Talk:Kishvari/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 11:39, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

I'll have a go at this one. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:39, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Comments

This article's main text is under 600 words, which while not forbidden in a GA, and not necessarily mandating a quick-fail, does raise some rather brightly-coloured flags. Questions that spring immediately to mind might include: Is this really all that is known of the poet? If so little has ever been written about him, is he in fact notable? Or, is the account in fact unjustifiably short? I'll address aspects of all this more specifically below.

• 11 of 18 citations are wholly or partly to Demirci 2010a. If this one scholar's opinion is practically all that asserts Kishvari's notability, is he in fact notable?
  • We have six reliable and distinct authors cited in the article, each of whose work is entirely dedicated entirely to Kishvari. This is more than sufficient to establish his notability and I have good articles with fewer sources (e.g., Ashiq Peri). — Golden ^talk
    • Good, I was hoping you'd feel able to say that. Then in that case we need to demonstrate with suitable text that each of these authors has discussed Kishvari "substantially".

Biography

• The biography is very brief: ok, that can happen for people known only for what they themselves wrote; but in that case, we need evidence of "substantial" discussion of Kishvari's poetry, in multiple reliable sources; or perhaps, evidence that multiple scholars have discussed Kishvari's person.

• "his only existing full work": what other works are known to have existed? Do some survive as fragments? Which?
  • Changed to "his only known work". — Golden ^talk

• If the article is principally about the poetry, then the article should be named "Divan of Kishvari" and should be structured not as a biography but as a book article with details of contents, publication, popular reception of the poems, and scholarly analysis of the work's literary effects and literary legacy.
  • I'm not sure what you mean. Currently, approximately 62% of the article is about Kishvari himself. However, I will look into the sources further to try and expand the content. — Golden ^talk

Poetry

• Further, the coverage of the poetry is very brief: the reader learns almost nothing of what the poems are like, what imagery they employ, what poetic devices (rhyme? metre? alliteration? assonance? ...) they rely on, what themes recur. A ghazal is normally a love-poem, but the reader hears nothing about what the 799 ghazals cover. If Kishvari's abundant use of this form is admired, how does he vary the theme? Why are his ghazals remembered? Did other poets quote, imitate, or mock him? What have Azerbaijani poets and scholars written about his work?

• I suggest we have at least one extract of a ghazal, in the original and with a translation beside it (in a table); and preferably with some scholarly commentary on that particular poem.
  • No English translations of the poet's works appear to be available, so I regretfully cannot include any. However, readers can access the Azerbaijani versions via the Wikiquote link provided at the end of the article. — Golden ^talk

• What is a qaṣīdah? A dedication, a piece of polite flattery in verse, perhaps?
  • It's a eulogy, as clarified at its first mention. — Golden ^talk
    • Not enough, we need to hear in the article text what they're like, why whoever it was got a poetic eulogy, what others thought of the effort, scholarly analysis, etc.
      • Not covered by the sources. — Golden ^talk

• At least the rübā'ī is linked, but we're told nothing about this instance other than its dedicatee. So, Ismail I was a patron, perhaps?
  • Already linked and explained at its first mention. Ismail I was not his patron. Kishvari simply dedicated poems to him because Ismail was a popular figure at the time. — Golden ^talk
    • It's no good just replying here, we need to have that in the article, and cited.
      • The sources do not provide a reason for the poet's dedication of poems to Ismail. As such, I can't offer any explanation beyond speculation, which would not be appropriate for the article. — Golden ^talk

• The influence paragraph, too, again gives one sentence or less to each poet or scholar mentioned. In each case, this is inadequate. So for instance:

• Howe did Ali-Shir Nava'i influence him? Examples? Table? Commentary?
  • Expanded. — Golden ^talk

• Same for the Chagatai language: examples?
  • There are no examples, but I have expanded upon the Chagatai influence. — Golden ^talk

• His "flowing, simple, and sincere style": e.g.? Analysis?

• The "richness of the ways of representation": e.g.? Discussion?

Legacy

• Finally, on the structural side, the Legacy section is extremely brief. The reader is told in one sentence that his poetry was "significant" in the 15th and 16th centuries, but nothing about what this significance consisted of. Did he recite verse in court? Was he taught in school? Did other authors cite him as an authority on grammar and syntax, or quote his usages in dictionaries of the language? In short, what do we know and how do we know it?
  • The section does not assert that his poetry was significant in the 15th century. Rather, it emphasises the significance of his work in shaping the Azerbaijani literary language during that era. I have added additional information about this. — Golden ^talk

• He was, again, a "prominent representative" of literature. How? Who among his contemporaries said any such thing? We know why Shakespeare was important in the 16th century: his plays were widely performed, admired, and imitated; his poetry too was widely read. But Kishvari? What is the evidence?
  • It is how a modern scholar has described him, likely because of his contribution to the development of the Azerbaijani literary language through his poetry. Perhaps it is unfair to compare a relatively obscure 15th-century Middle Eastern poet to one of the world's most renowned poets who lived a century later. — Golden ^talk

• "influenced future Azerbaijani poets": who? when? in what way?
  • Not covered by the sources. — Golden ^talk

• "existence of copies ... demonstrates ... wide popularity"[18]. Is this just Demirci's opinion? Once again, it's pretty thin. If the Bursa copy, for instance, is a clue to popularity in what is now Turkey, what evidence is there that Turkish poets or courtiers knew his verse?
  • Indeed, the statement is attributed to Demirci, as indicated by the phrase "According to Demirci" at the beginning. Unfortunately, the rest of your questions are not addressed by the available sources. — Golden ^talk

Images

• The existing image is clearly public domain.

• Given the date of the manuscripts, there is no reason why we should not have more than one image, at full resolution (all can be licensed PD-Art|PD-old-100, regardless of the modern source). It would be desirable to have a ghazal, a rübā'ī, a tarjī'band, and a qiṭ'ah (with their titles, at least, in English and Azerbaijani), to indicate something of the diversity of the work. Obviously it would be desirable also to support each image with a translation and a bit of scholarly commentary.
  • I've found two more images of Kishvari's work, which I'll upload to Commons soon. However, I don't believe we need an image example of each of a poet's works, especially in a short article. — Golden ^talk
    • Oh good. But we are not constrained to have a short article, nor to have unsupported images, per my suggestions in this item.
      • I have replaced the previous image with three manuscripts of the divan. — Golden ^talk

Summary

It is quite hard to believe, on this very limited evidence, that this article is ready for promotion to GA. If it is to get there, answers to some of the many questions this text could raise will need to be addressed, with suitable evidence. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:16, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

• Thank you for the review, Chiswick Chap. I understand your concerns about the broadness of the article. I'm confident that I can expand it further based on the sources, as there is still a lot of information, mostly technical, that I haven't included because I didn't want to make the article too technical. However, I'll go over it this week for you and try to address the rest of your points. — Golden ^talk 16:10, 5 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Thank you very much. There is no particular hurry. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:24, 5 September 2023 (UTC)
    • @Chiswick Chap: I have expanded the article to 1,250 words. Many of the points raised above have been addressed, although some questions could not be answered because of the general lack of information about the poet. Nearly all relevant information from the sources has been added, with the exception of highly technical details regarding the divan's grammar as described in Eyvazova's book. As such, further expansion of the article is not possible. However, I am happy to address any additional concerns that do not require new information. — Golden ^talk 22:49, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.