Poetry in Credo: World Poetry

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Contemp. Chinese poets have a conception of poetry much in common with the view held by their compatriots in other countries, so to use the term Chinese poetry may seem at first unproblematic. But before the mod. period, Chinese writers employed no single term that embraced all traditional forms of verse; they referred instead to individual genres.

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Taken literally, G. p. is the name for poetic compositions, anonymous or otherwise, which deal with the life and adventures of the Argentinean cowboy. It would be a mistake to apply the same denomination to all popular poetry produced in Sp. America.

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
apanese poetry has a recorded hist. of approximately 1,500 years, and the art has occupied a central position in the nation's cultural life. While the term Japanese poetry generally applies to verses in the vernacular, i.e., poetry in Japanese, it also refers in its most inclusive sense to poetry by Japanese, incl. that written in Chinese, which until mod. times was the lingua franca of East Asian literati.

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The poetry sung, recited, or written in the Judeo-Sp. (Judezmo, Ladino) dialect, in the various post-diasporic sanctuaries of the Sephardic Jews—North Africa (Morocco, Algeria) and the Eastern Mediterranean (the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, Israel)—after their exile from Spain in 1492.

Kalevala ('land of heroes', that is, Finland) is an epic poem first published in 1835 and brought out complete (at 22,800 lines long) in 1849.

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The lyric impulse in North Am. Indian cultures is rich, diverse, and persistent.

From The Princeton Handbook of World Poetries
Peru can claim one of the richest and most complex poetic traditions of any Spanish American nation. The recognition of indigenous poetry as literature, as opposed to folklore, was made possible by the pioneering work of 20th-c. anthropologists and writers, in particular by José María Arguedas (1911–69).

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The first examples of poetry in Afrikaans date from the late 19th c. and formed part of efforts to raise the political consciousness of Afrikaner people by elevating the status of the spoken language. South Africa first appears in English poetry in the work of John Donne, John Milton, and John Dryden.

Nigerian writer, b. Albert Chinualumogu Achebe. A graduate of University College at Ibadan (1953), Achebe, an Igbo who writes in English, is one of Africa's most acclaimed authors. In 2007 he was awarded the Man Booker International Prize.

From Encyclopedia of World Religions: Encyclopedia of Judaism
Yehuda Amichai was one of Israel's most important 20th-century Hebrew poets. He influenced the direction of modern Israeli poetry and attained wide popularity. Amichai was born in Bavaria in 1924 to a family steeped in Orthodox Judaism, and he received a traditional Jewish education. In 1935 the family fled Hitler and immigrated to Palestine, finding a home in Jerusalem. In 1982 Amichai was awarded the Israel Prize for his unique contribution to the field of poetry.

Argentine poet, critic, and short-story writer, b. Buenos Aires. Borges has been widely hailed as the foremost contemporary Spanish-American writer.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Swedish poet. Ekelöf's lifelong interest in mysticism was evident in his first book, Late Arrival on Earth (1932, tr. 1967), a collection of surrealist poems.

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
Cuban poet; he was born in Camagüey. His poetry is famous for its relating of black to Latin-American themes. He was the first to recognize that the black presence on his island was not merely exotic. He became Cuba's best-known poet, celebrated even by the illiterate. Much of his poetry is political, as was natural from a man who for many years was a leading member of the Communist Party of Cuba.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Spanish poet of the Generation of '98. He spent most of his life in Castile and his best poetry was influenced by its sober and dramatic landscape.

Cuban essayist, poet, and patriot, leader of the Cuban struggle for independence. One of the greatest prose writers of Spanish America, he is noted for his fluent style and vivid imagery.

Poet, essayist, and novelist, b. Szetejnie, Lithuania (then in Russia). Widely considered the greatest contemporary Polish poet, Miłosz was born into an ethnically Polish family.

Chilean poet, diplomat, and Communist leader. He changed his original name, Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basualto, so that his railroad-worker father would not discover that he was a poet.

German poet, b. Prague, the greatest lyric poet of modern Germany. Rilke's youth at military and business school was not happy.

Polish poet, awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. Her work is particularly noted for its careful choice of words and universal themes.