Talk:Occasional poetry

Defense of "most publicized" statement
This article contains the statement that Elizabeth Alexander's "Praise Song for the Day" is the most publicized occasional poem of the first decade of the 21st century. This is not the sort of claim I usually make based on indirect evidence without citing a source. I would argue, however, that before deleting, changing, or tagging this statement, an editor should find even one example of an occasional poem that made its debut in a setting with an audience potentially equal to 37.8 million people. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:11, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Sadly that's not how Wikipedia works. Claims have to be sourced; not just asserted with a challenge to disprove them. TSP (talk) 11:23, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Outline of article in development
I'm currently working on the following sections for this article:
 * Ancient Greece and Rome (this would be the section in which I'm strongest)
 * Vedic, Sanskrit, Indian literature (with which I could use some expert help!)
 * Persian literature (ditto)
 * Arabic literature (ditto)
 * Chinese literature (ditto)
 * Western literature, primarily 18th-century German; a section on the occasional poem in Medieval and/or Renaissance Europe would be greatly welcome, as would 20th century; or any other period, for that matter
 * Patronage
 * Orality
 * Disparagement (that is, why this form of poetry is sometimes looked down on)
 * Feminist criticism (which relates to the preceding, unfortunately; occasional poetry's loss of status seems to have to do with women starting to write it, causing the poetry patriarchy to regard it as no longer masculine)

I hope editors will take the initiative in developing these and other sections, as it's quite a lot and I'm working on other things. I believe "occasional poetry" is also an apt term in African literary studies, for instance. If you're interested in contributing to the listed topics, but don't want to start from scratch, please watch the article and add what you can. I was a little surprised to find the topic not yet covered in Wikipedia, as the term is used already in several articles (linking from these would be another task). Cynwolfe (talk) 15:11, 19 June 2009 (UTC)