Poetical Testament

Poetry (from the Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings. Any particular instance of poetry is called a poem and is written by a poet.

Poets use a variety of techniques called poetic devices, such as assonance, alliteration, euphony and cacophony, onomatopoeia, rhythm (via metre), and sound symbolism, to produce musical or other artistic effects. They also frequently organize these effects into poetic structures, which may be strict or loose, conventional or invented by the poet. Poetic structures vary dramatically by language and cultural convention, but they often use rhythmic metre (patterns of syllable stress or syllable (mora) weight). They may also use repeating patterns of phonemes, phoneme groups, tones (phonemic pitch shifts found in tonal languages), words, or entire phrases. These include consonance (or just alliteration), assonance (as in the dróttkvætt), and rhyme schemes (patterns in rimes, a type of phoneme group). Poetic structures may even be semantic (e.g. the volta required in a Petrachan sonnet).

Most written poems are formatted in verse: a series or stack of lines on a page, which follow the poetic structure. For this reason, verse has also become a synonym (a metonym) for poetry.

Some poetry types are unique to particular cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Readers accustomed to identifying poetry with Dante, Goethe, Mickiewicz, or Rumi may think of it as written in lines based on rhyme and regular meter. There are, however, traditions, such as Biblical poetry and alliterative verse, that use other means to create rhythm and euphony. Other traditions, such as Somali poetry, rely on complex systems of alliteration and metre independent of writing and been described as structurally comparable to ancient Greek and medieval European oral verse. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, testing the principle of euphony itself or altogether forgoing rhyme or set rhythm.

Poetry has a long and varied history, evolving differentially across the globe. It dates back at least to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile, Niger, and Volta River valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE. The earliest surviving Western Asian epic poem, the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', was written in the Sumerian language.

Early poems in the Eurasian continent include folk songs such as the Chinese ''Shijing'', religious hymns (such as the Sanskrit ''Rigveda'', the Zoroastrian ''Gathas'', the '' Hurrian songs'', and the Hebrew ''Psalms''); and retellings of oral epics (such as the Egyptian ''Story of Sinuhe'', Indian epic poetry, and the Homeric epics, the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'').

Ancient Greek attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's ''Poetics'', focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song, and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition, verse form, and rhyme, and emphasized aesthetics which distinguish poetry from the format of more objectively-informative, academic, or typical writing, which is known as prose.

Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretations of words, or to evoke emotive responses. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony, and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly, figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, and metonymy establish a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm.

Poets – as, from the Greek, "makers" of language – have contributed to the evolution of the linguistic, expressive, and utilitarian qualities of their languages.

In an increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles, and techniques from diverse cultures and languages.

A Western cultural tradition (extending at least from Homer to Rilke) associates the production of poetry with inspiration – often by a Muse (either classical or contemporary), or through other (often canonised) poets' work which sets some kind of example or challenge.

In first-person poems, the lyrics are spoken by an "I", a character who may be termed the ''speaker'', distinct from the poet (the ''author''). Thus if, for example, a poem asserts, "I killed my enemy in Reno", it is the speaker, not the poet, who is the killer (unless this "confession" is a form of metaphor which needs to be considered in closer context – via close reading).

History

Early works

Some scholars believe that the art of poetry may predate literacy, and developed from folk epics and other oral genres.
Others, however, suggest that poetry did not necessarily predate writing.

The oldest surviving epic poem, the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', dates from the 3rd millenniumBCE in Sumer (in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq), and was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets and, later, on papyrus. The Istanbul tablet#2461, dating to 2000BCE, describes an annual rite in which the king symbolically married and mated with the goddess Inanna to ensure fertility and prosperity; some have labelled it the world's oldest love poem. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is ''The Story of Sinuhe'' (c. 1800 BCE).

Other ancient epics includes the Greek ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey''; the Persian Avestan books (the ''Yasna

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