Poetry (from the Greek 'poiesis'/ποίησις [poieo/ποιέω], a making: a forming, creating, or the art of poetry, or a poem) is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning. Poetry may be written independently, as discrete poems, or may occur in conjunction with other arts, as in poetic drama, hymns, lyrics, or prose poetry. It is published in dedicated magazines (the longest established being ''Poetry'' and ''Oxford Poetry''), individual collections and wider anthologies.

Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian ''Epic of Gilgamesh''. The earliest poems evolved from folk songs, such as the Chinese ''Shijing'', or from the need to retell oral epics, such as the Sanskrit ''Vedas'', Zoroastrian ''Gathas'', and the Homeric epics, the ''Odyssey'' and the ''Iliad''. Ancient 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 the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from more objectively informative, prosaic forms of writing, such as manifestos, biographies, essays, and novels . From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally labeled as a fundamental creative act using language.

Poetry primarily is governed by idiosyncratic forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, or to evoke emotive responses. Devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony, and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly, metaphor, simile, and metonymy create 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.

Some poetry types are specific to particular cultures and genres, responding to the characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Readers accustomed to identifying poetry with Dante, Goethe, Mickiewicz and Rumi may think of it as being written in lines based upon rhyme and regular meter, there are traditions, such as Biblical poetry, that use other methodologies to create rhythm and euphony. Much of modern British and American poetry is to some extent a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing (among other things) the principle of euphony itself, to the extent that sometimes it deliberately does not rhyme or keep to set rhythms at all. In today's globalized world poets often borrow styles, techniques and forms from diverse cultures and languages.

History

Poetry as an art form may predate literacy. Epic poetry, from the Indian ''Vedas'' (1700–1200 BC) and Zoroaster's ''Gathas'' (1200-900 BC) to the ''Odyssey'' (800–675 BC), appears to have been composed in poetic form to aid memorization and oral transmission, in prehistoric and ancient societies. Other forms of poetry developed directly from the recording of folk songs. The earliest entries in the Han Dynasty ''Shijing'' (1000 BC) were initially lyrics, preceding later entries intended to be read. Poetry appears among the earliest records of most literate cultures, with poetic fragments found on early monoliths, runestones, and stelae.

The oldest surviving epic poem is the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', from the 3rd millennium BC in Sumer (in Mesopotamia, now Iraq), which was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets and, later, papyrus. Other ancient epic poetry includes the Greek epics ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'', the Old Iranian books the ''Gathic Avesta'' and ''Yasna'', the Roman national epic, Virgil's ''Aeneid'', and the Indian epics ''Ramayana'' and ''Mahabharata''.

The efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form , and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in "poetics"—the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as the Chinese through the ''Shi Jing'', one of the Five Classics of Confucianism, developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance. More recently, thinkers have struggled to find a definition that could encompass formal differences as great as those between Chaucer's ''Canterbury Tales'' and Matsuo Bashō's ''Oku no Hosomichi'', as well as differences in context spanning Tanakh religious poetry, love poetry, and rap.

Context can be critical to poetics and to the development of poetic genres and forms. Poetry that records historic events in epics, such as ''Gilgamesh'' or Ferdowsi's ''Shahnameh'', will necessarily be lengthy and narrative, while poetry used for liturgical purposes (hymns, psalms, suras, and hadiths) is likely to have an inspirational tone, whereas elegy and tragedy are meant to evoke deep emotional responses. Other contexts include Gregorian chants, formal or diplomatic speech, political rhetoric and invective, light-hearted nursery and nonsense rhymes, and even medical texts.

The Polish historian of aesthetics, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, in a paper on "The Concept of Poetry," traces the evolution of what is in fact ''two concepts of poetry''. Tatarkiewicz points out that the term is applied to two distinct things that, as the poet Paul Valéry observed, "at a certain point find union. Poetry [...] is an art based on ''language.'' But poetry also has a more general meaning [...] that is difficult to define because it is less determinate: poetry expresses a certain ''state of mind.''"

Western traditions

Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Notably, the existing fragments of Aristotle's ''Poetics'' describe three genres of poetry—the epic, the comic, and the tragic—and develop rules to distinguish the highest-quality poetry in each genre, based on the underlying purposes of the genre. Later aestheticians identified three major genres: epic poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry.

Aristotle's work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age, as well as in Europe during the Renaissance. Later poets and aestheticians often distinguished poetry from, and defined it in opposition to prose, which was generally understood as writing with a proclivity to logical explication and a linear narrative structure.

This does not imply that poetry is illogical or lacks narration, but rather that poetry is an attempt to render the beautiful or sublime without the burden of engaging the logical or narrative thought process. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic, "Negative Capability". This "romantic" approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic. This approach remained influential into the 20th century.

During this period, there was also substantially more interaction among the various poetic traditions, in part due to the spread of European colonialism and the attendant rise in global trade. In addition to a boom in translation, during the Romantic period numerous ancient works were rediscovered.

20th-century disputes

Some 20th-century literary theorists, relying less on the opposition of prose and poetry, focused on the poet as simply one who creates using language, and poetry as what the poet creates. The underlying concept of the poet as creator is not uncommon, and some modernist poets essentially do not distinguish between the creation of a poem with words, and creative acts in other media such as carpentry. Yet other modernists challenge the very attempt to define poetry as misguided, as when Archibald MacLeish concludes his paradoxical poem, "Ars Poetica", with the lines: "A poem should not mean / but be." See also Wallace Stevens's comparison of poetry to music in "To the One of Fictive Music", poetry "musing the obscure" so as to "give motion to perfection more serene" than any other music.

Disputes over the definition of poetry, and over poetry's distinction from other genres of literature, have been inextricably intertwined with the debate over the role of poetic form. The rejection of traditional forms and structures for poetry that began in the first half of the 20th century coincided with a questioning of the purpose and meaning of traditional definitions of poetry and of distinctions between poetry and prose, particularly given examples of poetic prose and prosaic poetry. Numerous modernist poets have written in non-traditional forms or in what traditionally would have been considered prose, although their writing was generally infused with poetic diction and often with rhythm and tone established by non-metrical means. While there was a substantial formalist reaction within the modernist schools to the breakdown of structure, this reaction focused as much on the development of new formal structures and syntheses as on the revival of older forms and structures.

Recently, postmodernism has come to convey more completely prose and poetry as distinct entities, and also among genres of poetry, as having meaning only as cultural artifacts. Postmodernism goes beyond modernism's emphasis on the creative role of the poet, to emphasize the role of the reader of a text (Hermeneutics), and to highlight the complex cultural web within which a poem is read. Today, throughout the world, poetry often incorporates poetic form and diction from other cultures and from the past, further confounding attempts at definition and classification that were once sensible within a tradition such as the Western canon.

Elements

Prosody

Prosody is the study of the meter, rhythm, and intonation of a poem. Rhythm and meter are different, although closely related. Meter is the definitive pattern established for a verse (such as iambic pentameter), while rhythm is the actual sound that results from a line of poetry. Thus, the meter of a line may be described as being "iambic", but a full description of the rhythm would require noting where the language causes one to pause or accelerate and how the meter interacts with other elements of the language. Prosody also may be used more specifically to refer to the scanning of poetic lines to show meter.

Rhythm

The methods for creating poetic rhythm vary across languages and between poetic traditions. Languages are often described as having timing set primarily by accents, syllables, or moras, depending on how rhythm is established, though a language can be influenced by multiple approaches. Japanese is a mora-timed language. Syllable-timed languages include Latin, Catalan, French, Leonese, Galician and Spanish. English, Russian and, generally, German are stress-timed languages. Varying intonation also affects how rhythm is perceived. Languages also can rely on either pitch, such as in Vedic Sanskrit or Ancient Greek, or tone. Tonal languages include Chinese, Vietnamese, Lithuanian, and most Subsaharan languages.

Metrical rhythm generally involves precise arrangements of stresses or syllables into repeated patterns called feet within a line. In Modern English verse the pattern of stresses primarily differentiate feet, so rhythm based on meter in Modern English is most often founded on the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (alone or elided). In the classical languages, on the other hand, while the metrical units are similar, vowel length rather than stresses define the meter. Old English poetry used a metrical pattern involving varied numbers of syllables but a fixed number of strong stresses in each line.

The chief device of ancient Hebrew Biblical poetry, including many of the psalms, was ''parallelism'', a rhetorical structure in which successive lines reflected each other in grammatical structure, sound structure, notional content, or all three. Parallelism lent itself to antiphonal or call-and-response performance, which could also be reinforced by intonation. Thus, Biblical poetry relies much less on metrical feet to create rhythm, but instead creates rhythm based on much larger sound units of lines, phrases and sentences. Some classical poetry forms, such as Venpa of the Tamil language, had rigid grammars (to the point that they could be expressed as a context-free grammar) which ensured a rhythm. In Chinese poetry, tones as well as stresses create rhythm. Classical Chinese poetics identifies four tones: the level tone, rising tone, departing tone, and entering tone. Note that other classifications may have as many as eight tones for Chinese and six for Vietnamese.

The formal patterns of meter used in Modern English verse to create rhythm no longer dominate contemporary English poetry. In the case of free verse, rhythm is often organized based on looser units of cadence rather than a regular meter. Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams are three notable poets who reject the idea that regular accentual meter is critical to English poetry. Jeffers experimented with sprung rhythm as an alternative to accentual rhythm.

Meter

In the Western poetic tradition, meters are customarily grouped according to a characteristic metrical foot and the number of feet per line. Thus, "iambic pentameter" is a meter comprising five feet per line, in which the predominant kind of foot is the "iamb". This metric system originated in ancient Greek poetry, and was used by poets such as Pindar and Sappho, and by the great tragedians of Athens. Similarly, "dactylic hexameter", comprises six feet per line, of which the dominant kind of foot is the "dactyl". Dactylic hexameter was the traditional meter of Greek epic poetry, the earliest extant examples of which are the works of Homer and Hesiod. More recently, iambic pentameter and dactylic hexameter have been used by William Shakespeare and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, respectively.

Meter is often scanned based on the arrangement of "poetic feet" into lines. In English, each foot usually includes one syllable with a stress and one or two without a stress. In other languages, it may be a combination of the number of syllables and the length of the vowel that determines how the foot is parsed, where one syllable with a long vowel may be treated as the equivalent of two syllables with short vowels. For example, in ancient Greek poetry, meter is based solely on syllable duration rather than stress. In some languages, such as English, stressed syllables are typically pronounced with greater volume, greater length, and higher pitch, and are the basis for poetic meter. In ancient Greek, these attributes were independent of each other; long vowels and syllables including a vowel plus more than one consonant actually had longer duration, approximately double that of a short vowel, while pitch and stress (dictated by the accent) were not associated with duration and played no role in the meter. Thus, a dactylic hexameter line could be envisioned as a musical phrase with six measures, each of which contained either a half note followed by two quarter notes (i.e. a long syllable followed by two short syllables), or two half notes (i.e. two long syllables); thus, the substitution of two short syllables for one long syllable resulted in a measure of the same length. Such substitution in a stress language, such as English, would not result in the same rhythmic regularity. In Anglo-Saxon meter, the unit on which lines are built is a half-line containing two stresses rather than a foot. Scanning meter can often show the basic or fundamental pattern underlying a verse, but does not show the varying degrees of stress, as well as the differing pitches and lengths of syllables.

As an example of how a line of meter is defined, in English-language iambic pentameter, each line has five metrical feet, and each foot is an iamb, or an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. When a particular line is scanned, there may be variations upon the basic pattern of the meter; for example, the first foot of English iambic pentameters is quite often inverted, meaning that the stress falls on the first syllable. The generally accepted names for some of the most commonly used kinds of feet include:

iamb – one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (e.g. describe, Include, retract)

trochee – one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (e.g. picture, flower)

dactyl – one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (e.g.annotate an-no-tate)

anapest – two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable (e.g. comprehend com-pre-hend)

spondee – two stressed syllables together (e.g. e-nough)

pyrrhic – two unstressed syllables together (rare, usually used to end dactylic hexameter)

The number of metrical feet in a line are described in Greek terminology as follows:

monometer - one foot

dimeter – two feet

trimeter – three feet

tetrameter – four feet

pentameter – five feet

hexameter – six feet

heptameter – seven feet

octameter – eight feet

There are a wide range of names for other types of feet, right up to a choriamb of four syllable metric foot with a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables and closing with a stressed syllable. The choriamb is derived from some ancient Greek and Latin poetry. Languages which utilize vowel length or intonation rather than or in addition to syllabic accents in determining meter, such as Ottoman Turkish or Vedic, often have concepts similar to the iamb and dactyl to describe common combinations of long and short sounds.

Each of these types of feet has a certain "feel," whether alone or in combination with other feet. The iamb, for example, is the most natural form of rhythm in the English language, and generally produces a subtle but stable verse. The dactyl, on the other hand, almost gallops along. And, in the manner of ''The Night Before Christmas'' or Dr. Seuss, the anapest is said to produce a light-hearted, comic feel.

There is debate over how useful a multiplicity of different "feet" is in describing meter. For example, Robert Pinsky has argued that while dactyls are important in classical verse, English dactylic verse uses dactyls very irregularly and can be better described based on patterns of iambs and anapests, feet which he considers natural to the language. Actual rhythm is significantly more complex than the basic scanned meter described above, and many scholars have sought to develop systems that would scan such complexity. Vladimir Nabokov noted that overlaid on top of the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse was a separate pattern of accents resulting from the natural pitch of the spoken words, and suggested that the term "scud" be used to distinguish an unaccented stress from an accented stress.

Metrical patterns

Different traditions and genres of poetry tend to use different meters, ranging from the Shakespearian iambic pentameter and the Homeric dactylic hexameter to the Anapestic tetrameter used in many nursery rhymes. However, a number of variations to the established meter are common, both to provide emphasis or attention to a given foot or line and to avoid boring repetition. For example, the stress in a foot may be inverted, a caesura (or pause) may be added (sometimes in place of a foot or stress), or the final foot in a line may be given a feminine ending to soften it or be replaced by a spondee to emphasize it and create a hard stop. Some patterns (such as iambic pentameter) tend to be fairly regular, while other patterns, such as dactylic hexameter, tend to be highly irregular. Regularity can vary between language. In addition, different patterns often develop distinctively in different languages, so that, for example, iambic tetrameter in Russian will generally reflect a regularity in the use of accents to reinforce the meter, which does not occur, or occurs to a much lesser extent, in English. Some common metrical patterns, with notable examples of poets and poems who use them, include: Iambic pentameter (John Milton, ''Paradise Lost'', William Shakespeare, ''Sonnets'') Dactylic hexameter (Homer, ''Iliad;'' Virgil, Aeneid; Ovid, ''Metamorphoses'') Iambic tetrameter (Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"; Aleksandr Pushkin, ''Eugene Onegin'', Robert Frost, ''Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'') Trochaic octameter (Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven") Anapestic tetrameter (Lewis Carroll, "The Hunting of the Snark"; Lord Byron, ''Don Juan'') Alexandrine (Jean Racine, ''Phèdre'')

Rhyme, alliteration, assonance

Rhyme, alliteration, assonance and consonance are ways of creating repetitive patterns of sound. They may be used as an independent structural element in a poem, to reinforce rhythmic patterns, or as an ornamental element.

Rhyme consists of identical ("hard-rhyme") or similar ("soft-rhyme") sounds placed at the ends of lines or at predictable locations within lines ("internal rhyme"). Languages vary in the richness of their rhyming structures; Italian, for example, has a rich rhyming structure permitting maintenance of a limited set of rhymes throughout a lengthy poem. The richness results from word endings that follow regular forms. English, with its irregular word endings adopted from other languages, is less rich in rhyme. The degree of richness of a language's rhyming structures plays a substantial role in determining what poetic forms are commonly used in that language.

Alliteration and assonance played a key role in structuring early Germanic, Norse and Old English forms of poetry. The alliterative patterns of early Germanic poetry interweave meter and alliteration as a key part of their structure, so that the metrical pattern determines when the listener expects instances of alliteration to occur. This can be compared to an ornamental use of alliteration in most Modern European poetry, where alliterative patterns are not formal or carried through full stanzas. Alliteration is particularly useful in languages with less rich rhyming structures. Assonance, where the use of similar vowel sounds within a word rather than similar sounds at the beginning or end of a word, was widely used in skaldic poetry, but goes back to the Homeric epic. Because verbs carry much of the pitch in the English language, assonance can loosely evoke the tonal elements of Chinese poetry and so is useful in translating Chinese poetry. Consonance occurs where a consonant sound is repeated throughout a sentence without putting the sound only at the front of a word. Consonance provokes a more subtle effect than alliteration and so is less useful as a structural element.

In 'A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry' (Longmans, 1969) Geoffrey Leech identified six different types of sound patterns or rhyme forms. These are defined as six possible ways in which either one or two of the structural parts of the related words can vary. The unvarying parts are in upper case/bold. C symbolises a consonant cluster, not a single consonant, V a vowel.

! Type	! Pattern	! Example 1	! Example 2
Alliteration	C v c	great/grow	send/sit
Assonance	c V c	great/fail	send/bell
Consonance	c v C	great/meat	send/hand
Reverse Rhyme	C V c	great/grazed	send/sell
Pararhyme	C v C	great/groat	send/sound
Rhyme	c V C	great/bait	send/bend

Rhyming schemes

In many languages, including modern European languages and Arabic, poets use rhyme in set patterns as a structural element for specific poetic forms, such as ballads, sonnets and rhyming couplets. However, the use of structural rhyme is not universal even within the European tradition. Much modern poetry avoids traditional rhyme schemes. Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme. Rhyme entered European poetry in the High Middle Ages, in part under the influence of the Arabic language in Al Andalus (modern Spain). Arabic language poets used rhyme extensively from the first development of literary Arabic in the sixth century, as in their long, rhyming qasidas. Some rhyming schemes have become associated with a specific language, culture or period, while other rhyming schemes have achieved use across languages, cultures or time periods. Some forms of poetry carry a consistent and well-defined rhyming scheme, such as the chant royal or the rubaiyat, while other poetic forms have variable rhyme schemes.

Most rhyme schemes are described using letters that correspond to sets of rhymes, so if the first, second and fourth lines of a quatrain rhyme with each other and the third line does not rhyme, the quatrain is said to have an "a-a-b-a" rhyme scheme. This rhyme scheme is the one used, for example, in the rubaiyat form. Similarly, an "a-b-b-a" quatrain (what is known as "enclosed rhyme") is used in such forms as the Petrarchan sonnet. Some types of more complicated rhyming schemes have developed names of their own, separate from the "a-b-c" convention, such as the ottava rima and terza rima. The types and use of differing rhyming schemes is discussed further in the main article.

Ottava rima

Ottava rima is a rhyming scheme using a stanza of eight lines with an alternating a-b rhyming scheme for the first six lines followed by a closing couplet. First used by Boccaccio, it was developed for heroic epics but has also been used for mock-heroic poetry.

Terza rima

Dante's ''Divine Comedy'' is written in terza rima, where each stanza has three lines, with the first and third rhyming, and the second line rhyming with the first and third lines of the next stanza (thus, a-b-a / b-c-b / c-d-c, et cetera.) in a chain rhyme. The terza rima provides a flowing, progressive sense to the poem, and used skilfully it can evoke a sense of motion, both forward and backward. Terza rima is appropriately used in lengthy poems in languages with rich rhyming structures (such as Italian, with its many common word endings).

Form

Poetic form is more flexible in modernist and post-modernist poetry, and continues to be less structured than in previous literary eras. Many modern poets eschew recognisable structures or forms, and write in free verse. But poetry remains distinguished from prose by its form; some regard for basic formal structures of poetry will be found in even the best free verse, however much such structures may appear to have been ignored. Similarly, in the best poetry written in classic styles there will be departures from strict form for emphasis or effect.

Among major structural elements used in poetry are the line, the stanza or verse paragraph, and larger combinations of stanzas or lines such as cantos. Also sometimes used are broader visual presentations of words and calligraphy. These basic units of poetic form are often combined into larger structures, called ''poetic forms'' or poetic modes (see following section), as in the sonnet or haiku.

Lines and stanzas

Poetry is often separated into lines on a page. These lines may be based on the number of metrical feet, or may emphasize a rhyming pattern at the ends of lines. Lines may serve other functions, particularly where the poem is not written in a formal metrical pattern. Lines can separate, compare or contrast thoughts expressed in different units, or can highlight a change in tone. See the article on line breaks for information about the division between lines.

Lines of poems are often organized into stanzas, which are denominated by the number of lines included. Thus a collection of two lines is a couplet (or distich), three lines a triplet (or tercet), four lines a quatrain, five lines a quintain (or cinquain), six lines a sestet, and eight lines an octet. These lines may or may not relate to each other by rhyme or rhythm. For example, a couplet may be two lines with identical meters which rhyme or two lines held together by a common meter alone. Stanzas often have related couplets or triplets within them.

Other poems may be organized into verse paragraphs, in which regular rhymes with established rhythms are not used, but the poetic tone is instead established by a collection of rhythms, alliterations, and rhymes established in paragraph form. Many medieval poems were written in verse paragraphs, even where regular rhymes and rhythms were used.

In many forms of poetry, stanzas are interlocking, so that the rhyming scheme or other structural elements of one stanza determine those of succeeding stanzas. Examples of such interlocking stanzas include, for example, the ghazal and the villanelle, where a refrain (or, in the case of the villanelle, refrains) is established in the first stanza which then repeats in subsequent stanzas. Related to the use of interlocking stanzas is their use to separate thematic parts of a poem. For example, the strophe, antistrophe and epode of the ode form are often separated into one or more stanzas. In such cases, or where structures are meant to be highly formal, a stanza will usually form a complete thought, consisting of full sentences and cohesive thoughts.

In some cases, particularly lengthier formal poetry such as some forms of epic poetry, stanzas themselves are constructed according to strict rules and then combined. In skaldic poetry, the dróttkvætt stanza had eight lines, each having three "lifts" produced with alliteration or assonance. In addition to two or three alliterations, the odd numbered lines had partial rhyme of consonants with dissimilar vowels, not necessarily at the beginning of the word; the even lines contained internal rhyme in set syllables (not necessarily at the end of the word). Each half-line had exactly six syllables, and each line ended in a trochee. The arrangement of dróttkvætts followed far less rigid rules than the construction of the individual dróttkvætts.

Visual presentation

Even before the advent of printing, the visual appearance of poetry often added meaning or depth. Acrostic poems conveyed meanings in the initial letters of lines or in letters at other specific places in a poem. In Arabic, Hebrew and Chinese poetry, the visual presentation of finely calligraphed poems has played an important part in the overall effect of many poems.

With the advent of printing, poets gained greater control over the mass-produced visual presentations of their work. Visual elements have become an important part of the poet's toolbox, and many poets have sought to use visual presentation for a wide range of purposes. Some Modernist poets have made the placement of individual lines or groups of lines on the page an integral part of the poem's composition. At times, this complements the poem's rhythm through visual caesuras of various lengths, or creates juxtapositions so as to accentuate meaning, ambiguity or irony, or simply to create an aesthetically pleasing form. In its most extreme form, this can lead to concrete poetry or asemic writing.

Diction

Poetic diction treats of the manner in which language is used, and refers not only to the sound but also to the underlying meaning and its interaction with sound and form. Many languages and poetic forms have very specific poetic dictions, to the point where distinct grammars and dialects are used specifically for poetry. Registers in poetry can range from strict employment of ordinary speech patterns, as favoured in much late 20th century prosody, through to highly ornate and aureate uses of language by such as the medieval and renaissance makars.

Poetic diction can include rhetorical devices such as simile and metaphor, as well as tones of voice, such as irony. Aristotle wrote in the ''Poetics'' that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor." Since the rise of Modernism, some poets have opted for a poetic diction that de-emphasizes rhetorical devices, attempting instead the direct presentation of things and experiences and the exploration of tone. On the other hand, Surrealists have pushed rhetorical devices to their limits, making frequent use of catachresis.

Allegorical stories are central to the poetic diction of many cultures, and were prominent in the West during classical times, the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Rather than being fully allegorical, however, a poem may contain symbols or allusions that deepen the meaning or effect of its words without constructing a full allegory.

Another strong element of poetic diction can be the use of vivid imagery for effect. The juxtaposition of unexpected or impossible images is, for example, a particularly strong element in surrealist poetry and haiku. Vivid images are often, as well, endowed with symbolism and or metaphor.

Many poetic dictions use repetitive phrases for effect, either a short phrase (such as Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" or "the wine-dark sea") or a longer refrain. Such repetition can add a somber tone to a poem, as in many odes, or can be laced with irony as the context of the words changes. For example, in Antony's famous eulogy of Caesar in Shakespeare's ''Julius Caesar'', Antony's repetition of the words, "For Brutus is an honorable man," moves from a sincere tone to one that exudes irony.

Forms

Specific poetic forms have been developed by many cultures. In more developed, closed or "received" poetic forms, the rhyming scheme, meter and other elements of a poem are based on sets of rules, ranging from the relatively loose rules that govern the construction of an elegy to the highly formalized structure of the ghazal or villanelle. Described below are some common forms of poetry widely used across a number of languages. Additional forms of poetry may be found in the discussions of poetry of particular cultures or periods and in the glossary.

Sonnet

Among the most common forms of poetry through the ages is the sonnet, which by the 13th century was a poem of fourteen lines following a set rhyme scheme and logical structure. By the 14th century, the form further crystallized under the pen of Petrarch, whose sonnets were later translated in the 16th century by Sir Thomas Wyatt, who is credited with introducing the sonnet form into English literature. A sonnet's first four lines typically introduce the topic. A sonnet usually follows an a-b-a-b rhyme pattern. The sonnet's conventions have changed over its history, and so there are several different sonnet forms. Traditionally, in sonnets English poets use iambic pentameter, the Spenserian and Shakespearean sonnets being especially notable. In the Romance languages, the hendecasyllable and Alexandrine are the most widely used meters, though the Petrarchan sonnet has been used in Italy since the 14th century. Sonnets are particularly associated with love poetry, and often use a poetic diction heavily based on vivid imagery, but the twists and turns associated with the move from octave to sestet and to final couplet make them a useful and dynamic form for many subjects. Shakespeare's sonnets are among the most famous in English poetry, with 20 being included in the ''Oxford Book of English Verse''. The relative prominence of a poet or set of works is often measured by reference to inclusion in the ''Oxford Book of English Verse'' or the ''Norton Anthology of Poetry''.

Jintishi

The jintishi (近體詩) is a Chinese poetic form based on a series of set tonal patterns using the four tones of Middle Chinese in each couplet: the level, rising, departing and entering tones. The basic form of the jintishi has eight lines in four couplets, with parallelism between the lines in the second and third couplets. The couplets with parallel lines contain contrasting content but an identical grammatical relationship between words. Jintishi often have a rich poetic diction, full of allusion, and can have a wide range of subject, including history and politics. One of the masters of the form was Du Fu, who wrote during the Tang Dynasty (8th century). There are several variations on the basic form of the jintishi.

Sestina

The sestina has six stanzas, each comprising six unrhymed lines, in which the words at the end of the first stanza’s lines reappear in a rolling pattern in the other stanzas. The poem then ends with a three-line stanza in which the words again appear, two on each line.

Villanelle

The Villanelle is a nineteen-line poem made up of five triplets with a closing quatrain; the poem is characterized by having two refrains, initially used in the first and third lines of the first stanza, and then alternately used at the close of each subsequent stanza until the final quatrain, which is concluded by the two refrains. The remaining lines of the poem have an a-b alternating rhyme. The villanelle has been used regularly in the English language since the late 19th century by such poets as Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, and Elizabeth Bishop. It is a form that has gained increased use at a time when the use of received forms of poetry has generally been declining.

Pantoum

The pantoum is a rare form of poetry similar to a villanelle. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next.

Rondeau

The rondeau was originally a French form, written on two rhymes with fifteen lines, using the first part of the first line as a refrain.

Roundel

The roundel form, said to have been devised by Swinburne, consists of nine lines plus a refrain after the third line and after the last line, the refrain being identical with the beginning of the first line.

Rondelet

The rondelet is a poem usually having seven lines and always two rhymes, with the first line containing four syllabes repeated as lines three and seven and the other lines having eight syllabes each. The rhyme scheme is AbAabbA where A is the refrain.

Triolet

A triolet is an eight line poem or stanza with a set rhyme scheme. Line four and line seven are the same as line one, and line eight is the same as line two. The rhyme scheme is ABaAabAB. The French poet Théodore de Banville has written several triolets.

Tanka

Tanka is a form of unrhymed Japanese poetry, with five sections totalling 31 ''onji'' (phonological units identical to morae), structured in a 5-7-5 7-7 pattern. There is generally a shift in tone and subject matter between the upper 5-7-5 phrase and the lower 7-7 phrase. Tanka were written as early as the Nara period by such poets as Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, at a time when Japan was emerging from a period where much of its poetry followed Chinese form. Tanka was originally the shorter form of Japanese formal poetry, and was used more heavily to explore personal rather than public themes. It thus had a more informal poetic diction. By the 13th century, tanka had become the dominant form of Japanese poetry, and it is still widely written today. The 31-mora rule is generally ignored by poets writing literary tanka in languages other than Japanese.

Haiku

Haiku is a popular form of unrhymed Japanese poetry, which evolved in the 17th century from the ''hokku'', or opening verse of a renku. Generally written in a single vertical line, the haiku contains three sections totalling 17 ''onji'' (see above, at Tanka), structured in a 5-7-5 pattern. Traditionally, haiku contain a kireji, or cutting word, usually placed at the end of one of the poem's three sections, and a kigo, or season-word. The 17-mora rule is generally ignored by poets writing literary haiku in languages other than Japanese. The most famous exponent of the haiku was Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694). An example of his writing: : :fuji no kaze ya oogi ni nosete Edo miyage

:the wind of Mt. Fuji :I've brought on my fan! :a gift from Edo

Ruba'i

''Ruba'i'' is a four-line verse (quatrain) practiced by Arabian, Persian, Urdu, Azerbaijani (Azeri) poets. Famous for his ''rubaiyat'' (collection of quatrains) is the Persian poet Omar Khayyam. The most celebrated English renderings of the ''Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'' were produced by Edward Fitzgerald; an example is given below:

:They say the Lion and the Lizard keep :The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep: :And Bahram, that great Hunter—the Wild Ass :Stamps o'er his Head, and he lies fast asleep.

Sijo

''Sijo'' is a short musical lyric practiced by Korean poets. It is usually written as three lines, each averaging 14-16 syllables, for a total of 44-46 syllables. There is a pause in the middle of each line and so, in English, a sijo is sometimes printed in six lines rather than three. An example is given below:

:You ask how many friends I have? Water and stone, bamboo and pine. :The moon rising over the eastern hill is a joyful comrade. :Besides these five companions, what other pleasure should I ask?

Ode

Odes were first developed by poets writing in ancient Greek, such as Pindar, and Latin, such as Horace. Forms of odes appear in many of the cultures that were influenced by the Greeks and Latins. The ode generally has three parts: a strophe, an antistrophe, and an epode. The antistrophes of the ode possess similar metrical structures and, depending on the tradition, similar rhyme structures. In contrast, the epode is written with a different scheme and structure. Odes have a formal poetic diction, and generally deal with a serious subject. The strophe and antistrophe look at the subject from different, often conflicting, perspectives, with the epode moving to a higher level to either view or resolve the underlying issues. Odes are often intended to be recited or sung by two choruses (or individuals), with the first reciting the strophe, the second the antistrophe, and both together the epode. Over time, differing forms for odes have developed with considerable variations in form and structure, but generally showing the original influence of the Pindaric or Horatian ode. One non-Western form which resembles the ode is the qasida in Persian poetry.

Ghazal

The ghazal (Arabic: ghazal, Persian: ghazel, Turkish/Azerbaijani: gazel, Urdu: gazal, Bengali/Sylheti: gozol) is a form of poetry common in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Urdu and Bengali poetry. In classic form, the ghazal has from five to fifteen rhyming couplets that share a refrain at the end of the second line. This refrain may be of one or several syllables, and is preceded by a rhyme. Each line has an identical meter. Each couplet forms a complete thought and stands alone, and the overall ghazal often reflects on a theme of unattainable love or divinity. The last couplet generally includes the signature of the author.

As with other forms with a long history in many languages, many variations have been developed, including forms with a quasi-musical poetic diction in Urdu. Ghazals have a classical affinity with Sufism, and a number of major Sufi religious works are written in ghazal form. The relatively steady meter and the use of the refrain produce an incantatory effect, which complements Sufi mystical themes well. Among the masters of the form is Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet who lived in Konya, in present-day Turkey.

Acrostic

An acrostic (from the late Greek akróstichon, from ákros, "top", and stíchos, "verse") is a poem or other form of writing in an alphabetic script, in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out another message. A form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval.

A famous acrostic comes from the acclamation, "Jesus Christ, God's son, savior," which in Greek is: "Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ ͑Υιός, Σωτήρ", ''Iēsous Christos, Theou Huios, Sōtēr''. The initial letters of each word spell ichthys, the Greek word for fish; hence the frequent use of the fish as a symbol for Jesus Christ.

The Jewish devotional prayer Ashrei has lines beginning with each of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in turn, implying that Jews ought to praise God with each letter of the alphabet. Likewise, the prayer Ashamnu, recited on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), lists sins beginning with each letter of the alphabet, emphasizing the breadth and universality of wrongdoing.

Canzone

Literally "song" in Italian, a canzone (plural: canzoni) (cognate with English to chant) is an Italian or Provençal song or ballad. It is also used to describe a type of lyric which resembles a madrigal. Sometimes a composition which is simple and songlike is designated as a canzone, especially if it is by a non-Italian; a good example is the aria "Voi che sapete" from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.

Cinquain

While "cinquain" is the general term for a class of poetic forms that employ a 5-line pattern, there are specific forms within that category that are defined by specific rules and guidelines. The term "cinquain" as used by modern poets usually refers to a form invented by American poet Adelaide Crapsey. The first examples of these were published in 1915 in ''The Complete Poems'', roughly a year after her death. Her cinquain form was inspired by Japanese haiku and tanka).

Other forms

Other forms of poetry include:

Carmina figurata

Fixed verse

Folk song

Free verse: based on the irregular rhythmic cadence or the recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of meter.

Gogyōka

Limerick

Lune

Minnesang

Pastourelle

Quintain

Stev

Yoik

Genres

In addition to specific forms of poems, poetry is often thought of in terms of different genres and subgenres. A poetic genre is generally a tradition or classification of poetry based on the subject matter, style, or other broader literary characteristics. Some commentators view genres as natural forms of literature. Others view the study of genres as the study of how different works relate and refer to other works.

Epic poetry is one commonly identified genre, often defined as lengthy poems concerning events of a heroic or important nature to the culture of the time. Lyric poetry, which tends to be shorter, melodic, and contemplative, is another commonly identified genre. Some commentators may organize bodies of poetry into further subgenres, and individual poems may be seen as a part of many different genres. In many cases, poetic genres show common features as a result of a common tradition, even across cultures.

Described below are some common genres, but the classification of genres, the description of their characteristics, and even the reasons for undertaking a classification into genres can take many forms.

Narrative poetry

Narrative poetry is a genre of poetry that tells a story. Broadly it subsumes epic poetry, but the term "narrative poetry" is often reserved for smaller works, generally with more appeal to human interest.

Narrative poetry may be the oldest type of poetry. Many scholars of Homer have concluded that his ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' were composed from compilations of shorter narrative poems that related individual episodes and were more suitable for an evening's entertainment. Much narrative poetry—such as Scots and English ballads, and Baltic and Slavic heroic poems—is performance poetry with roots in a preliterate oral tradition. It has been speculated that some features that distinguish poetry from prose, such as meter, alliteration and kennings, once served as memory aids for bards who recited traditional tales.

Notable narrative poets have included Ovid, Dante, Juan Ruiz, Chaucer, William Langland, Luís de Camões, Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Robert Burns, Fernando de Rojas, Adam Mickiewicz, Alexander Pushkin, Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Tennyson.

Epic poetry

Epic poetry is a genre of poetry, and a major form of narrative literature. It recounts, in a continuous narrative, the life and works of a heroic or mythological person or group of persons. Examples of epic poems are Homer's ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'', Virgil's Aeneid, the ''Nibelungenlied'', Luís de Camões' ''Os Lusíadas'', the ''Cantar de Mio Cid'', the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', the ''Mahabharata'', Valmiki's ''Ramayana'', Ferdowsi's ''Shahnama'', Nizami (or Nezami)'s Khamse (Five Books), and the ''Epic of King Gesar''.

While the composition of epic poetry, and of long poems generally, became less common in the west after the early 20th century, some notable epics have continued to be written. Derek Walcott won a Nobel prize to a great extent on the basis of his epic, ''Omeros''.

Dramatic poetry

Dramatic poetry is drama written in verse to be spoken or sung, and appears in varying, sometimes related forms in many cultures. Verse drama may have developed out of earlier oral epics, such as the Sanskrit and Greek epics.

Greek tragedy in verse dates to the 6th century B.C., and may have been an influence on the development of Sanskrit drama, just as Indian drama in turn appears to have influenced the development of the ''bianwen'' verse dramas in China, forerunners of Chinese Opera. East Asian verse dramas also include Japanese Noh.

Examples of dramatic poetry in Persian literature include Nizami's two famous dramatic works, ''Layla and Majnun'' and ''Khosrow and Shirin'', Ferdowsi's tragedies such as ''Rostam and Sohrab'', Rumi's ''Masnavi'', Gorgani's tragedy of ''Vis and Ramin'', and Vahshi's tragedy of ''Farhad''.

Satirical poetry

Poetry can be a powerful vehicle for satire. The punch of an insult delivered in verse can be many times more powerful and memorable than that of the same insult, spoken or written in prose. The Romans had a strong tradition of satirical poetry, often written for political purposes. A notable example is the Roman poet Juvenal's satires, whose insults stung the entire spectrum of society.

The same is true of the English satirical tradition. Embroiled in the feverish politics of the time and stung by an attack on him by his former friend, Thomas Shadwell (a Whig), John Dryden (a Tory), the first Poet Laureate, produced in 1682 ''Mac Flecknoe'', one of the greatest pieces of sustained invective in the English language, subtitled "A Satire on the True Blue Protestant Poet, T.S." In this, the late, notably mediocre poet, Richard Flecknoe, was imagined to be contemplating who should succeed him as ruler "of all the realms of Nonsense absolute" to "reign and wage immortal war on wit."

Another master of 17th-century English satirical poetry was John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester. He was known for ruthless satires such as "A Satyr Against Mankind" (1675) and a "A Satyr on Charles II."

Another exemplar of English satirical poetry was Alexander Pope, who famously chided critics in his ''Essay on Criticism'' (1709). Dryden and Pope were writers of epic poetry, and their satirical style was accordingly epic; but there is no prescribed form for satirical poetry.

The greatest satirical poets outside England include Poland's Ignacy Krasicki, Azerbaijan's Sabir and Portugal's Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage, commonly known as Bocage.

Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry is a genre that, unlike epic poetry and dramatic poetry, does not attempt to tell a story but instead is of a more personal nature. Rather than depicting characters and actions, it portrays the poet's own feelings, states of mind, and perceptions. While the genre's name, derived from "lyre", implies that it is intended to be sung, much lyric poetry is meant purely for reading.

Though lyric poetry has long celebrated love, many courtly-love poets also wrote lyric poems about war and peace, nature and nostalgia, grief and loss. Notable among these are the 15th century French lyric poets, Christine de Pizan and Charles, Duke of Orléans. Spiritual and religious themes were addressed by such mystic lyric poets as St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila. The tradition of lyric poetry based on spiritual experience was continued by later poets such as John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Antonio Machado and T. S. Eliot.

Though the most popular form for western lyric poetry to take may be the 14-line sonnet, as practiced by Petrarch and Shakespeare, lyric poetry shows a bewildering variety of forms, including increasingly, in the 20th century, unrhymed ones. Lyric poetry is the most common type of poetry, as it deals intricately with an author's own emotions and views.

Elegy

An elegy is a mournful, melancholy or plaintive poem, especially a lament for the dead or a funeral song. The term "elegy," which originally denoted a type of poetic meter (elegiac meter), commonly describes a poem of mourning. An elegy may also reflect something that seems to the author to be strange or mysterious. The elegy, as a reflection on a death, on a sorrow more generally, or on something mysterious, may be classified as a form of lyric poetry. In a related sense that harks back to ancient poetic traditions of sung poetry, the word "elegy" may also denote a type of musical work, usually of a sad or somber nature.

Elegiac poetry has been written since antiquity. Perhaps the first example of the form is II Samuel, Chapter 1, in which David laments the fall of King Saul and of Saul's son and heir Jonathan. Notable practitioners have included Propertius (lived ca. 50 BCE – ca. 15 BCE), Jorge Manrique (1476), Jan Kochanowski (1580), Chidiock Tichborne (1586), Edmund Spenser (1595), Ben Jonson (1616), John Milton (1637), Thomas Gray (1750), Charlotte Turner Smith (1784), William Cullen Bryant (1817), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1823), Evgeny Baratynsky (1837), Alfred Tennyson (1849), Walt Whitman (1865), Louis Gallet (lived 1835–98), Antonio Machado (1903), Juan Ramón Jiménez (1914), William Butler Yeats (1916), Rainer Maria Rilke (1922), Virginia Woolf (1927), Federico García Lorca (1935), Kamau Brathwaite (born 1930).

Verse fable

The fable is an ancient, near-ubiquitous literary genre, often (though not invariably) set in verse. It is a succinct story that features anthropomorphized animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that illustrate a moral lesson (a "moral"). Verse fables have used a variety of meter and rhyme patterns; Ignacy Krasicki, for example, in his ''Fables and Parables'', used 13-syllable lines in rhyming couplets.

Notable verse fabulists have included Aesop (mid-6th century BCE), Vishnu Sarma (ca. 200 BCE), Phaedrus (15 BCE–50 CE), Marie de France (12th century), Robert Henryson (fl.1470-1500), Biernat of Lublin (1465?–after 1529), Jean de La Fontaine (1621–95), Ignacy Krasicki (1735–1801), Félix María de Samaniego (1745–1801), Tomás de Iriarte (1750–1791), Ivan Krylov (1769–1844) and Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914). All of Aesop's translators and successors owe a debt to that semi-legendary fabulist.

An example of a verse fable is Krasicki's "The Lamb and the Wolves": :Aggression ever finds cause if sufficiently pressed. :Two wolves on the prowl had trapped a lamb in the forest :And were about to pounce. Quoth the lamb: "What right have you?" :"You're toothsome, weak, in the wood." — The wolves dined sans ado.

Prose poetry

Prose poetry is a hybrid genre that shows attributes of both prose and poetry. It may be indistinguishable from the micro-story (aka the "short short story", "flash fiction"). It qualifies as poetry because of its conciseness, use of metaphor, and special attention to language.

While some examples of earlier prose strike modern readers as poetic, prose poetry is commonly regarded as having originated in 19th-century France, where its practitioners included Aloysius Bertrand, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé.

The genre has subsequently found notable exemplars in various languages:

''Bengali'': Michael Madhusudan Dutt.

''English'': Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson, T. S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Bly, Russell Edson, H.P. Lovecraft, Charles Simic, Clark Ashton Smith, Seamus Heaney, Giannina Braschi.

''French'': Max Jacob, Henri Michaux, Francis Ponge, Jean Tardieu, Jean-Pierre Vallotton.

''Greek'': Andreas Embirikos, Nikos Engonopoulos

''Italian'': Eugenio Montale, Salvatore Quasimodo, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Umberto Saba

''Polish'': Bolesław Prus, Zbigniew Herbert

''Portuguese'': Fernando Pessoa, Mário Cesariny, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Walter Solon, Eugénio de Andrade, Al Berto, Alexandre O'Neill, José Saramago, António Lobo Antunes

''Russian'': Ivan Turgenev, Regina Derieva, Anatoly Kudryavitsky

''Spanish'': Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Octavio Paz, Giannina Braschi, Ángel Crespo, Julio Cortázar, Ruben Dario, Oliverio Girondo, Aníbal Cristobo.

''Swedish'': Tomas Tranströmer

''Sindhi language'': Narin Shiam, Hari Dilgeer, Tanyir Abasi, Saikh Ayaz, Mukhtiar Malik, Taj Joyo

''Punjabi language'': Ali Arman

''Urdu language'': Ali Arman

Since the late 1980s especially, prose poetry has gained increasing popularity, with entire journals devoted solely to that genre.

Speculative & Weird Poetry

Speculative poetry, also known as fantastic poetry, (of which weird or macabre poetry is a major subclassification), is a poetic genre which deals thematically with subjects which are 'beyond reality', whether via extrapolation as in science fiction or via weird and horrific themes as in horror fiction. Such poetry appears regularly in modern science fiction and horror fiction magazines and there are many exponents of this form within the wider fantastic fiction community. Critic John Clute considers that fantastic poetry falls into four main classes - science fiction; science fact; macabre, and speculative (which crosses over into the surreal).

See also

Creative nonfiction

Hypocatastasis

Poetry terminology

Tanka prose

Notes

References

Anthologies

Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter & Jon Stallworthy (Eds). ''The Norton Anthology of Poetry''. New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Co. (4th ed, 1996), ISBN 0-393-96820-0.

Helen Gardner (Ed). ''New Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1950''. New York, New York and London, England: Oxford University Press, (1972), ISBN 0-19-812136-9.

Donald Hall (Ed). ''New Poets of England and America. New York, New York: Meridian Press, (1957).

Philip Larkin (Ed). ''The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse''. New York, New York and London, England: Oxford University Press, (1973)

James Laughlin (Ed). ''New Directions in Prose and Poetry'' Annuals. Norfolk, Connecticut and New York, New York: New Directions Publications (1936–1991).

Arthur Quiller-Couch (Ed). ''Oxford Book of English Verse''. Oxford University Press, (1900).

W.B. Yeats (Ed). ''Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935''. Oxford University Press, (1936)

Scansion and form

Alfred Corn. ''The Poem's Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody''. London, England: Storyline Press (1997), ISBN 1-885266-40-5.

Annie Finch. ''A Poet's Ear: A Handbook of Meter and Form''. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press (2011).

Stephen Fry. ''The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within''. London: Arrow Books (2007), ISBN 978-0-09-950934-9.

Paul Fussell. ''Poetic Meter and Poetic Form''. New York, New York: Random House (1965).

John Hollander. ''Rhyme's Reason'' (3rd ed). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press (2001).

James McAuley. ''Versification, A Short Introduction''. Michigan State University Press (1983), ISBN B0007DTS8K

Robert Pinsky. ''The Sounds of Poetry'' (1998).

Criticism and history

Cleanth Brooks. ''The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry''. New York, New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, (1947).

William K. Wimsatt, Jr. & Cleanth Brooks. ''Literary Criticism: A Short History''. New York, New York: Vintage Books, (1957).

T. S. Eliot. ''The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism''. London, England: Methuen Publishing, Ltd., (1920).

George Gascoigne. ''Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of English Verse or Ryme'' Stormloader.com.

Ezra Pound. ''ABC of Reading''. London, England: Faber, (1951).

Władysław Tatarkiewicz. "The Concept of Poetry," translated by Christopher Kasparek, ''Dialectics and Humanism: the Polish Philosophical Quarterly'', vol. II, no. 2 (spring 1975), pp. 13–24.

John Thompson. ''The Founding of English Meter''. New York, New York: Columbia University Press (1961).

Language

Zhiming Bao. ''The Structure of Tone''. New York, New York: Oxford University Press (1999) ISBN 0-19-511880-4.

Morio Kono. "Perception and Psychology of Rhythm" in ''Accent, Intonation, Rhythm and Pause''. (1997).

Moira Yip. ''Tone''. Cambridge textbooks in linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2002) ISBN 0-521-77314-8 (hbk), ISBN 0-521-77445-4 (pbk).

Other

Alex Preminger, Terry V.F. Brogan and Frank J. Warnke (Eds). ''The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics'' (3rd Ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-02123-6.

Hamid R. Tizhoosh, Farhang Sahba, Rozita Dara Poetic Features for Poem Recognition: A Comparative Study Journal of Pattern Recognition Research, (JPRR.org) Vol 3 (1) 2008.

Michel Barrucand, Françoise Besson, Eric Doumerc, Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard, Aurélie Guilain, Wendy Harding, Isabelle Keller-Privat, Lesley Lawton, Catherine Lanone et Sylvie Maurel, ''An Introduction to poetry in English'', Presses Universitaires du Mirail, Toulouse (France), ISBN 978-2-85816-921-4.

Category:Aesthetics Category:Genres Category:Literature Category:Methods of writing * Category:Spoken word Category:Greek loanwords

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name	Rik Mayall
birth name	Richard Michael Mayall
birth date	March 07, 1958
birth place	Harlow, Essex, England
medium	Television, Film, Stand up
nationality	British
active	1980–present
genre	Black comedy, Physical comedy
influences	Monty Python, Derek and Clive, Rowan Atkinson
influenced	David Walliams, Matt Lucas, Stewart Lee
notable work	''Rick'' in The Young Ones''Richie Richard'' in Bottom The Comic Strip Presents...''Alan B'stard'' in The New Statesman''Richie Twat'' in Guest House Paradiso
spouse	Barbara Robbin (m.1985, 3 children)

}}

Richard Michael "Rik" Mayall (born 7 March 1958) is an English comedian, writer, and actor. He is known for his comedy partnership with Ade Edmondson, his over-the-top, energetic portrayal of characters, and as a pioneer of alternative comedy in the early 1980s. Such notability has lead him to appear in sitcoms such as ''The Young Ones'', ''Blackadder'' and ''Bottom'' and even onto the big screen in comedy films such as ''Drop Dead Fred''.

Early life

Mayall, the second of four children, was born in Harlow, Essex to John and Gillian Mayall. He has an older brother, Anthony, and two younger sisters, Libby and Kate. When he was only three years old, Mayall and his parents — who taught drama — moved to Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire, where he spent the rest of his childhood and performed in his parents' plays. After attending The King's School, Worcester, Mayall studied drama at the University of Manchester in 1976, where he befriended his future comedy partner Adrian Edmondson. He also met Ben Elton and Lise Mayer, with whom he later co-wrote ''The Young Ones''.

Career

Edmondson and Mayall gained their reputation at The Comedy Store, from 1980. The double act, "20th Century Coyote", became popular. Mayall also developed solo routines using characters such as Kevin Turvey and a pompous anarchist poet named Rick. This led to Edmondson and Mayall, along with Comedy Store compere Alexei Sayle and other upcoming comedians including Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson, French and Saunders, Arnold Brown, and Pete Richens, to set up their own comedy club called "The Comic Strip" in the Raymond Revue Bar, a strip club. Mayall's popularity led to a regular slot for Kevin Turvey on ''A Kick Up the Eighties'', first broadcast in 1981. He appeared as "Rest Home" Ricky in Richard O'Brien's ''Shock Treatment'', sequel to ''The Rocky Horror Picture Show''. He played Dentonvale's resident attendant as the love interest to Nell Campbell's Nurse Ansalong.

Mayall's television appearances as Kevin Turvey in 1977 along with Johnathan PP Seller warranted a mockumentary based on the character entitled ''Kevin Turvey — The Man Behind The Green Door'', broadcast in 1982. The previous year, he appeared in a bit role in ''An American Werewolf in London''. His stage partnership with Edmondson continued, often appearing together as "The Dangerous Brothers", hapless daredevils whose hyper-violent antics foreshadowed their characters in ''Bottom''. Mayall also made a cameo appearance in the 1983 gothic horror movie, ''The Keep'' directed by Michael Mann. Channel 4 offered the Comic Strip group six short films, which became ''The Comic Strip Presents...'', debuting on 2 November 1982. The series, which continued sporadically for many years, saw Mayall play a wide variety of roles. It was known for anti-establishment humour and for parodies such as ''Bad News On Tour'', a spoof "rockumentary" starring Mayall, Richardson, Edmondson and Planer as a heavy metal band.

At the time ''The Comic Strip Presents...'' was negotiated, the BBC took an interest in ''The Young Ones'', a sitcom written by Mayall and then-girlfriend Lise Mayer, in the same anarchic vein as ''Comic Strip''. Ben Elton joined the writers. The series was commissioned and first broadcast in 1982, shortly before ''Comic Strip''. Mayall played Rik, a pompous sociology student and Cliff Richard devotee. Despite the sitcom format, Mayall maintained his double-act with Edmondson, who starred as violent punk Vyvyan. Nigel Planer (as hippie Neil) and Christopher Ryan (as "Mike the cool guy") also starred, with additional material written and performed by Alexei Sayle. The first series was successful and a second was commissioned in 1984.

Becoming a household name

Mayall continued to work on ''The Comic Strip'' films. He returned to standup, starring on ''Saturday Live'' — a British version of the American ''Saturday Night Live'' — first broadcast in 1985. He and Edmondson had a regular section as "The Dangerous Brothers", their earlier stage act. In 1985, Mayall debuted another comic creation. He had starred in the final episode of ''The Black Adder'' in 1983 as "Mad Gerald". He returned to play Lord Flashheart in the episode ''Blackadder II'' entitled "Bells". A descendant of this character, Squadron Commander Flashheart, was in the ''Blackadder Goes Forth'' episode "Private Plane". A similar character, also played by Mayall, appeared in 2000's ''Blackadder: Back & Forth'' as Robin Hood.

In 1986, Mayall joined with Planer, Edmondson and Elton to star in ''Filthy Rich & Catflap'' as Richie Rich in what was billed as a follow-up to ''The Young Ones''. The idea of "Filthy Rich and Catflap" was in reaction to comments Jimmy Tarbuck made about the "Young Ones". The series primary focus was to highlight the "has been" status of light entertainment. While he received positive critical reviews, viewing figures were poor and the series was never repeated on the BBC. In later years, release on video, DVD and repeats on UK TV found a following. Mayall suggested the series did not last because he was uncomfortable acting in an Elton project, when they had been co-writers on ''The Young Ones''. in 1987 saw Mayall co-star with Edmondson in the ITV sit-com ''Hardwicke House''. Due to adverse reaction of press and viewers, ITV withdrew the series after two episodes. The same year, Mayall had a number one hit in the UK Singles charts when he and his co-stars from ''The Young Ones'' teamed with Cliff Richard to record "Living Doll" for the inaugural ''Comic Relief'' campaign. Mayall played Rick one last time in the stage show and has supported the ''Comic Relief'' cause ever since. He appeared on the children's television series ''Jackanory''. His crazed portrayal of Roald Dahl's ''George's Marvellous Medicine'' proved memorable. However, the BBC received complaints "with viewers claiming both story and presentation to be both dangerous and offensive."

In 1987, Mayall played fictional Conservative MP Alan Beresford B'Stard in the sitcom ''The New Statesman'' for Yorkshire Television, written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran. The character was a satire of Tory MPs in the United Kingdom in the 1980s and early 1990s. The programme ran for four series — incorporating two BBC specials — between 1987–1994 and was a success critically and in ratings. In a similar vein to his appearance on ''Jackanory'', in 1989, Mayall starred in a series of bit shows for ITV called ''Grim Tales'', in which he narrated Grimm Brothers fairy tales while puppets acted the stories. In the early 1990s Mayall starred in humorous adverts for Nintendo games and consoles. With money from the ads, he bought his house in London which he calls 'Nintendo Towers'. He lent his voice to the PlayStation and Windows PC video game ''Hogs of War''. In the early 1990s, he auditioned for Banzai, Zazu and Timon in'' The Lion King''. He was asked to audition by lyricist Tim Rice. The role of Zazu finally went to his Blackadder co-star Rowan Atkinson.

1990s

In 1991, Edmondson and Mayall co-starred in the West End production of Beckett's ''Waiting for Godot'' at the Queen's Theatre. Here they came up with the idea for ''Bottom'', which they said was a cruder cousin to ''Waiting for Godot''. ''Bottom'' was commissioned by the BBC and three series were shown between 1991–1995. Mayall starred as "Richard 'Richie' Richard" alongside Edmondson's "Eddie Elizabeth Hitler". The series featured slapstick violence taken to new extremes. The series gained a strong cult following. In 1993, following the second series, Mayall and Edmondson decided to take a stage show version of the series on a national tour. ''Bottom: Live'' was a commercial success, filling large venues. Four additional stage shows were embarked upon in 1995, 1997, 2001 and 2003, each to great success. The violent natures of these shows saw both Edmondson and Mayall ending up in hospital at various points. A film version, ''Guest House Paradiso'', was released in 1999. A fourth TV series was also written, but not commissioned by the BBC.

Mayall starred alongside Phoebe Cates in 1991's ''Drop Dead Fred'' as the eponymous character, a troublesome imaginary friend reappearing from a woman's childhood. He also appeared in ''Carry On Columbus'' (1992) with other alternative comedians. In 1991 he played Vladimir in Samuel Beckett's ''Waiting for Godot'' at the Queen's Theatre in the West End, alongside Edmondson (Estragon) and Christopher Ryan (Lucky). Mayall also provided the voice of the character Froglip, the leader of the goblins, in the 1992 animated film adaption of the 1872 children's tale, ''The Princess and the Goblin'' by George MacDonald. In 1993, he appeared in ''Rik Mayall Presents'', three individual comedy dramas. Mayall's performances won a Best Comedy Performer award at that year's British Comedy Awards, and a second series of three was broadcast in early 1995. He provided the voice for Little Sod in Simon Brett's ''How to Be a Little Sod'', written in 1991 and adapted as 10 consecutive episodes broadcast on the BBC in 1995.

In 1995 Mayall co-starred in a production of the play ''Cell Mates'', alongside Stephen Fry. Not long into the run, Fry had a nervous breakdown and fled to Belgium, where he remained for several days, and the play closed. In 2007, Mayall said of the incident: "You don't leave the trenches ... selfishness is one thing, being a cunt is another. I mustn't start that war again." Edmondson poked fun at the event during their stage tours. In ''Bottom Live: The Big Number Two Tour'', after Mayall gave mocking gestures to the audience and insulted their town in a silly voice, Edmondson said "Have you finished yet? It's just I'm beginning to understand why Stephen Fry fucked off." In ''Bottom Live 2003: Weapons Grade Y-Fronts Tour'', after Richie accidentally fondles Eddie, he replies "I see why Stephen Fry left that play." Towards the end of ''Cell Mates'' Mayall revealed a replica gun — a prop from the play — to a passer-by in the street. He was cautioned over the incident. Mayall later conceded that this was "incredibly stupid, even by my standards". Since 1999, Mayall was the voice of the black-headed seagull Kehaar in the first and the second season of the animated television series ''Watership Down''.

2000s–present

In 2000, Mayall appeared in the video production of ''Jesus Christ Superstar'' as King Herod. He joked in the "Making of" documentary, which was included on the DVD release, that "the real reason why millions of people want to come and see this is because I'm in it! Me and Jesus!" In 2002, Mayall teamed up with Marks and Gran once more when he starred as Professor Adonis Cnut in the ITV sitcom, ''Believe Nothing''. However, the sitcom failed to repeat the success of ''The New Statesman'' and lasted only one series. Following 2003's ''Bottom: Live'' tour, ''Bottom 5: Weapons Grade Y-Fronts'', Mayall stated that he and Edmondson would return with another tour. Shortly thereafter, however, Edmondson told ''The Daily Mail'' that he no longer wished to work on ''Bottom''. This effectively dissolved their nearly 30-year partnership. Edmondson claimed they were "too old" to continue portraying the characters. Edmondson added that, since Mayall had recovered from his coma, he was slower on the uptake and it had become more difficult to work with him, as well as citing that due to taking medication, Mayall had been advised to stop drinking alcohol. However, Edmondson said that the pair remained very close friends.

Mayall voiced Edwin in the BBC show ''Shoebox Zoo''. He released an 'in-character' semi-fictionalised autobiography in September 2005 entitled ''Bigger than Hitler, Better than Christ'' (ISBN 0-00-720727-1). At the same time, he starred in a new series for ITV, ''All About George''. Mayall reprised the role of Alan B'Stard in 2006 in the play ''The New Statesman 2006: Blair B'stard Project'', written by Marks and Gran. By this time B'Stard had left the floundering Conservatives and become a Labour MP. Following a successful two-month run in London's West End at The Trafalgar Studios in 2007, a heavily re-written version toured theatres nationwide, with Marks and Gran constantly updating the script to keep it topical. However, Mayall succumbed to chronic fatigue and flu in May 2007, and withdrew from the show. Alan B'Stard was played by his understudy, Mike Sherman during his hiatus.

Mayall was cast as the poltergeist Peeves in ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', the first of the Harry Potter films in 2001. Comments by Mayall suggest material for the role was filmed and shown in cinemas but then never released to the public on any subsequent release for no apparent reason. He tells the story of this hiring/firing on his second website blog for his 2008 film, ''Evil Calls: The Raven''. For ''Evil Calls'', he shot his role as Winston the Butler in 2002, when the film was titled ''Alone in the Dark''. The film was not completed until 2008 and was released under its new 'Evil Calls' title to distance itself from the ''Alone in the Dark'' computer game movie. He may appear in a possible sequel. Mayall provides the voice of the Andrex puppy in the UK TV commercials for Andrex toilet paper, and also has a voice part in the UK Domestos cleaning product adverts. He performs the voice of King Arthur in the children's television cartoon series ''King Arthur's Disasters'', alongside Matt Lucas (Little Britain) who plays Merlin. Mayall also had a recurring role in the Channel Five remake of the lighthearted drama series, ''Minder''.

In September 2009, Mayall played a supporting role in the British television program ''Midsomer Murders'', shown on ITV1 (and made by Meridian Broadcasting) as 'David Roper', a recovering party animal and tenuous friend of the families in and around Chettham Park House. In April 2010, Motivation Records released Mayall's England Football anthem 'Noble England' for the 2010 FIFA World Cup which he recorded with Coventry producer Dave Loughran. On the track Mayall performs an adapted speech from Shakespeare's Henry V In June 2010 the official BBC Match Of The Day compilation CD (2010 Edition) was released by Sony/Universal featuring Noble England - Track 18, CD2. In September 2010 ''Cutey And The Sofaguard'' was released as an audio book, narrated by Mayall. The book was written by Chris Wade and released by Wisdom Twins Books by digital download. In this same month Mayall played the voice of Roy’s Dad in cult animation ''Dog Judo''. He recorded five episodes all of which exclusively streamed from http://www.dogjudo.com.

In November 2010 Rik provided narrative for five characters for CDs accompanying books from the publishing house Clickety Books. The books are for children and aid speech and language development by bombarding the child with troubelsome sound targets.

Rik has so far recorded introductions and narratives for the titles:Jake the Achy Snake, Corky the Squawky Hawk, Erica the Picky Chicken, Lucky the Plucky Duck and Jacqueline the Black Alpaca. The books are written by Craig Green and illustrated by Sarah-Leigh Wills.

The recording and prouction was undertaken by Matt Bernard and Jay Auborn at the Deep Blue Sound studio in Plymouth, UK. On 5 March 2011, Mayall appeared on ''Let's Dance For Comic Relief'' in which he came on stage and attacked Ade Edmondson with a frying pan during his performance of ''The Dying Swan'' Ballet. Edmondson mentioned backstage that it was the first time in eight years they've done something like that together and claimed Mayall had left his head with a small bump.

In April 2011, Mayall again revived the character of Alan B'Stard to make an appearance in a satirical television advertisement for the No2AV campaign prior to the 2011 voting reform referendum in the UK. The character is shown being unfairly elected under the alternative vote system, then using his newly gained position of power to renege on his campaign promises. In his personal life, Rik Mayall does not support the alternative vote. In May of the same year Mayall became the eponymous 'Bombardier' in a TV advertising campaign for Bombardier Bitter in the UK, arguably reviving his Lord Flashheart persona from the UK TV series ''Blackadder''.

Personal life

Family

Since 1985 Mayall has been married to Scottish make-up artist Barbara Robbin, with whom he has three children: Rosie (born 1986), Sidney (born 1988) and Bonnie (born 18 September 1995). The couple met in 1981 while filming ''A Kick Up The Eighties''. At the time, Mayall was in a long-term relationship with Lise Mayer. Mayall and Robbin embarked on a secret affair which lasted until 1985. Mayall and Robbin immediately eloped to Barbados. Mayer would later suffer a miscarriage. Mayall maintains that, despite a longstanding feud, he and Mayer are now friends.

Quad bike accident

On 9 April 1998, Mayall was injured after crashing a quad bike near his home in Devon. Mayall's daughter Bonnie and her cousin had asked him to take them for a ride on the bike — a Christmas gift from his wife — but he refused due to rain, and went alone. Mayall's wife Barbara looked out the window and saw him lying on the ground with the bike, believing he was joking. He was in a coma for several days. Mayall was airlifted to Plymouth's Derriford Hospital, with two hematomas and a fractured skull. During the following 96 hours, Mayall was kept sedated to prevent movement which could cause pressure on his brain. His family was warned he could die or have brain damage.

After five days doctors felt it safe to bring Mayall back to consciousness. In his 2005 spoof biography, Mayall claims he "rose from the dead". During Mayall's hospitalisation, the ''Comic Strip'' special ''Four Men in a Car'' was broadcast for the first time. The film involves Mayall's character being hit by a car. Mayall believed he was held hostage at the hospital. After transfer to hospital in London, he took a taxi home but was taken back that day after being sedated. He was to take medication for a year to prevent epileptic seizures. Mayall stopped taking it. He had epileptic seizures. During one, he bit through his tongue. He is now on medication for life. Mayall returned to work with voice-over work. His first post-accident job was in the 1998 ''Jonathan Creek'' Christmas special, as DI Gideon Pryke. Mayall and Edmondson have joked about this event in stage versions of ''Bottom'', Edmondson quipping: 'If only I'd fixed those brakes properly'. The pair wrote the first draft of their feature film ''Guest House Paradiso'' while Mayall was hospitalised. They planned to co-direct but Edmondson took on the duties himself.

Recognition

In the 2005 poll ''The Comedian's Comedian'', Mayall was voted among the top 50 comedy performers of all time.

In 2008, Mayall was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) from the University of Exeter.

In the 2010 poll "Top 100 Stand-Up Comedians", Mayall was placed 91.

Filmography

''An American Werewolf in London'' (1981)

''Shock Treatment'' (1981)

''The Young Ones'' (1982)

''Filthy Rich & Catflap'' (1986)

''Blackadder II'' (1986)

''Mr Jolly Lives Next Door'' (1987)

''French & Saunders: The Ingenue Years'' (1987)

''Eat the Rich'' (1987)

''The New Statesman'' (1987)

''Blackadder Goes Forth'' (1989)

''Drop Dead Fred'' (1991)

''Bottom'' (1991)

''Carry On Columbus'' (1992)

''Midsomer Murders'' (episode "The Creeper") (1997)

''The Canterville Ghost'' (1997)

''Bring Me the Head of Mavis Davis'' (1997)

''Johnathan Creek: Christmas Special'' (1998)

''A Monkey's Tale'' (1999)

''Guest House Paradiso'' (1999)

''Blackadder: Back & Forth'' (1999)

''Escape to Watership Down'' (1999)

''Journey to Watership Down'' (1999)

''Winter on Watership Down'' (1999)

''Jesus Christ Superstar: 2000'' (2000)

''Merlin: The Return'' (2000)

''Chilly Dogs'' (2001)

''Kevin of the North'' (2001)

''Believe Nothing'' (2002)

''Oh Marbella!'' (2003)

''Chaos & Cadavers'' (2003)

''Churchill: The Hollywood Years'' (2004)

''Valiant'' (2005)

''Just For the Record'' (2010)

''Cutey and the Sofaguard'' (2010)

''Johnny English Reborn'' (2011)

References

External links

Interview with Rik Mayall on Theatre.com

(http://www.scribd.com/doc/37736644/Hound-Dawg-Issue-10-RIK-MAYALL-INTERVIEW)

Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:Old Vigornians Category:Alumni of the Victoria University of Manchester Category:The Comic Strip Category:English comedians Category:English film actors Category:English television actors Category:English voice actors Category:People from Droitwich Spa Category:People from Harlow Category:People with epilepsy

ca:Rik Mayall es:Rik Mayall fr:Rik Mayall hr:Rik Mayall nl:Rik Mayall no:Rik Mayall pt:Rik Mayall fi:Rik Mayall sv:Rik Mayall

Sarah Kay is a professor of French at Princeton University.

Kay was a student in the UK at the University of Oxford. She started her teaching career at the University of Liverpool then moved to the University of Cambridge. She was head of department at Cambridge from 1996 until 2001 and Director of Studies at Girton College, Cambridge from 2003 to 2005. Kay has been a fellow of the British Academy since 2004 and was awarded a D.Litt (Cambridge) in 2005.

Publications

''Žižek: A Critical Introduction'' (Cambridge: Polity, 2003)

(with Malcolm Bowie and Terence Cave) ''A Short History of French Literature'' (Oxford University Press, 2003)

''Courtly Contradictions'' (Stanford University Press, 2001)

(with Simon Gaunt) ''The Troubadours. An Introduction'' (Cambridge University Press, 1999)

''The Chansons de geste in the Age of Romance'' (Oxford University Press, 1995)

(as co-editor with Miri Rubin) ''Framing Medieval Bodies'' (Manchester University Press, 1994)

(as editor) ''Raoul de Cambrai'' (Oxford University Press, 1992)

''Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry'' (Cambridge University Press, 1990)

References

External links

Kay's profile at Princeton University

Review of Kay's ''Courtly Contradictions'' published in ''The Medieval Review'', 2004.

Category:Fellows of the British Academy Category:Literary critics of French Category:Living people Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford Category:Academics of the University of Cambridge Category:Princeton University faculty Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

name	Kanye West
background	solo_singer
birth name	Kanye Omari West
birth date	June 08, 1977
birth place	Atlanta, Georgia, United States
origin	Chicago, Illinois, United States
genre	Hip hop
instrument	Vocals, keyboards, sampler, percussion, synthesizer
occupation	Producer, rapper, musician, singer, songwriter
years active	1996–present
label	GOOD Music, Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam
associated acts	Go Getters, Child Rebel Soldier, Jay-Z, The Throne, Common, John Legend, Kid Cudi, Rihanna, Jeff Bhasker, Pusha T, Mos Def, Mr Hudson, Talib Kweli, Big Sean, A-Trak, Pharrell, Lupe Fiasco, RZA
website	}}

Kanye Omari West (; born June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter and record producer. West first rose to fame as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records, where he eventually achieved recognition for his work on Jay-Z's album ''The Blueprint'', as well as hit singles for musical artists including Alicia Keys, Ludacris, and Janet Jackson. His style of production originally used pitched-up vocal samples from soul songs incorporated with his own drums and instruments. However, subsequent productions saw him broadening his musical palette and expressing influences encompassing '70s R&B;, baroque pop, trip hop, arena rock, folk, alternative, electronica, synthpop, and classical music.

West released his debut album ''The College Dropout'' in 2004, his second album ''Late Registration'' in 2005, his third album ''Graduation'' in 2007, his fourth album ''808s & Heartbreak'' in 2008, and his fifth album ''My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'' in 2010. West released a collaborative album, ''Watch the Throne'', with Jay-Z on August 8, 2011, which is the duo's first collaborative album. His five solo albums, all of which have gone platinum, have received numerous awards and critical acclaim. As of 2012, West has won a total of eighteen Grammy Awards, making him one of the most awarded artists of all time. All albums have been very commercially successful, with ''My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'' becoming his fourth consecutive No.1 album in the U.S. upon release. West has had 5 songs exceed 3 million in digital sales as of July 2011, with "Gold Digger" selling 3,086,000, "Stronger" selling 4,402,000, "Heartless" selling 3,742,000, "E.T." selling over 4,000,000 and "Love Lockdown" selling over 3,000,000 placing him third in overall digital sales of the past decade. He has sold over 30 million digital songs in the United States making him one of the best selling digital artists of all time.

West also runs his own record label GOOD Music, home to artists such as John Legend, Common and Kid Cudi. West's mascot and trademark is "Dropout Bear," a teddy bear which has appeared on the covers of three of his five albums as well as various single covers and music videos. About.com ranked Kanye West No.8 on their "Top 50 Hip-Hop Producers" list. On May 16, 2008, Kanye West was crowned by MTV as the year's No.1 "Hottest MC in the Game." On December 17, 2010, Kanye West was voted as the MTV Man of the Year by MTV. Billboard ranked Kanye West No. 3 on their list of Top 10 Producers of the decade. West has also been included in the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world as well as being listed in a number of ''Forbes''' annual lists.

Early life

Kanye West was born in Atlanta, Georgia, where he lived with his parents. When he was three years old, his parents divorced, and he and his mother moved to Chicago, Illinois. His father was Ray West, a former Black Panther who was one of the first black photojournalists at ''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,'' and is now a Christian counselor. West's mother, Dr. Donda West, was a Professor of English at Clark Atlanta University, and the Chair of the English Department at Chicago State University before retiring to serve as West's manager. He was raised in a middle-class background, attending Polaris High School in suburban Oak Lawn, Illinois after living in Chicago. When asked about his grades in high school, West replied, "I got A's and B's. And I'm not even frontin'".

West attended art classes at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and also enrolled at Chicago State University, but dropped out to focus on his music career. While attending school, West produced for local artists. He later gained fame by producing hit singles for major hip hop/R&B; artists, including Jay-Z, Talib Kweli, Cam'ron, Paul Wall, Common, Mobb Deep, Jermaine Dupri, Scarface, The Game, Alicia Keys, Janet Jackson, John Legend among others. He also "ghost-produced" for his mentor Deric Angelettie, according to his song "Last Call" and the credits of Nas' "Poppa Was a Playa".

Music career

1996–2003: Career beginnings

Kanye West's first career productions came on Chicago rapper Grav's 1996 debut album ''Down to Earth''. West produced eight tracks on the album. While the album did not attract much attention and would be the only album released by Grav, West would soon be producing for higher profile artists. In 1998–1999 he produced for well-known artists such as Jermaine Dupri, Foxy Brown, Goodie Mob, and the group Harlem World.

West got his big break in the year 2000, when he began to produce for artists on Roc-a-Fella Records. He produced the well-received Jay-Z song "This Can't Be Life" off of the album ''The Dynasty: Roc La Familia''. West would later state that to create the beat for "This Can't Be Life", he sped up the drum beat from Dr. Dre's song "Xxplosive".

After producing for Jay-Z earlier, West’s sound was featured heavily on Jay-Z's critically acclaimed album ''The Blueprint,'' released September 11, 2001. His work was featured on the lead single "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)," "Heart of the City (Ain't No Love)" and a diss track against Nas and Mobb Deep named "Takeover"; West has worked with Mobb Deep and Nas since the track's release.

After meeting great commercial success and critical acclaim for his productions on ''The Blueprint'', West became a sought after producer in the hip-hop industry, even before he became known as a rapper and solo artist. In the years 2002–2003 he would produce for artists such as Nas, Scarface, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, T.I., Ludacris, DMX, and Monica. He also continued producing for Roc-a-Fella Records artists and contribued four tracks to Jay-Z's follow up album to ''The Blueprint'', ''The Blueprint²: The Gift & the Curse''.

After great successes as a producer, West now looked to pursue a career as a rapper and solo artist, but struggled to get a record deal. Chris Anokute, then A&R; at Def Jam, said that when West regularly dropped by the office to pick up his producer checks he would play demos of solo material to Anokute in his cubicle and bemoan the fact that no one was taking him seriously as a rapper. Jay-Z admitted that Roc-A-Fella was initially reluctant to support West as a rapper, claiming that he saw him as a producer first and foremost. Multiple record companies felt he was not as marketable as rappers who portray the "street image" prominent in hip hop culture. Beginning his career as a rapper, Kanye West recorded the third verse on the song "The Bounce" off of Jay-Z's ''The Blueprint²: The Gift & the Curse'', an album he produced for, from the same label he was signed to as a rapper.

2004–05: ''The College Dropout'' and ''Late Registration''

On October 23, 2002, West was involved in a near fatal car crash while driving home from the recording studio. The crash provided inspiration for West's first single, "Through the Wire". West's faith is apparent in many of his songs, such as "Jesus Walks", which became a staple at his benefit performances, such as the Live 8 concert. These songs were featured on West's debut album, ''The College Dropout'', which was released on Roc-A-Fella Records in February 2004, and went on to receive critical acclaim. The album also defined the style for which West would become known, including wordplay and sampling. The album was eventually certified triple platinum. Guest appearances included Jay-Z, Ludacris, GLC, Consequence, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Common, and Syleena Johnson. The album also featured the singles, "All Falls Down" and "The New Workout Plan", as well as Twista's number one single, "Slow Jamz". During 2003 West also co-produced songs for British singer Javine Hylton, even appearing in the music video to Real Things playing the love interest of Javine.

West was involved in a financial dispute over Royce Da 5'9"'s song "Heartbeat", produced by West and released on ''Build & Destroy: The Lost Sessions''. West maintains that Royce never paid for the beat, but recorded to it and released it; hearing him on the beat, the original customers decided not to buy it from West. After the disagreement, West vowed to never work with Royce again. Other Kanye West-produced hit singles during the period ''The College Dropout'' was released included "I Changed My Mind" by Keyshia Cole, "Overnight Celebrity" by Twista and "Talk About Our Love" by Brandy.

Taking a more eclectic route, West collaborated with American film score composer Jon Brion to construct his second album, ''Late Registration'', which was released on August 30, 2005. Like its predecessor, the sophomore effort garnered universal acclaim from music critics. ''Late Registration'' topped countless critic polls and was revered as the best album of the year by numerous publications, including ''USA Today'', ''Spin'', and ''Time''. ''Rolling Stone'' awarded the album the highest position on their end of the year record list and hailed it as a "sweepingly generous, absurdly virtuosic hip-hop classic." The record earned the number one spot on the ''Village Voice'''s Pazz & Jop critics' poll of 2005 for the second consecutive year. ''Late Registration'' was also a commercial success, selling over 860,000 copies in its first week alone and topping the ''Billboard 200''. Grossing over 2.3 million units sold in the United States alone by year's end, ''Late Registration'' was considered by industry observers as the sole majorly successful album release of the fall of 2005, a season that was plagued by steadily declining CD sales. The second album earned eight Grammy Award nominations including ''Album of the Year'' and ''Record of the Year'' for the song "Gold Digger". The album is certified triple platinum.

On August 22, 2005, the MTV special ''All Eyes On Kanye West'' aired, in which West spoke out against homophobia in hip-hop. He claimed that hip-hop has always been about "speaking your mind and about breaking down barriers, but everyone in hip-hop discriminates against gay people." He then reflected on a personal experience. He said that he had a "turning point" when he realized one of his cousins was gay. He said regarding this experience: "This is my cousin. I love him and I've been discriminating against gays." He drew comparison between African Americans' struggle for civil rights and today's gay rights movement. The following year, in an interview with ''Entertainment Weekly'', West further expounded his experiences with and views on the relationship between the black and gay communities.

In September 2005, West announced that he would release his Pastelle Clothing line in spring 2006: "Now that I have a Grammy under my belt and ''Late Registration'' is finished, I am ready to launch my clothing line next spring." In that year, West produced the hit singles "Go" by Common and "Dreams" by The Game.

2007–09: ''Graduation'' and ''808s & Heartbreak''

In 2007, it was announced that West would be starring in a series directed by Larry Charles. He has been working on the pilot episode for the past two years with Larry Charles and Rick Rubin. He also had this to say on January 14: "I wouldn't do something as cliché as a reality show. At least give me the credit for being more creative than that. It's a situational half-hour comedy. It's fictional, and loosely based on my life. " West also collaborated with Japanese hip-hop group Teriyaki Boyz to produce the single "I Still Love H.E.R.," a reference to Common's 1994 single "I Used to Love H.E.R.". Further to this, during a radio appearance in early 2007, West, like many of his peers, recorded an impromptu freestyle to the popular song "Throw Some D's." The song that to all other rappers was about automobile rims, was used by West to comically refer to D-cup breasts. Because of the unexpected success of the song, West went on to make a video for the freestyle, in which he is seen playing his 'Old Ass Cousin'.

West was also featured in a new song called "Classic (Better Than I've Ever Been)". It was believed to be a single for, ''Graduation'', because he is featured on the track, but Nike quickly explained that it was for the Nike Air Force 1's anniversary. It was meant only to be an exclusive track for the company.

On March 25, 2007, he and his father Ray West supported World Water Day by having a "Walk for Water" rally. After a two-year break, West has returned to being a fashion columnist in lifestyle magazine ''Complex''. On July 7, 2007, West performed with The Police and John Mayer at the American leg of Live Earth. West hosted the August 17 edition of British comedy- variety show The Friday Night Project.

In July 2007, West changed the release date of ''Graduation'', his third album, from September 18, 2007, to the same release date as 50 Cent's album ''Curtis'', September 11, 2007. 50 Cent later claimed that if ''Graduation'' were to sell more records than ''Curtis,'' he would stop releasing solo albums. However, 50 Cent would later dispel his comments. The album has been certified double platinum. Guest appearances included T-Pain, Mos Def, and Lil Wayne.

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On August 26, 2007, West appeared as himself on the HBO television show ''Entourage'' which he used as a platform to premier his new single "Good Life" during the end credits. On September 9, 2007, West performed at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, losing in every category he was nominated for; he gave an angry speech immediately afterward. (see "Controversies" section)

Following the MTV stint, West was nominated in eight Grammy Award categories for the 50th annual Grammy Awards. He won four of them, including Best Rap Album for ''Graduation'' and Best Rap Solo Performance for "Stronger" from ''Graduation''. During the four-hour televised Grammy Awards ceremony, West also performed two songs: "Stronger" (with Daft Punk) and "Hey Mama" (in honor of his recently deceased mother).

West kicked off the Glow in the Dark Tour in Seattle at the Key Arena on April 16. The tour was originally scheduled to end in June in Cincinnati but was extended into August. Over the course of the tour West was joined by a varying group of opening acts, including Lupe Fiasco, Rihanna, N.E.R.D., DJ Craze, and Gnarls Barkley. On June 15, West was scheduled to perform a late night set at the Bonnaroo Music Festival. His performance started almost two hours late and ran for half of its alloted time, angering many fans in the audience. West later wrote an outraged entry on his blog, blaming the festival organizers as well as Pearl Jam's preceding set, which ran longer than expected.

On September 7, West debuted a new song "Love Lockdown" at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. "Love Lockdown" features no rapping and only singing using an auto-tune device. This song appears on West's fourth studio album, ''808s & Heartbreak''. The new album was expected to be released on December 16, but West announced on his blog on September 24, 2008, that he had finished the album and would be releasing it sometime in November, earlier than previously scheduled. In early October, West made a surprise appearance at a T.I. concert in Los Angeles, where he stated that ''808s & Heartbreak'' was scheduled to be released on November 25, though it was actually released on the 24th, and that the second single is "Heartless". The album was another number one album for West, even though the first week numbers fell well short of ''Graduation'' with 450,145 sold.

West performed at the American Music Awards ceremony on November 23. That same night he won two AMA awards, including Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Album for ''Graduation'' and Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Male Artist. West performed at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August 2008, along with Wyclef Jean and N.E.R.D. in support of Barack Obama. On January 20, 2009, Kanye West performed at the Youth Inaugural Ball hosted by MTV for Obama's inauguration.

On February 17, 2009, West was named one of Top 10 Most Stylish Men in America by ''GQ''. The next day, February 18, 2009, West won International Male Solo Artist at The Brit Awards 2009. West was not in attendance but accepted his award with a video speech, saying "Barack is the 'Best Interracial Male' but I'm proud to be the Best International Male in the world.

In April 2009, Kanye West recorded a song called "Hurricane" with 30 Seconds to Mars to appear on their album ''This Is War'', but was not released due to legal issues with both record companies. The song was eventually released on the deluxe version of ''This Is War'', titled "Hurricane 2.0".

2010–present: ''My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'' and ''Watch the Throne''

In May 2010, West made an animated television guest appearance on Fox's animated television series ''The Cleveland Show'' (a spin-off of ''Family Guy'') as the voice behind "Kenny West", a rival of Cleveland Brown's son. In his first episode he performed in a rap battle with Cleveland's son. The producers stated working with West was a very good experience and a reason they chose him was because they knew he was a fan of ''Family Guy''. Kenny West re-appeared in the season 2 premiere of ''The Cleveland Show''.

West spent the first half of 2010 in Honolulu, Hawaii, working on his new album with the working title ''"Good Ass Job"'', later named ''My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'', released on November 22, 2010. West has cited Maya Angelou, Gil Scott-Heron and Nina Simone as his musical inspirations for this album. Outside production is said to come from RZA, Q-Tip, Pete Rock, and DJ Premier. West also had Justin Vernon flown into his studio on Oahu after seemingly expressing interest in sampling one of Bon Iver's songs; Vernon proceeded to feature on a number of new tracks, including "Lost In The World," which features Vernon's vocal line from Woods.

On May 28, the Dwele-assisted first single from the album, entitled "Power", leaked to the Internet. On June 30, the track was officially released via iTunes. The upcoming music video was quoted as being "apocalyptic, in a very personal way" by the director Marco Brambilla.

On September 12, 2010, West performed a new song, "Runaway" featuring Pusha T, at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. Shortly after the performance, Kanye revealed he was working on a 35 minute short film based around the song. The movie is said to be influenced by film noir and concerns a fallen phoenix whom Kanye falls in love with. On October 15, 2010, Kanye West was ranked 3rd in BET's "Top Ten Rappers of the 21st Century" list.

''Watch the Throne'', a collaborative studio album by West and Jay-Z, was released by Def Jam Recordings on August 8, 2011. It has been under production since August 2010 as part of West's GOOD Friday initiative of releasing new songs every Friday between August 20 and Christmas 2010. West said through a recent interview with MTV that the album is "going to be very dark and sexy, like couture hip hop." He appeared at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, performing the track "Lost in the World" from ''My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy''. On January 6, 2011, Kanye announced via Twitter that the first official single from ''Watch the Throne'' would be a song called "H•A•M" produced by Lex Luger. The song was released on January 11, 2011.

On April 17, 2011, West closed the Coachella Festival with a headlining set that received glowing praise from fans and critics alike. On July 20, a track titled "Otis" from the album was released in the iTunes Store. It samples "Try a Little Tenderness" by Otis Redding. On October 19, 2011, West announced on his Twitter plans for a Spring 2012 GOOD Music album release. On April 6, 2012, "Mercy", the lead single from the ''GOOD Music'' compilation album was released. The song, produced by newly-signed in-house producer Lifted, features West along with Big Sean, Pusha T and southern rapper 2 Chainz.

Other ventures

Business ventures

In August 2008, West revealed plans to open 10 Fatburger restaurants in the Chicago area; the first was set to open in September 2008 in Orland Park. The second followed in January 2009, while a third location is yet to be revealed, although the process is being finalized. His company, KW Foods LLC, bought the rights to the chain in Chicago. Additionally, West planned to launch his fashion career, and applied for internships with major European fashion houses. He was due to release his own clothing line called Past Tell in 2009. He also collaborated with Nike to release his own shoe, Air Yeezys.

On January 22, 2009, during Paris Fashion Week, West introduced his first shoe line designed for Louis Vuitton. The line was released in summer 2009.

On October 01, 2011, Kanye West premiered his women's fashion label, DW Kanye West at Paris Fashion Week. He received support from DSquared2 duo Dean and Dan Caten, Olivier Theyskens, Jeremy Scott, Azzedine Alaïa, and the Olsen twins, who were also in attendance during his show. His debut fashion show received mixed-to-negative reviews, ranging from reserved observations by Style.com to excoriating commentary by The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, Elleuk.com, The Daily Telegraph, Harper's Bazaar and many others.

Philanthropy

West started the "Kanye West Foundation" in Chicago in 2003. On August 24, 2007, West hosted the inaugural benefit concert to launch the foundation's partnership with Strong American Schools. It is focused on helping Latino and African American children stay in school and to get a proper education through grade school, high school, and college. The foundation also helps children to stay in high school by finding a path through music. West has contributed over $500,000 to his foundation. The foundation has also been called the "Donda West Foundation".

Kanye West has appeared and participated in many fundraisers, benefit concerts, and has done community work for Hurricane Katrina relief, the Kanye West Foundation, the Millions More Movement, 100 Black Men of America, a Live Earth concert benefit, World Water Day rally and march, Nike runs, and a MTV special helping young Iraq War veterans who struggle through debt and PTSD a second chance after returning home.

Musical style and influences

At the start of his career, Kanye West's production style often used pitched-up vocal samples, usually from soul songs, with his own drums and instruments. His first major release featuring his trademark vocal sampling style was "This Can't Be Life", a track from Jay-Z’s ''The Dynasty: Roc La Familia''. West said he sped up the drum beat of Dr. Dre's "Xxplosive" to use as a replacement for his drums on "This Can't Be Life".

West has said that Wu-Tang Clan producer RZA influenced him in his style, and has said on numerous occasions that Wu-Tang rappers Ghostface Killah and Ol' Dirty Bastard were some of his all-time favorites, "Wu-Tang? Me and my friends talk about this all the time... We think Wu-Tang had one of the biggest impacts as far as a movement. From slang to style of dress, skits, the samples. Similar to the [production] style I use, RZA has been doing that." RZA himself has spoken quite positively of the comparisons, stating in an interview for ''Rolling Stone'', "All good. I got super respect for Kanye. He came up to me about a year or two ago. He gave me mad praising and blessings... For people to say Wu-Tang inspire Kanye, Kanye is one of the biggest artists in the world. That goes back to what we say: 'Wu-Tang is forever.' Kanye is going to inspire people to be like him." After hearing his work on ''The Blueprint'', RZA claimed that a torch-passing had occurred between him and West, saying, "The shoes gotta be filled. If you ain't gonna do it, somebody else is gonna do it. That's how I feel about rap today."

While his use of sampling has lessened over time, West's production continues to feature distinctive and intricate string arrangements. This characteristic arose from him listening to the English trip hop group Portishead, whose 1998 live album ''Roseland NYC Live'', with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra inspired him to incorporate string sections into his hip hop production. Though he was unable to afford live instruments beyond violin riffs provided by Israeli violinist Miri Ben-Ari around the time of his debut album, its subsequent commercial success allowed him to hire his very own eleven-piece string orchestra. For a time, West stood as the sole current pop star to tour with a string section.

West has stated on several occasions that outside of work, he favors listening to rock music over hip-hop. He cites Franz Ferdinand, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Killers as some of his favorite musical groups. Additionally, on ''Graduation'', West drew inspiration from arena rock bands such as U2, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin for melody and chord progression. Both a fan and supporter of indie culture, West uses his official website to promote obscure indie rock bands, posting up music videos and mp3s on a daily basis. This musical affinity is mutual, as West has collaborated with indie artists such as Santigold, Peter Bjorn and John, and Lykke Li while his songs have gone on to be covered countless times by myriad rock bands.

Personal life

Relationships

Kanye West and designer Alexis Phifer ended their 18-month engagement in 2008. The couple had been dating on and off since 2002, with West eventually proposing in August 2006. According to a friend, the couple's relationship had become increasingly strained, burdened by the sheer amount of time and attention West was dedicating to his current concert tour. "It's always sad when things like this end, and we remain friends," Phifer told ''People''.

West was also in a high profile on/off relationship with Amber Rose from 2008 until the summer of 2010. He is now reportedly dating reality star Kim Kardashian.

Mother's death

On November 10, 2007, West's mother, Donda West, died of complications from cosmetic surgery involving abdominoplasty and breast reduction. TMZ reported that Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Andre Aboolian refused to do the surgery because Donda West had a health condition that placed her at risk for a heart attack. Aboolian referred her to an internist to investigate her cardiac issue. Donda never met with the doctor recommended by Aboolian and had the procedures performed by a third doctor, Jan Adams. She was 58 years old (1949–2007).

Adams sent condolences to Donda West's family but declined to publicly discuss the procedure because of confidentiality. He had previously been under scrutiny by the medical board. Adams appeared on ''Larry King Live'' on November 20, 2007 but left before speaking. Two days later, he appeared again, with his attorney, stating he was there to "defend himself." He said that the recently released autopsy results "spoke for themselves". The final coroner's report January 10, 2008 concluded that Donda West died of "coronary artery disease and multiple post-operative factors due to or as a consequence of liposuction and mammoplasty."

The funeral and burial for Donda West was held in Oklahoma City on November 20, 2007. West held his first concert following the funeral at The O2 in London on November 22. He dedicated a performance of "Hey Mama", as well as a cover of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'", to his mother, and did so on all other dates of his Glow in the Dark tour.

At a December 2008 press conference in New Zealand, West spoke about his mother's death for the first time. "It was like losing an arm and a leg and trying to walk through that," he told reporters.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger passed the "Donda West Law," a legislation which makes it mandatory for patients to provide medical clearance for elective cosmetic surgery.

Legal issues

In December 2006, Robert "Evel" Knievel sued West for trademark infringement in West's video for "Touch the Sky." Knievel took issue with a "sexually-charged video" in which West takes on the persona of "Evel Kanyevel" and attempts flying a rocket over a canyon. The suit filed in federal court claims infringement on his trademarked name and likeness. Knievel also claims the "vulgar and offensive" images depicted in the video damage his reputation. The suit seeks damages and to stop distribution of the video. West's attorneys argued that the music video amounted to satire and therefore was covered under the First Amendment. Just days before his death in November 2007, Knievel amicably settled the suit after being paid a visit from West, saying, "I thought he was a wonderful guy and quite a gentleman."

On September 11, 2008, West and his road manager/bodyguard Don "Don C." Crowley were arrested at Los Angeles International Airport and booked on charges of felony vandalism after an altercation with the paparazzi in which West and Crowley broke the photographers' cameras. West was later released from the Los Angeles Police Department's Pacific Division station in Culver City on $20,000 bail bond. On September 26, 2008 the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said it would not file felony counts against West over the incident. Instead the case file was forwarded to the city attorney's office, which charged West with one count of misdemeanor vandalism, one count of grand theft and one count of battery and his manager with three counts of each on March 18, 2009. West's and Crowley's arraignment was delayed from an original date of April 14, 2009.

West was arrested again on November 14, 2008 at the Hilton hotel near Gateshead after another scuffle involving a photographer outside the famous Tup Tup Palace nightclub in Newcastle Upon Tyne. He was later released "with no further action", according to a police spokesperson.

Controversies

General media

West has had several controversies throughout his career. On September 2, 2005, during a benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina relief on NBC, A Concert for Hurricane Relief, West was a featured speaker. When West was presenting alongside actor Mike Myers, he deviated from the prepared script. Myers spoke next and continued to read the script. Once it was West's turn to speak again, he said "George Bush doesn't care about black people." At this point, telethon producer Rick Kaplan cut off the microphone and then cut away to Chris Tucker, who was unaware of the cut for a few seconds. Still, West's comment reached much of the United States. Bush stated in an interview that the comment was "one of the most disgusting moments” of his presidency.

In January 2006, West again sparked controversy when he appeared on the cover of ''Rolling Stone'' in the image of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns.

In November, 2010, in a taped interview with Matt Lauer for the Today Show, West expressed regret for his criticism of Bush. "I would tell George Bush in my moment of frustration, I didn't have the grounds to call him a racist," he told Lauer. "I believe that in a situation of high emotion like that we as human beings don't always choose the right words." The following day, Bush reacted to the apology in a live interview with Lauer saying he appreciated the rapper's remorse. "I'm not a hater," Bush said. "I don't hate Kanye West. I was talking about an environment in which people were willing to say things that hurt. Nobody wants to be called a racist if in your heart you believe in equality of races."

Reactions were mixed, but some felt that West had no need to apologize. "It was not the particulars of your words that mattered, it was the essence of a feeling of the insensitivity towards our communities that many of us have felt for far too long," noted Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons. Dr. Boyce Watkins said that West was, "now part of the establishment, where waffling on your principles is fully expected. Bush deserved no apology, for you don’t apologize to a criminal after repudiating him for an egregious crime. " Bush himself was acceptive towards the apology, saying, "I appreciate that. It wasn't just Kanye West who was talking like that during Katrina, I cited him as an example, I cited others as an example as well. You know, I appreciate that."

Award shows

In 2004, West had his first of a number of incidents involving music award events. At the American Music Awards of 2004, West stormed out of the auditorium after losing Best New Artist to country singer Gretchen Wilson. He later commented, "I felt like I was definitely robbed [...] I was the best new artist this year." After the 2006 Grammy nominations were released, West said he would "really have a problem" if he did not win the Album of the Year, saying, "I don't care what I do, I don't care how much I stunt – you can never take away from the amount of work I put into it. I don't want to hear all of that politically correct stuff." On November 2, 2006, when his "Touch the Sky" failed to win Best Video at the MTV Europe Music Awards, West went onto the stage as the award was being presented to Justice and Simian for "We Are Your Friends" and argued that he should have won the award instead. Hundreds of news outlets worldwide criticized the outburst. On November 7, 2006, West apologized for this outburst publicly during his performance as support act for U2 for their Vertigo concert in Brisbane. He later spoofed the incident in the season premiere of ''Saturday Night Live''.

On September 9, 2007, West suggested that his race had to do with his being overlooked for opening the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) in favor of Britney Spears; he claimed, "Maybe my skin’s not right." West was performing at the event; that night, he lost all 5 awards that he was nominated for, including Best Male Artist and Video of the Year. After the show, he was visibly upset that he had lost at the VMAs two years in a row, stating that he would not come back to MTV ever again. He also appeared on several radio stations saying that when he made the song "Stronger" that it was his dream to open the VMAs with it. He has also stated that Spears has not had a hit in a long period of time and that MTV exploited her for ratings.

On September 13, 2009, during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards while Taylor Swift was accepting her award for Best Female Video for "You Belong with Me", West went on stage and grabbed the microphone to proclaim that Beyoncé's video for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", nominated for the same award, was "one of the best videos of all time". He was subsequently removed from the remainder of the show for his actions. When Beyoncé later won the award for Best Video of the Year for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", she called Swift up on stage so that she could finish her acceptance speech. West was criticized by various celebrities for the outburst, and by President Barack Obama, who called West a "jackass". In addition, West's VMA disruption sparked a large influx of Internet photo memes with blogs, forums and "tweets" with the "Let you finish" photo-jokes. Subsequently, West posted two apologies for the outburst on his personal blog; one on the night of the incident and the other the same day he appeared on ''The Jay Leno Show'', on September 14, 2009, where he apologized again. After Swift appeared on ''The View'' two days after the outburst, partly to discuss the matter, West called her to apologize personally. Swift said she accepted his apology. In September 2010, West wrote a series of apologetic tweets addressed to Swift including "Beyonce didn't need that. MTV didn't need that and Taylor and her family friends and fans definitely didn't want or need that" and concluding with "I'm sorry Taylor." West also revealed he had written a song for Swift and if she did not accept the song, he would perform it himself. However, on November 8, 2010, in an interview with a Minnesota radio station, West seemed to recant a bit of his past apologies by attempting to describe the act at the 2009 awards show as "selfless" and downgrade the perception of disrespect it created.

Discography

Solo Albums

''The College Dropout'' (2004)

''Late Registration'' (2005)

''Graduation'' (2007)

''808s & Heartbreak'' (2008)

''My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'' (2010)

Collaborations

''G.O.O.D. Morning, G.O.O.D. Night'' (2009) - with Malik Yusef

''Watch the Throne'' (2011) – with Jay-Z

''GOOD Music'' (2012) – with GOOD Music artists

Filmography

''We Were Once a Fairytale'' (2009)

''Runaway'' (2010)

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Kanye West at Beatbuggy

Category:1977 births Category:Midwest hip hop musicians Category:African American rappers Category:African American record producers Category:African American male singers Category:American bloggers Category:American Christians Category:American hip hop record producers Category:American music industry executives Category:American music video directors Category:American pop musicians Category:Songwriters from Georgia (U.S. state) Category:Brit Award winners Category:Chicago State University alumni Category:Electro-hop musicians Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Hip hop singers Category:Living people Category:Mercury Records artists Category:Rappers from Atlanta, Georgia Category:Rappers from Chicago, Illinois Category:Roc-A-Fella Records artists Category:World Music Awards winners Category:Songwriters from Illinois

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Name	Saul Williams
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Saul Stacey Williams
Born	February 29, 1972
Genre	Hip hop, Spoken word, poetry, electronic, Industrial hip hop
Occupation	PoetWriterSingerMusicianActorVoice Actor
Instrument	Vocals
Associated acts	Trent Reznor, Serj Tankian, Zack de la Rocha, Thavius Beck, Atari Teenage Riot, Buckethead
Website	Official Site }}

Saul Stacey Williams (born February 29, 1972) is an American poet, writer, actor and musician known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop and for his leading role in the 1998 independent film ''Slam''.

Biography

The youngest of three children, Williams was born in Newburgh, New York. He attended Newburgh Free Academy for high school, where he would write his song "Black Stacey." After graduating from Morehouse College with a B.A. in acting and philosophy, Williams moved to New York City to earn a Master's Degree at New York University in acting. There, he found himself at the center of the New York cafe poetry scene.

Williams and artist Marcia Jones began their relationship in 1995 as collaborative artists on the Brooklyn performance art and spoken word circuit. Their daughter, Saturn, was born in 1996. His collection of poems ''S/HE'' is a series of reflections on the demise of the relationship. [Marcia Jones], a visual artist and art professor, created the cover artwork for The Seventh Octave, images through-out S/HE in response to Williams, and set designed his 2001 album ''Amethyst Rock Star''. Saturn has recently been performing with her father on his 2008 concert tour .

On his 36th birthday, February 29, 2008, Williams married his girlfriend of five years, actress Persia White. Williams met White in 2003 when he made a guest appearance on the TV show ''Girlfriends'' as a poet named Sivad. (1993). On January 17, 2009, White announced via her MySpace blog that she and Williams were no longer together.

Williams is a vegan.

Career

By 1995, he had become an open mic poet and, in 1996, he won the title of Nuyorican Poets Cafe's Grand Slam Champion. The documentary film ''SlamNation'' follows Williams and the other members of the 1996 Nuyorican Poets Slam team (Beau Sia, Mums da Schemer and Jessica Care Moore) as they compete in the 1996 National Poetry Slam held in Portland, Oregon.

The following year, Williams landed the lead role in the 1998 feature film ''Slam.'' Williams served as both a writer and actor on the film, which would win both the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes Camera D'Or (Golden Camera) and serve to introduce Williams to international audiences.

Williams was at this time breaking into music. He had performed with such artists as Nas, The Fugees, Christian Alvarez, Blackalicious, Erykah Badu, KRS-One, Zack De La Rocha, De La Soul, and DJ Krust, as well as poets Allen Ginsberg and Sonia Sanchez. After releasing a string of EPs, in 2001 he released the LP ''Amethyst Rock Star'' with producer Rick Rubin and in September 2004 his self-titled album to much acclaim. He played several shows supporting Nine Inch Nails on their European tour in summer 2005, and has also supported The Mars Volta.

Williams was also invited to the Lollapalooza music festival in Summer 2005. The Chicago stage allowed Williams to attract a wider audience. He also appeared on NIN's album ''Year Zero'', and supported the group on their 2006 North American tour. On the tour Williams announced that Trent Reznor would co-produce his next album.

This collaboration resulted in 2007's ''The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!''. This album was available only at the website niggytardust.com until a physical CD of the album was issued. The physical release included new tracks and extended album artwork. The first 100,000 customers on the website had the option to download a free lower-quality audio version of the album. The other option was for users to pay $5 to support the artist directly and be given the choice of downloading the higher-quality MP3 version or the lossless FLAC version. The material has been produced by Trent Reznor and mixed by Alan Moulder. It was Reznor who said that, after his own recent dealings with record labels, they should release it independently and directly.

As a writer, Williams has been published in ''The New York Times'', ''Esquire'', ''Bomb Magazine'' and ''African Voices'', as well as having released four collections of poetry. As a poet and musician, Williams has toured and lectured across the world, appearing at many universities and colleges. In his interview in the book, ''Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam'', Williams explained why he creates within so many genres, saying:

Williams is a vocal critic of the War on Terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; among his better-known works are the anti-war anthems "Not In My Name" and "Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare)". In early 2008, a Nike Sparq Training commercial featured Williams' song "List of Demands (Reparations)".

In a November 2008 interview with Wired.com, Williams talked about his forthcoming projects:

In January 2009, he released "NGH WHT - The Dead Emcee Scrolls with The Arditti Quartet", a reading of his 2006 poetry book of the same name. This collaboration with Thomas Kessler (who also set '',said the shotgun to the head'' to music) is released with two payment options: listeners may download Chapters 18-22 of the 27-minute composition for free (in mp3 format), or for $6, can download the entire 33-chapter composition in lossless .aif format, along with the isolated vocal and quartet multitrack stems. The entire paid download totals in size at 563 Megabyte.

He currently resides in Paris, France.

Saul has recently released a new song 'Explain My Heart' from his forthcoming album Volcanic Sunlight. Williams showcased the album at London's Hoxton Bar Kitchen on January 26, 2011. Livemusic.fm interviewed Williams on the evening and made a subsequent film. Artist Alex Templeton-Ward produced the film. When Williams was asked what the point of poetry was he said "I'm making this up, I have no idea but here we go, I think that it would be to express, to share, to relieve, to explore", "for me poetry offers some what of a cathartic experience. I am able to move through emotions and emotional experience particularly, you know, break-ups, difficulties in all the things that I may face, whether that is with an industry or a loved one or whomever, there needs to be an infiltration process, like you have a window open over there. That is the purpose of poetry - it is the window that opens that allows some air in, some other insight, some other possibility so we can explore all that we feel, all that we think but with the space to see more than what we know, because there is so much more than we know.", "If I didn't open myself to the possibilities of the unknown then I would be lost."

Discography

Albums/EPs

''Penny for a Thought / Purple Pigeons'' (2000)

''Amethyst Rock Star'' (2001)

''Not in My Name'' (2003)

''Saul Williams'' (2004)

''The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!'' (2007)

''NGH WHT - The Dead Emcee Scrolls with The Arditti Quartet'' (2009)

''Volcanic Sunlight'' (2011)

Guest and compilation appearances

"Twice the First Time" on ''Eargasms - Crucialpoetics Vol. 1'' (1997)

"Elohim (1972)" on ''Black Whole Styles'' (1998)

"Ohm" on ''Lyricist Lounge, Volume One'' (1999)

"Coded Language" on ''Coded Language'' by DJ Krust (1999)

"Spongebob Squarepants" (2001)

"Release" with Lyrics Born and Zack De La Rocha on ''Blazing Arrow'' by Blackalicious (2002)

"Time (Jungle) (Temple Of Soul Mix)" on ''Nublu Sessions'', mixed by Wax Poetic (2003)

"Sent from Sandy Shores" (with Sacajawea) on ''Dreams of Water Themes'' by Adventure Time (2003)

''"Wake up Show Freestyles"'' by Sway and King Tech (2004)

"Three Fingers" on ''Enter the Chicken'' by Buckethead & Friends (2005)

"Sea Lion (Extended)" (with Will Oldham) on "Sea Lion" by Sage Francis (2005)

"Mr. Nichols" on ''Sound Mirrors'' by Coldcut (2006)

"April Showers, April Tears" on ''¿What'' by Stuart Davis (2006)

",said the shotgun to the head" on ''Thomas Kessler'' by Thomas Kessler (2006)

"Survivalism" and "Me, I'm Not" on ''Year Zero'' by Nine Inch Nails (2007)

"Gunshots By Computer" and "Survivalism" on ''Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D'' by Nine Inch Nails (2007)

"Lyrical Gunplay" on ''Thru'' by Thavius Beck

"Dance Of The Dead" on ''The Unbound Project, Vol. 1'' a compilation benefit album for Mumia Abu-Jamal

"List Of Demands" on Nike Sparq Commercial

"Black Stacy Remix" ft. Nas

"U Can Do It" (with Maeckes) on "KIDS" by Maeckes (2010)

"Dance or Die" on ''The ArchAndroid'' by Janelle Monáe (2010)

Bibliography

''The Seventh Octave'', 1998, Moore Black Press ISBN 0-9658308-1-0

''She'', 1999, MTV/Pocketbooks ISBN 0-671-03977-6

'',said the shotgun to the head'', 2003, MTV/Pocketbooks ISBN 0-7434-7079-6

''The Dead Emcee Scrolls'', 2006, MTV/Pocketbooks ISBN 1-4165-1632-8

Mentioned in Raine Maida's song "One Second Chance" off his 2007 Solo Album - "The Hunters Lullabye"

Filmography

''Downtown 81'' (voice) (1981/2000)

''Underground Voices'' (1996)

''Slam'' (1998)

''SlamNation'' (1998)

''I'll Make Me a World'' (1999)

''King Of The Korner'' (2000)

''K-PAX'' (2001)

''The N Word'' (2004)

''Lackawanna Blues'' (2005)

References

External links

Official Site

Saul Williams at Discogs

Category:1972 births Category:African American actors Category:African American musicians Category:African American poets Category:African American performance poets Category:American activists Category:American anti–Iraq War activists Category:American film actors Category:American poets Category:American rappers Category:American television actors Category:American vegans Category:Anti-corporate activists Category:Copyright activists Category:Integral art Category:Living people Category:Morehouse College alumni Category:Actors from New York Category:Musicians from New York Category:People from Newburgh, New York Category:Slam poets Category:Urban fiction Category:American spoken word artists

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