2,935 articles
Bidagdha Chintamani
Bidagdha Chintamani (ବିଦଗ୍ଧ ଚିନ୍ତାମଣି) is an 18th-century Odia kavya by Abhimanyu Samanta Singhara, telling the love story of Radha and Krishna and counted as the longest kavya in Odia literature.
Bidrohi
Bidrohi (বিদ্রোহী, "The Rebel") is a Bengali revolutionary poem by Kazi Nazrul Islam, written in December 1921 and published in 1922, which earned him the title Bidrohi Kavi, the Rebel Poet.
Bihari Satsai
The Bihari Satsai (बिहारी सतसई) is a collection of about seven hundred doha couplets in Braj Bhasha composed by the poet Bihari Lal around 1662.
Bijak
The Bijak (बीजक) is the principal collection of the verses of Kabir, the fifteenth-century weaver-poet of Varanasi, and the most sacred scripture of the Kabir Panth religious order.
Bilanka Ramayana
Bilanka Ramayana (ବିଲଙ୍କା ରାମାୟଣ) is an Odia poetic retelling of the Ramayana, attributed to Sarala Das, in which Rama, aided by Sita, kills a thousand-headed Ravana in the subterranean city of Bilanka.
Bird Singing Stream
Bird Singing Stream (鸟鸣涧) is a twenty-character Chinese quatrain by the Tang poet Wang Wei, describing a still spring night stirred by falling flowers, moonrise, and bird calls.
Birthday Letters
Birthday Letters is a 1998 poetry collection by Ted Hughes, 88 poems addressed to his first wife, Sylvia Plath, ending decades of public silence about their marriage.
Bisarjan
Bisarjan (বিসর্জন, "Sacrifice"/"Immersion") is Rabindranath Tagore's 1890 Bengali verse drama, adapted from his novel Rajarshi, in which the Tripura king bans animal sacrifice and clashes with the royal priest Raghupati.
Bisclavret
Bisclavret is an Old French narrative lai by Marie de France, written in the late 12th century, telling of a noble knight who periodically becomes a werewolf.
Bisher Banshi
Bisher Banshi (বিষের বাঁশী, "The Poisonous Flute") is a 1924 Bengali poetry collection by Kazi Nazrul Islam, banned by the British colonial government two months after publication.
Black Eggs
Black Eggs (Kuroi tamago) is a collection of free verse and tanka by Hiroshima poet Kurihara Sadako, self-published in 1946 and counted among the earliest works of atomic bomb literature.
Blue Cat
Blue Cat (Aoneko, 青猫) is a 1923 poetry collection by the Japanese poet Sakutarō Hagiwara, gathering 55 poems from 1917 to 1922 and marking the establishment of colloquial free verse in modern Japanese poetry.
Blue Horses
Blue Horses (Georgian: Lurja Tskhenebi) is a symbolist poem by the Georgian poet Galaktion Tabidze, written in 1915 and published in 1916 in the journal Tsisperi Qantsebi.
Boat Mooring at Guazhou
Boat Mooring at Guazhou (泊船瓜洲) is a quatrain by Song statesman and poet Wang Anshi, written while his boat lay moored at Guazhou on the Yangtze.
Bogatyr (богатырь)
Bogatyr (богатырь), Turkic-derived word for a hero of Russian byliny epic songs; warrior of extraordinary strength defending the Russian land. Key figures: Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich.
Bogurodzica
Bogurodzica is the oldest known Polish religious hymn and poetic text, probably composed in the 13th century and sung by Polish knights as a battle song.
Böhmen liegt am Meer
"Böhmen liegt am Meer" ("Bohemia lies by the sea") is a 1964 poem by the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann, first published in 1968 in Kursbuch.
Bolond Istók
Bolond Istók, or Istók the Fool, is an unfinished comic-heroic narrative poem by the Hungarian poet János Arany, composed between 1850 and 1880, following a foundling through Hungarian poverty.
Boots (poem)
"Boots" is an 1903 poem by Rudyard Kipling from The Five Nations, voicing a British infantryman marching in South Africa during the Second Boer War, built on the refrain "Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again" and the line "There's no discharge in the war."
Booz endormi
"Booz endormi" is an 1859 poem by Victor Hugo in La Légende des siècles, retelling the Book of Ruth, where Ruth lies at the sleeping Boaz's feet.
Borodino
Borodino (Бородино) is an 1837 narrative poem by Mikhail Lermontov, in which an old soldier recalls the 1812 Battle of Borodino; it made his literary fame.
Bottom of the Wave
Bottom of the Wave (Qararat al-Mawja) is the third poetry collection of the Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala'ika, published in Beirut in 1957 during the rise of Arabic free verse.
Bovo-bukh
Bovo-bukh, also known as Bovo d'Antona, is a chivalric romance in Old Yiddish verse by Elia Levita, regarded as the first secular work written in Yiddish.
Braj Bhasha poetry
Braj Bhasha poetry (ब्रजभाषा काव्य) is verse composed in Braj Bhasha, a Western Hindi dialect and the chief poetic language of North India from the medieval period into the early twentieth century.
Brajangana
Brajangana Kavya (ব্রজাঙ্গনা কাব্য) is an 1861 collection of Bengali lyric poems by Michael Madhusudan Dutt, written on Radha's grief after Krishna's departure from Braj, and credited as the first ode in Bengali.
Bread and Wine
"Bread and Wine" (Brod und Wein) is a celebrated elegy by the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, written in winter 1800/01, asking what poets are for in a destitute time.
Breathturn
Breathturn (Atemwende) is a 1967 collection of 80 poems by Paul Celan, his sixth volume, published by Suhrkamp in Frankfurt am Main, marking the start of his late style.
Briggflatts
Briggflatts is a five-part autobiographical long poem by the British poet Basil Bunting, published in 1966, celebrating the Northumbrian landscape and hailed as his masterpiece and a key text of British modernism.
Bring in the Wine
"Bring in the Wine" (将进酒, Jiang Jin Jiu) is a famous drinking poem by the Tang dynasty poet Li Bai, a classic of High Tang poetry.
Briseis (Βρισηΐς)
Briseis (Βρισηΐς), daughter of Brises, is Achilles' captive war prize in the Iliad, whose seizure by Agamemnon sparks the epic's quarrel; she speaks once, lamenting Patroclus in Book 19, and is later reimagined by Ovid, Barker, and Miller.