Edward Estlin Cummings, who was also known as E. E. Cummings, e. e. cummings and e e cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays. He is often regarded as one of the most important American poets of the 20th century. Cummings is associated with modernist free-form poetry. Much of his work has idiosyncratic syntax and uses lower-case spellings for poetic expression.
"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is a popular English lullaby. The lyrics are from an early-19th-century English poem written by Jane Taylor, "The Star". The poem, which is in couplet form, was first published in 1806 in Rhymes for the Nursery, a collection of poems by Taylor and her sister Ann. It is now sung to the tune of the French melody "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman", which was first published in 1761 and later arranged by several composers, including Mozart with Twelve Variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman". The English lyrics have five stanzas, although only the first is widely known. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7666.
Publius Ovidius Naso, known in English as Ovid, was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus banished him to Tomis, a Dacian province on the Black Sea, where he remained a decade until his death.
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for a jingoism-fuelled war. Sassoon became a focal point for dissent within the armed forces when he made a lone protest against the continuation of the war in his "Soldier's Declaration" of July 1917, culminating in his admission to Craiglockhart War Hospital; this resulted in his forming a friendship with Wilfred Owen, who was greatly influenced by him. Sassoon later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-volume, fictionalised autobiography, collectively known as the Sherston trilogy.
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted home city of Los Angeles. Bukowski's work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column Notes of a Dirty Old Man in the LA underground newspaper Open City.
In Norse mythology, a valkyrie is one of a host of female figures who guide souls of the dead to the god Odin's hall Valhalla. There, the deceased warriors become einherjar. When the einherjar are not preparing for the events of Ragnarök, the valkyries bear them mead. Valkyries also appear as lovers of heroes and other mortals, where they are sometimes described as the daughters of royalty, sometimes accompanied by ravens and sometimes connected to swans or horses.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote sonnets on a variety of themes. When discussing or referring to Shakespeare's sonnets, it is almost always a reference to the 154 sonnets that were first published all together in a quarto in 1609. However, there are six additional sonnets that Shakespeare wrote and included in the plays Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Love's Labour's Lost. There is also a partial sonnet found in the play Edward III.
"Mary Had a Little Lamb" is an English language nursery rhyme of nineteenth-century American origin, first published by American writer Sarah Josepha Hale in 1830. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7622.
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", commonly known as "Prufrock", is the first professionally published poem by American-born British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965). Eliot began writing "Prufrock" in February 1910, and it was first published in the June 1915 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse at the instigation of Ezra Pound (1885–1972). It was later printed as part of a twelve-poem pamphlet titled Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917. At the time of its publication, Prufrock was considered outlandish, but is now seen as heralding a paradigmatic cultural shift from late 19th-century Romantic verse and Georgian lyrics to Modernism.
Nizar Tawfiq Qabbani was a Syrian diplomat, poet, writer and publisher. He is considered to be Syria's National Poet. His poetic style combines simplicity and elegance in exploring themes of love, eroticism, religion, and Arab empowerment against foreign imperialism and local dictators. Qabbani is one of the most revered contemporary poets in the Arab world.
Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov, born Kirill Mikhailovich Simonov, was a Soviet author, war poet, playwright and wartime correspondent, arguably most famous for his 1941 poem "Wait for Me".
In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a legendary figure of Cyprus, who was a king and a sculptor. He is most familiar from Ovid's narrative poem Metamorphoses, in which Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved.
The game of cricket has inspired much poetry, most of which romanticises the sport and its culture.
William Shakespeare's sexuality has been the subject of frequent debates. It is known from public records that he married Anne Hathaway and had three children with her; scholars have examined their relationship through documents, and particularly through the bequests to her in his will. Some historians have speculated Shakespeare had affairs with other women, based on contemporaries' written anecdotes of such affairs and sometimes on the "Dark Lady" figure in his sonnets. Some scholars have argued he was bisexual, based on analysis of the sonnets; many, including Sonnet 18, are love poems addressed to a man, and contain puns relating to homosexuality.
Kopperuncholan was a Tamil king of the Early Cholas mentioned in Sangam Literature. We have no definite details about this Chola or his reign. The only information we have is from the fragmentary poems of Sangam in the Purananuru.
Somali literature is the literature used by the ethnic Somalis of Somalia, Somaliland, Djibouti, Yemen, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Kenya.
Sriti Jha is an Indian actress who primarily works in Hindi television. She made her acting debut in 2007 with Dhoom Machaao Dhoom playing Malini Sharma. Jha earned wider recognition with her portrayal of Pragya Arora in Kumkum Bhagya, which won her various awards, including Indian Telly Award for Best Actress in a Lead Role and ITA Award for Best Actress Drama.
Gherardo Perini was a model for Michelangelo and came to work for him around 1520. When Perini failed to show up to his studio, Michelangelo was distraught and stated "I beg you not to make me draw this evening since Perino's not here." On that same page, he drew a naked putto urinating into a vase.
"LA Who Am I to Love You" is a poem by American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey from her first poetry collection, Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass (2020). The poem was recorded by Del Rey for her spoken word album of the same name with musical accompaniment by Jack Antonoff. The song was released onto digital outlets on July 27, 2020, the day before the album's release, making it the only track from the album available digitally.
