What poem has the most words?
With more than 220,000 (100,000 shloka or couplets) verses and about 1.8 million words in total, the Mahābhārata is one of the longest epic poems in the world.
At 200,000 verse lines and 1.8 million words, it took more than half a millennium to write the Mahabharata. The epic Sanskrit poem, spanning the tale of love and warfare between rival families, is seven times the length of The Iliad and The Odyssey combined.
The number of lines in a 1000-word poem can vary widely depending on the poem's structure, form, and the poet's style. Poems can range from a few lines to several pages. Traditional forms such as sonnets or haikus have specific line counts, but free verse poems may have a more fluid structure.
"Jabberwocky" is considered one of the greatest nonsense poems written in English. Its playful, whimsical language has given English nonsense words and neologisms such as "galumphing" and "chortle".
The longest poem in English is one on the life of King Alfred by John Fitchett (1766-1838) of Liverpool, Merseyside, which ran to 129,807 lines and took 40 years to write. His editor, Robert Riscoe, added the concluding 2,585 lines.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the world's shortest poem is a one-letter poem by Aram Saroyan comprising a four-legged version of the letter "m".
An epic is a lengthy, revered narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. The term "long poem" includes all the generic expectations of epic and the reactions against those expectations.
Saroyan's most famous one-word poem, “lighght,” for instance, became famous (or infamous) several years after it was in written in the fall of 1965, and was first published as a 24″ × 36″ poster by Brice Marden in early 1966.
The definition of repetition in poetry is repeating words, phrases, lines, or stanzas. Repetition can be used to help establish rhyme schemes, metrics, and rhythm. These all contribute to the musical quality of poems when they are read aloud.
A nonet is a nine-line poem. In the nonet form, each line contains specific, descending syllable counts. The first line contains nine syllables, the second line contains eight, the third line contains seven, and so on. The last line of nonet poetry contains one syllable.
Who wrote the most poem?
However, some prolific poets, such as William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, and Pablo Neruda, are known to have written thousands of poems during their lifetimes. For example, Emily Dickinson is believed to have written nearly 1,800 poems, while Pablo Neruda's collected works include over 3,500 poems.
According The Guinness Book of Records they claim Aram Saroyan's poem M written in the mid 1960s is the world's shortest poem. This poem consists of a four-legged version of the letter 'm' thus making it one and a half letters long.
The oldest known "poems" are anonymous - such as the Rig Vedas of Hinduism, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Song of the Weaver by an unknown Egyptian of the Second Dynasty. The psalms and The Iliad are "attributed" to David and Homer, respectively - but painstaking scholarship has never given them exclusive credit.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest long poem in history. An ancient Babylonian poem about a mighty hero who tried to become immortal, its universal themes of love, life and death resonate as clearly today as in antiquity.
The Mahābhārata is the longest epic poem known and has been described as "the longest poem ever written". Its longest version consists of over 100,000 śloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines (each shloka is a couplet), and long prose passages.
Minimalism and concrete poetry
Admirer Bob Grumman has written that the poem plays on formation of an alphabet, as if 'm' and 'n' are in the process of separating. It can also be understood as a pun on "I am", implying the formation of consciousness itself.
Some poetic forms just seem to spring up out of nowhere, and such is the case with the minute poem--a fun, 60-syllable long poem with a simple rhyme scheme and iambic meter. Some forms have a long, exotic history. Some forms are relatively new, but have a well-known founder.
No, your poem(s) can be of any length.
While a lot of poetry rhymes, it doesn't have to. There are many forms of poetry that don't involve rhyming at all. Here are some more types of poetry that don't need to rhyme.
A 7-line poem is called a Septet. It can also be known as a Rhyme Royal.
What is the oldest surviving long poem in English?
Beowulf is an Old English epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines. It is possibly the oldest surviving long poem in Old English and is commonly cited as one of the most important works of Old English literature. It was written in England some time between the 8th and the early 11th century.
The earliest known English poem is a hymn on the creation; Bede attributes this to Cædmon (fl. 658–680), who was, according to legend, an illiterate herdsman who produced extemporaneous poetry at a monastery at Whitby. This is generally taken as marking the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry.
The author of the first poem is not definitively known, as poetry predates written records. However, the earliest known poems were composed in ancient Sumeria and date back to over 4,000 years ago. These poems were written on clay tablets and are attributed to various authors.
An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the first letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet.
The poet suggests that from the loss of the ball, the boy is learning how to stand up in a world of possessions where he will lose things, will buy some more to replace the ones lost, but would never be able to buy back the thing that he had lost. He is sensing his first responsibility as he has lost the ball.
References
- https://www.storymakersclub.com/2020/03/26/seven-line-poetry-creative-writing-prompts/
- https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-britlit1/chapter/beowulf-background/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata
- https://study.com/learn/lesson/repetition-poetry-overview-analysis-examples.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_poem
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrostic
- https://poetrysociety.org.uk/question/is-there-a-line-limit/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aram_Saroyan
- https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/minute-poem-poetic-forms
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lines_on_the_Antiquity_of_Microbes
- https://www.quora.com/Who-wrote-the-first-poem
- https://www.quora.com/How-many-lines-are-in-a-1000-word-poem
- https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-largest-number-of-poems-written-in-a-lifetime
- https://www.soas.ac.uk/research/epic-gilgamesh-ancient-poem-modern-inspiration
- https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/theatre-and-performance/article-mahabharata-sanskrit-poem/
- https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-23818,00.html
- https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/art-of-one-word-poem/
- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-life-hacks/writing/do-poems-have-to-rhyme
- https://nikkiwordsmith.com/the-worlds-shortest-poem-by-muhammad-ali/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_poetry
- https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-a-nonet
- https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/67401-longest-english-poem-ever-published
- https://byjus.com/question-answer/what-does-the-poet-say-the-boy-is-learning-from-the-loss-of-the-ball/