Which Dead Poet Are You?
Fun Dead Poet Facts
A lyrist poet (her poetry was meant to be accompanied by the music from a lyre ) Sappho spent much of her life on the Isle of Lesbos, a major Greek cultural center at the time. Today, both visitors and locals on Lesbos enjoy the island’s signature drink, ouzo, along with small plates of food and good company.
Enheduanna, in addition to being the first named female poet in history, was also the first author known to have used the first person point of view to express her religious devotion, often to the goddess Inanna. Some of her surviving poetry might sound odd to a modern ear:
En-hedu-ana will recite a prayer to you. To you, holy Inanna shall give free vent to my tears like sweet beer!
Beer, however, was a dietary staple in ancient Mesopotamia, brewed by women and viewed as a gift from the gods.
Ferdowsi, the 10th century Persian poet and author of The Shahmaneh, wrote of great heroes like Rostam and his trusty horse Raksh. Sadly, his loyalty to the Persian dynasties of the time never benefited him personally. He died as a poor widower, and his achievements were only fully recognized long after his death. Today, he’s honored as a giant in Persian literature, with visitors flocking to his tomb in Tus, Iran, and statues to him all over the world, including Rome.
Regarded as the national poet of Palestine, Mahmoud Darwish dealt with themes of exile and loss, often bringing in images of simple experiences like making coffee to express resilience in the face of war and dispossession. His collection of poems include Unfortunately, It was Paradise: Selected Poems, and The Butterfly’s Burden .
The most famous poet of the Abbasid period, Abu Nuwas wrote odes to drunkenness and licentious behavior with young men that continue to face censorship even to this day. The fame of his life and poems even led to a fictionalized version of him as a character in 1001 Arabian Nights . His ground-breaking work influenced later great poets in both the Arab and Persian traditions, but he is said to have died of assassination while in prison for his writing.
