure what work, if any, the template for this project is doing. --Jbmurray 06:59, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

W. B. Yeats FAR

W. B. Yeats has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. LuciferMorgan 13:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Seamus Heaney's Death of a Naturalist collection and a more general point of poems.

I was browsing Wikipedia today. Typed in "Digging" into the address bar after the wikipedia address. I expected to come across the method of excavation, which I think would be the most common response. Instead I arrived at a Seamus Heavney poem, entitled Digging. I posted a short comment regarding this on the comment box.

However the works grabbed my attention so I looked at the remainder of the collection. It turned out that only 2 poems had content, a third wanted an article. Given that both poems were saying roughly the same thing, I wondered as to the point. I realise that for Shakespeare's more well known Sonnets, as well as some other major works that an individual poem needs it's own page. However I thought that it might be better to start articles out as a paragraph on the author's name, before expanding to a collection's own page, then finally giving the poem it's own page. This would seem to me to be a good solution as it would keep the quality of Wikipedia high, while allowing room for expansion for more recognized works. It seems clear that not every poem has enough content (or controversy!) to make it to article stage and so it seems weird to attempt this.

I suppose the only downside to this is that poem's are often released in multiple collections. However I think that if its released twice that probably means that it will have enough information to grant it's own article.

I also don't think that a mass merge is a good thing, but I wanted to express the idea as it relates to new poems. Maybe if consensus is agreed we could slowly merge the shorter poem articles back.

Thoughts please :) Philipwhiuk 19:51, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Michael Hamburger

Can anyone confirm that Michael Hamburger died yesterday? Charles Matthews 11:54, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

The Raven

A couple of us have been putting a lot of effort into reworking the article on "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. If anyone has any interest, feel free to give some feedback on the talk page there (or here or on my talk page... whatever you'd like). I think we're close to putting it up for peer review with the hope of getting it up to (at least) Good Article status. Thanks! --Midnightdreary 14:57, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I put "The Raven" up for Peer Review but no takers so far. Is anyone willing to give some feedback on this article? Any help is greatly appreciated! :) --Midnightdreary 12:44, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Expert review: Lucille Nixon

As part of the Notability wikiproject, I am trying to sort out whether Lucille Nixon is notable enough for an own article. I would appreciate an expert opinion. For details, see the article's talk page. If you can spare some time, please add your comments there. Thanks! --B. Wolterding 07:45, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Poets as audio files

I went about this the wrong way earlier, and I'm told you it's better to go through you guys. I think it's useful and important to hear poets read their own work, especially performance poets as mentioned above. And I know now not to just add the links I know about all by myself as it looks like spam. Can I then mention a few sites where you might find external links to audio files for poets you're working on?

You may, of course, know these already, and I've seen lots of references to poets.org, for which hurrah. I'm sure there are more, too. Sandpiper7 09:50, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

The Raven up for featured article review

Today I put the article on Edgar Poe's "The Raven" up for featured article review. Just thought I'd share. If you are interested in the discussion, feel free to visit: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Raven‎. Thanks! --Midnightdreary 22:05, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe the voting for "The Raven" as a featured article is closing within the next 24 hours. It has only received four votes (3 supports, 1 oppose). If anyone has the time, please drop by and give your opinion!!! Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Raven. --Midnightdreary 05:27, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
It's official, "The Raven" is now a featured article! It took two attempts, but it was worth it. --Midnightdreary 13:17, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.