Flip Wilson had once said something profound. He said that if you don’t put coins in the machine, you can’t expect to win a jackpot. However, there are some casino review websites that allow you to play online slots and other games for free! They also provide loads of useful information about online casinos and responsible gambling. One such website is Casinos Jungle. To know more, visit www.casinosjungle.com

You might’ve heard many sad stories on gambling addiction. It might break your heart to hear about people who gambled and lost all their wealth, landing in poverty. On the other hand, there are stories of people winning big by gambling. Here are a few poems that reflect certain aspects of gambling:

1. Roulette

Many of the poems have a happy ending. One such poem about gambling comes from the British-Canadian poet Robert William Service. However, in the beginning, the poem paints a dark picture. The protagonist fears that she’ll lose all her money and is pretty tense. 

She decides to bet all the thousand francs that she’s got and wait with a prayer on her lips. She has made up her mind that if she loses, she’ll commit suicide by consuming sleeping pills. All of a sudden, she is awakened from her trance by the kind folks around her. 

They say that the red one which she wagered all her money has come ten times. They advise her not to risk another chance and leave with her half a million francs. She decides she’ll never again play that game and thanks to God for her luck.

2. No Fruit Machine Will Get the Better of Me

This poem by Wayne Leon Learmond talks about the sights and sounds of what seems like a slot machine. He describes how he is drawn towards the fruit-themed slot machine. Whenever he wins a jackpot, he yells and screams in delight. As he spends his money on the slot, he feels the adrenaline rush within him. 

The flashing lights, the colours, and the sounds always seem to attract him. He goes on to say that he never panics when the money gets tight. He speaks highly of his willpower by concluding that no fruit machine will get the better of him.

3. The Gambler

In this poem, L.G. Mace talks about the environment that inspires gambling. She is a member of the Academy of American Poets and has been writing poetry all these years. The poem begins with a vivid description of the good old days of the Wild Wild West. It talks about men gathering in saloons, drinking whisky and playing cards. 

She then talks about a gambler who played poker all through the night. The poem says how people in the saloon gather around his table. All of them share the suspense and the excitement of the game. It is later revealed that there has been foul play. The poem ends with a moral that if your intention is to cheat, you better not play.

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While you might think that it’s something magical, neuroscience offers a more rational point of view. In recent times, researchers have explained this using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and other advanced tools. They were used to study how the human brain responded to poetry. Among several other things, they discovered that the brain is wired to recognize rhythms and rhymes used by poets. 

The brain also differentiates them from ordinary prose or speech. Researchers also found that poetic imagery and a poem’s multiple layers of meanings activate certain areas of the brain. Some of these areas help us to interpret our everyday reality.

How your brain is wired for poetry

It seems that our brains are wired to recognize poetry. This explains why poems have such profound effects on us. A newly published study in the journal Frontiers of Psychology also offers an explanation. The researchers at the Bangor University in the United Kingdom read several sentences to Welsh-speaking individuals. 

Some of these sentences conformed to the rules of Cynghanedd for intricate poetic construction. This is a traditional form of Welsh poetry. Other individuals in the group didn’t follow the rules. Although the individuals didn’t know a thing about Cynghanedd, they categorized the sentences following the rules as ‘good’. The researchers also hooked up these individuals to EEG devices. 

They then observed a distinctive burst of electrical activity in the brains of these people. It occurred instantly after hearing the last word of a poetic line. Guillaume Thierry, a psychology professor at Bangor said that the results argued for a profoundly intuitive origin of poetry. Poetry affects certain areas of the brain, depending upon the degree of complexity and emotion of ideas and language. 

In 2013, a study was published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. Researchers at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom had participants lay inside an fMRI scanner. Then the researchers read several texts on a screen. The selections deliberately included dull prose, such as an instruction manual, passages from novels, and samples of poetry. 

The subjects had told earlier that some of these poems were their favourites. The listeners had to rate the texts on qualities, such as how many emotions they aroused. The texts were also rated based on how difficult they were to contemplate.

The research findings

The scans showed more activation in areas on the right side of the brain when certain texts were read. These were the texts to which the subjects had assigned a higher degree of emotions. This was quite similar to the findings of a study that was conducted in 2001. In this case, these areas were activated by music that had moved listeners to a great extent. 

The favourite poems of the subjects had weakly activated a network in the brain, which was associated with reading. Strong activation was seen in the inferior parietal lobes, which is an area associated with recognition.

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There are 24-hour news broadcasts, social media sites, and blogs competing for space in people’s minds. However, it seems that the traditional forms of art are fighting back and among them is poetry. According to research, the annual sales of poetry books has been growing in the United States since 2015. 

This has made it one of the fastest-growing categories in the publishing industry. Almost half of these books have been written by Insta-poets. Most of the buyers of such books are teenage girls and young women. Here, we’ve presented the most popular poets who’ve gained tremendous popularity through Instagram.

1. Lang Leav

This Thailand-born and New Zealand-based novelist and poet is known for her writings on love, loss, and women’s empowerment. According to her, Instagram is a great medium for uploading snippets of work. The only problem she has with a social media platform is that it shouldn’t define a literary genre. When her first book came out, it sat next to Shakespeare and Poe on the shelves. 

The world of literature was mostly dominated by men, the white, and the privileged. Her first book Love & Misadventure, which was released in 2013, was a welcome change. She believes that women of colour are now dominating the modern poetry scene. The reason, according to her, is that an increasing number of readers want more diverse views of the world.

2. Leticia Sala

This Spanish law graduate and former UN worker say that she had no expectations. In 2015, she decided to start posting her poems on Instagram. She just thought it would be interesting to use Instagram a bit differently. Back in the day, everyone published images and she thought of publishing her writings. 

In her opinion, it’s a shame to criticize Insta-poets so heavily. Today, it seems that the literary world is strongly opposed to this innovative approach. Leticia believes that the poetry coming from social media platforms are the purest. 

It’s not edited, corrected, or polished by anyone and is therefore raw and honest. She thinks that these poems are brave and genuine. Perhaps, this is why such poems resonate so much in recent times. People today spend endless hours living in the virtual world of vanity. 

They are constantly scrolling for entertainment and information. According to Leticia, the best feeling is when readers comment to say that they relate to the poem.

3. Rupi Kaur

In 2016, her first book Milk & Honey astonishingly outsold Homer’s The Odyssey. This book of poetry was on the New York Times bestseller list for over 100 consecutive weeks. Rupi Kaur had then begun leading the charge. Her book has been translated into more than 35 languages. 

In 2017, her second book The Sun and Her Flowers had sold a million copies. It happened within the first three months of the book being released. Rupi Kaur is now considered one of the social media’s biggest success stories.

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There are some great movies on poems as well. However, here we’ll be looking at the appearance of poetry in films. Certain instances have been described here, where the famous poems were recited in the movies. Here are some of the popular poems that appeared in films:

1. The Hollow Men

Written by the modernist writer T.S. Eliot, this 1925 poem appeared in the epic war film, Apocalypse Now. Just like much of his poetry, this poem has overlapping and fragmentary themes. It is concerned with Europe after the First World War under the Treaty of Versailles. The poem is symbolic of many things, such as hopelessness, redemption, and religious conversion. 

Some of the critics also find traces of his failing marriage with Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot in the poem. It was published two years before the conversion of Eliot to Anglicanism. The poem has 98 lines and is divided into five parts. The final four are probably the ones that have been quoted the most of any of the 20th-century poems.

2. Kubla Khan

This poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge was completed in 1797 and was published about nineteen years later. It has a preface to Kubla Khan. The poem was written a night after he experienced a dream when he was under the influence of opium. Just before it happened, he had read a work describing Shangdu. It was the summer capital of the Yuan dynasty, which was founded by the Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan. 

When he woke up from his dream, Coleridge began writing the lines of poetry that came from his dream. He was interrupted by an individual from Porlock and he forgot the lines due to the interruption. This poem appeared in Citizen Kane, an American drama film released in 1941.

3. As I Walked Out One Evening

The most memorable verses written by W.H. Auden is contained in this poem. He had once said that light verse was the kind written by poets who are in tune with their audience democratically. He also added that the language of light verse is straightforward and closest to general speech. Going by this definition, the 123 poems in his collection qualify for this form of poetry. 

Such poems are as accessible as popular songs but have great profoundness and wisdom. Auden was the most irresistible and affecting in As I Walked Out One Evening. Perhaps this is why it was mentioned in Before Sunrise, a romantic drama film released in 1995.

4. The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Notable for its playfulness, this poem by Robert Browning was originally published in 1842. It has a delightful and simple rhyme scheme. The length of each of its stanza varies. The story’s rhythm, therefore, changes constantly. It mostly follows the immensely popular fairy tale of the Pied Piper and keeps to the same two morals. 

The poem makes a subtle comment on politics and economics in this manner. The use of the word ‘corporation’ makes it seem more recent. It suggests that a population is not only ruled by the government but also the economic system of the country. This poem appeared in The Sweet Hereafter, a 1997 Canadian drama film.

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1. Charles Bukowski loved cats

Once declared by Time magazine as the ‘laureate of American lowlife’, Charles Bukowski had a soft spot for felines. This German-American poet owned a pet cat named ‘Minx’. He even wrote a poem on his felines called ‘My Cats’. In the poem, he describes how he was inspired by the courage of his cats. He mentioned that their courage gave him strength whenever he was feeling low.

2. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s last words were very sweet

Many poems of this author from the Victorian era were inspired by her beloved husband, Robert Browning. Elizabeth was known for her romantic poems like How Do I Love Thee? He was also a poet. Most of her life was spent in poor health, but the romance in her never died. 

When she was dying at the age of 55, her husband held her in his arms. He then asked her how she was feeling. Her final word in response was, “Beautiful”.

3. Pablo Neruda preferred handwriting his poems using green ink

Pablo Neruda was a Pulitzer Prize winner from Chile. He was a poet who blended politics and surrealism into his poetry. It is popularly believed that he saw green as a colour of hope. Perhaps this is the reason why he favoured writing his poems with a fountain pen filled with green ink.

4. E.E. Cummings once called out those who spurned him in a dedication page

The American writer E.E. Cummings’s collection of 70 poems was rejected by several publishers. This happened despite him being a published author and having released a novel, poetry collections, and plays. He finally managed to publish the collection in 1935 with the help of a loan from his mother. It had two revisions that were noteworthy. 

In the first revision, he changed its title to ‘No Thanks’. This was a reference to the letters of dismissal that he had received. On the dedication page, he printed a concrete poem. It was written in the shape of a funeral urn. What’s truly interesting is that the poem listed the names of all publishers who had rejected him.

5. Sappho, the archaic Greek poet, might’ve been a popular songwriter

The ancient texts described Sappho’s writing as ‘mele’, which literally translates as ‘songs’. The debate about how her works were performed still goes on among historians. The description suggests that her poems were set to music. This means that Sappho might’ve been a popular songwriter. 

There have been speculations that Sappho’s fans copied her lyrics into papyrus and pottery. In this way, her talent and verses were preserved for thousands of years.

6. Shel Silverstein was an award-winning songwriter

This American humorist is best known for his illustrated poetry books for children. The best examples would be Where The Sidewalk Ends and A Light In the Attic. It is worth noting that he also earned Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. 
In 1991, he received nominations for his song I’m Checking Out. It was performed at the end of the movie Postcards From the Edge by Meryl Streep. About two decades earlier, he had won the Grammy for Best Country Song. This was for writing A Boy Named Sue.

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However, the ability to write poetry is certainly not a personality trait. The famous poets may be more eccentric and creative, but writing poetry is a learned skill. Of course, it can’t be denied that some poets do have personality traits that help them write better poems. It’s more like certain people who have a natural talent for physics, horticulture, singing, and dancing. 

You may have natural strengths and abilities that feed a certain passion or skill. You can also have the ability to improve on whatever natural talent you possess. If you feel you’re not a natural poet, but want to write good poems, then you can definitely learn. If you practice the basics and keep moving forward, you will certainly improve your skills. 

You’ll see that whether or not you have the personality traits of a poet would become less important. All that would really matter is your ability to retain the childlike awe and wonder and keep writing. Now let’s see what the three greatest qualities of every poet are:

1. A knack for rhythm and pattern

Writers and poets can see patterns not only in their writing but in life as well. A poet sees rhythm and patterns in all the lines and verses of a poem. In fact, it may seem to him or her that every word has a certain rhyme and rhythm. The essence of pattern and rhythm is a poet’s personality. 

A verse or poem that lacks pattern is utter chaos. ‘Batching’ is the term used by productivity experts to describe this. For a blogger, this would mean collecting a dozen images at once.

2. Protective of their time

It’s quite interesting to see that the most successful published poets are not ‘people pleasers’. They certainly know how to say ‘no’. Successful poets know how to close their doors so that they can work in peace. They’re extremely good at prioritizing their writing and avoiding distractions. Most of the published writers and poets simplify their lives to make more time to write. 

This means saying ‘no’ to family members, friends, colleagues, neighbours, and strangers. Some people don’t understand the need to set boundaries. Such people don’t really possess the personality traits and passion required for writing poems.

3. Motivated from within

Almost all successful poets have much-needed inspiration and internal motivation. They write for themselves and can do that for hours without the greed for material gains. They’re driven mostly by their own experiences. Such poets are the ones who wish to share their insights to help readers live fulfilling lives. Internal motivation is one of the key personality traits of all the successful individuals in the world. 

This simply means that if you do something out of your own internal motivation, you’re more likely to achieve success. You’ll certainly lose your drive if you’re trying to chase certain trends or please others. This would eventually lead to failure.

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Despite this, most of the poems possess some key characteristics. These are the choices that can vary from poem to poem. Some of the essential characteristics of poetry are as explained below:

1. Figures of Speech

The figurative language or figures of speech are ways, by which, things are explained in a non-literal manner. For instance, a metaphor describes a particular thing by linking it to something else. Let’s say, “His touch was a lightning strike”. Here, the author doesn’t mean to say that the touch was a lightning strike in the literal sense. It rather means that the touch produced feelings of heightened excitement and emotions. 

Another example of figures of speech is hyperbole. It is used frequently for a humorous exaggeration, which usually provides hints of a larger truth. Here, let’s say, “He ran faster than the wind”. In this sentence, the author means to say that the person in question ran at his fastest speed.

2. Format and Punctuation

The punctuation and format are all about how a poem is arranged on the page. It is also about how the author wants you to read the poem. If the poem contains short stanzas and frequent line breaks, you’re compelled to read it in a certain rhythm. 

You’ll read the poem in a different rhythm if it is arranged in longer stanzas and fewer line breaks. In order to understand this even better, you must try reading the poem aloud. This would help you gauge the impact of the format.

3. Imagery

Imagery is a description of what the author witnesses, hear, or senses. It can be something that exists in his or her mind or can be real. Imagery needs to be something concrete, such as sight, sound, taste, or smell. Visual imagery describes what the author sees. This is the most common type of imagery used in poetry. It creates a picture, which the listener or reader can see in his or her mind.

4. Sound and Tone

Authors of poems use various tones and sounds throughout the poetry. This is done to change the way it sounds. For example, the author may use alliteration. This is when many consecutive words begin with the same letter. Here, the author may write, “Pretty pugs prance playfully on the promenade”. 

The author may choose his or her letters to give a sharp or soft sound to the poem. For instance, using words with soft consonants like m, f, and w produces a certain sound. The sound would be entirely different when hard consonants like k, d, and z are used.

5. Meter choices

Meter refers to a poem’s rhythm or pattern of speech with which a reader reads it. This doesn’t happen by accident, as authors use different meters to produce different rhythms. They have some technical names like spondaic heptameter and iambic pentameter. These names act as measurements for poems. The rhythm and meter of a poem can be broken down and analyzed with the help of these measurements.

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Of course, you’ll be heartbroken upon hearing this as you might’ve poured out your heart into the poem. The world of poetry is varied and vast. Certainly, there are poems you’d love to read and the ones you’d enjoy writing. You might just need a quick introduction to several poetic forms to be on track. So, here are the most popular types of poems:

1. Sonnet

When you begin thinking about the poetic forms, the sonnet might be the first to surface in your mind. This is an old form, which originated during the 13th century in Italy. There are two common forms of a sonnet, namely the Petrarchan or Italian and the Shakespearean or Elizabethan. Both of them have several rules. Traditionally, there are 14 lines in sonnets and are often about different kinds of love. 

Lost love, married love, forgotten love, longing for love are some of the examples. Petrarchan sonnets have a rhyme scheme of ABBA ABBA CDE CDE. The Shakespearean sonnets are usually written in the ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme.

2. Haiku

This is a Japanese form, which originated in the 17th century in the writings of Matsuo Basho. The Haiku are very short poems. Owing to their short length, they are perfect for writing exercises and school assignments. A Haiku typically has 17 syllables that are arranged in three lines. 

The first line has five syllables, the next has 7, and the third has 5. Such poems are commonly about nature and include a seasonal reference, usually containing two juxtaposed ideas or images.

3. Ballad

Ballad is for those who wish to tell a story or read one in the form of a poem. It is a traditional and old form, which were earlier passed down orally from one generation to the next. If you are someone who wants to take this form quite seriously, there are certain rules to be followed. 

Ballads are written in quatrains or groups of four lines. The rhyme scheme to follow is ABAB or ABCB. The lines usually alternate between having six syllables and eight. However, the ballad is a form that’s loose enough to make it into whatever you want.

4. Free Verse

This form of poetry gives you complete freedom to do whatever you want! There are absolutely no rules in free verse. You’re not required to follow the regular patterns of rhythm or rhyme. There’s no need for lines of a particular length or stanzas of a certain number. 

Free verse can be liberating and terrifying at the same time. Of course, you can do whatever you wish to, but you may keep thinking about where to begin. Nevertheless, you can still go ahead and try it, enjoying all the freedom that it offers.

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Poetry can be highly subjective just like art. It would only be worthy if it connects emotionally with the audience. It’s quite difficult, therefore, to judge poetry solely on the basis of its technical merits. Another great mistake would be to rank one poet against the other. 

Nevertheless, there are poets who have made significant achievements in several forms of poetry. Some have also influenced literary movements or left a lasting impression on popular culture. Here, we’ve listed some of the greatest poets who influenced the world:

1. William Shakespeare

He is among the best-known poets of all time. In recent times, William Shakespeare has gotten a lot of attention with his Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. Not many know the fact that his original fame came as a result of his poetry. This had even earned him the nickname of ‘the bard’. 

He had written 154 sonnets during his career. Among them were love poems, such as Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? or sonnet 18. The narrative poem Venus and Adonis is also included in his body of work. This poem tells the tale of unrequited love between a hunter and a goddess.

2. Dante Alighieri

Dante is renowned worldwide for his magnum opus called La Commedia or The Divine Comedy. It is considered one of the greatest poems in the Italian language and the world of literature. It took twelve years to complete. This Italian poet was born during the middle ages in Florence and grew up amid the aristocratic society. 

Under the apprenticeship of poet Brunetto Latini, he developed a fascination for literature. He presents himself as the protagonist in The Divine Comedy. It describes his journey through hell’s nine circles to purgatory and heaven. He remained in love with Beatrice Portinari despite being married to another woman. 

Upon the death of Beatrice in 1290, he was stricken with grief. Later, he committed himself to study the philosophies of Aristotle, Cicero, and Boethius. During this time, he also developed his own poetic voice in lyrical poems. A few years later, Beatrice was depicted as the subject of mythical love in his collection Vita Nuova.

3. Maya Angelou

An American poet, civil rights activist, and autobiographer, Maya Angelou was born on the 4th of April, 1928. She had worked for Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Most of her poems delves into feminism, race, and black beauty. An example of all three would be her famous poem Still I Rise. 

She also wrote poetry on the anti-Vietnam war. For her poem Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie, she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Maya Angelou was a singer, playwright, dancer, and editor besides being a poet. In the year 1988, she became the first black director in Hollywood. 

During her lifetime, she received more than fifty honorary degrees. Maya Angelou was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton. She was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

4. Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson is considered one of the all-time great poets of the United States today. It may come as a surprise to many that she was not so well-known during her lifetime. Emily was born during the 19th century in Massachusetts to a well-connected family. She studied at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary but returned to lead the life of a recluse at her family home. 

She barely left her bedroom even as the years passed. It was during these days of isolation that she wrote almost 1,800 poems. Only ten of her heavily edited poems were published while she was alive. After her death, a cache of her poetry was discovered by her sister Lavinia. This led to a huge surge in the publication of her poems. The major themes of her poetry were Christianity, love, and death.

5. Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Rumi

Renowned worldwide simply as ‘Rumi’, he was a Persian poet and Islamic scholar from the 13th century. His poems have been translated into many different languages of the world. This earned him the nickname of the ‘most popular poet’. Translated versions of his poems are extremely popular in the United States, South Asia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan. 

Although he wrote mainly in Persian, Rumi had also dabbled in Arabic, Turkish, and Greek languages. His best-known work is Masnavi, which is a series of spiritual poetry books. Its 25,000 verses have been written to teach Sufis how to love God truly. Many also consider it as the greatest work of poetry in the Persian language.

6. Homer

Very little information is available about Homer. Some are not even sure whether he existed or not. Literary scholars are of the opinion that Homer was the single author behind two epic poems. They are The Iliad and The Odyssey, which form the foundations of ancient Greek literature. 

The accounts of Homer’s life suggest that he was a blind bard from Ionia. Today, it is a coastal area of Turkey. Scholars have clearly stated that The Iliad and The Odyssey are some of the most influential works ever written. The Iliad is set in the times of the siege of Troy. 

It focuses on the conflict that took place between the warrior Achilles and King Agamemnon. The Odyssey narrates the tale of Odysseus. He was the king of Ithaca. The epic poem tells the tale of his journey home after the fall of Troy.

7. Robert Frost

He was a famous American poet born in San Francisco. He achieved tremendous popularity during his lifetime and was also praised by critics. They loved his dramatic scenes and the realistic depictions of life in rural America. He is the only poet to have received four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry. 

Besides this honour, he was also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Two years before he died, Robert Frost was declared poet laureate of Vermont. He used New England as the setting for his poems frequently. They examine the philosophical and social themes in relation to nature.

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