Essays

Reviewed Poetry Book: Canzoniere by Petrarch, Translated by A.M. Juster, Liveright (Norton) Publishing, 2026 by Margaret Coats A.M. Juster, longtime member of the Society of Classical Poets, has completed the only full English translation of Petrarch’s Canzoniere in formal verse corresponding to the Italian original. Why read it? In reading...

  Prophecy and Divine Intervention in Virgil’s Aeneid. by Kaitlyn Brown The divine, represented through both the supernatural power of prophecy and through divine intervention, plays a very important role in The Aeneid, by Virgil (70-19 B.C.). Prophecy and divine intervention constantly influence Aeneas’s journey and there are many examples...

  Poetic Justices: The Poetry of United States Supreme Court Justices by Adam Sedia In 1979, Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court remarked in an interview that “the best preparation for the study of law was the study of poetry, especially lyric poetry.” The relationship between...

  The First American Sonnets: David Humphreys by Margaret Coats In 1776, the first known sonnet in the United States of America was written by a young patriot ready to join the continental army. Below, see it and several more by David Humphreys (1752–1818), who was born in Connecticut, and...

  A Very Early Taste of Poetry by Joseph S. Salemi The earliest and most important steps in attaining literacy are not usually remembered. I liked drawing with a pencil on paper when I was a toddler, and I would fill up each blank page with rows and rows of...

  Extracted from a recent article in Intellectual Takeout by Jeff Minick: Every day a new poem from the Society of Classical Poets arrives in my inbox. Published recently were two poems, “Beelzebots” and “Blabberbots,” by Susan Jarvis Bryant. First up is “Blabberbots”:   The day he called that twaddle-bot a she...

  Extracted from a recent article in American Essence by Marlena Figge:   Among the many interesting facts about Abraham Lincoln—that he was the only president to hold a patent (for a device for lifting boats over shoals), that he was an accomplished wrestler and was honored in the Wrestling...

Extracted from a recent Epoch Times article by Tiffany Brannan:   In 1620, the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. In 1776, the 13 colonies declared their independence from England. This year, we’re celebrating the 250th anniversary of this momentous event. Between those dates, countless generations, families, and individuals lived, loved,...

  Reviewed Poetry Book: The Burning Word: A Poetic Pilgrimage through Suffering, Faith, and Divine Encounter, by James Sale, 2026 by Theresa Werba I have had the honor and privilege of knowing British poet James Sale personally and reading his poetry for over ten years. He remains one of the...

Poet Mark F. Stone delivers a speech on reading poetry live on the radio. His remarks were given at the Society of Classical Poets’ in-person Poetry Symposium held in Naperville, Illinois on September 5-6, 2025:   https://youtu.be/hV4wYXu2lE4 Video created by Andrew Benson Brown.     Transcript of the YouTube video of...

  Mythology and Modernism by Joseph S. Salemi Many years ago I attended a poetry reading by my friend Psyche Ceres. This was the pen name for a woman who had a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, who taught philosophy at a college here in New York, and who...

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmgiYCYQqAA     Andrew Benson Brown‘s epic-in-progress, Legends of Liberty, chronicles the major events of the American Revolution. He writes history articles for American Essence magazine and resides in Missouri. Watch his Classical Poets Live videos here.

  Seven Sonnets of Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo Translated from French and Curated by Adam Sedia Introduction Joseph-Casimir Rabearivelo (1903-1937) was born on March 4, 1903, in Antananarivo, Madagascar. At the time Madagascar had been a French colony since 1897, when it had annexed the island kingdom. His native language was Malagasy,...

  Harry Thurston Peck by Joseph S. Salemi A few weeks ago my wife asked me to find a book for her via the internet bookstores. This is now the only practical way to locate out-of-print texts, and I had done the same thing several times in the past for...

. Harmony of Design: Form and Worldview in Classical Chinese Poetry by Adam Sedia China’s uninterrupted literary tradition of three millennia is truly one of the world’s cultural wonders. The introduction of traditional Chinese poetry to the West by Ezra Pound and the Imagists sadly occurred with an agenda behind...

. A Poet First: The Poetry of Thomas Hardy by Adam Sedia Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is known today primarily as one of the great novelists of late Victorian England---and one of the greatest novelists in English. Among his best-known novels are Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Return of...

. Poetry as a Pathway to Critical Thinking —with a focus on metaphor and image Poetry: “the right words in the best order.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge Critical thinking: “conceptualizing, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, questioning, and exploring information, ideas, and expressions from multiple perspectives.” by Leland James First, on “metaphor,” Robert Frost...

. https://youtu.be/vAjMoMKye0c . . Andrew Benson Brown‘s epic-in-progress, Legends of Liberty, chronicles the major events of the American Revolution. He writes history articles for American Essence magazine and resides in Missouri. Watch his Classical Poets Live videos here.

. Apollo, Mnemosyne, and Poetry Chapter 9 from Gods, Heroes and Us (Bruges Group, May, 2025) by James Sale Our last chapter discussed the imperative for distinguishing between Truth (Veritas) and Falsehood (Mendacium), and how in our modern, digital era this is becoming increasingly difficult. Also, we talked about a shift...

. Book Reviewed: Doorway: The English Cantos, Volume III, by James Sale, 2025 by Cynthia Erlandson It’s been several years since I’ve read Dante’s Divine Comedy; yet as I read James Sale’s Doorway, memories of it echoed in my mind. Clearly, Sale has immersed himself in Dante’s masterpiece and has...

. Apologia "Bring…the books…" ---2 Timothy 4.13 John Calvin, writing on this verse, extolled the benefits that come from reading old and trusted writers. He agreed with Paul that there is wisdom to be gained from all the great minds of the past. And even though his death was nigh,...

. https://youtu.be/lUU-G7-7nKE . . Andrew Benson Brown‘s epic-in-progress, Legends of Liberty, chronicles the major events of the American Revolution. He writes history articles for American Essence magazine and resides in Missouri. Watch his Classical Poets Live videos here.

. Wanted: A Verse Curriculum and Pedagogy David J. Rothman discusses the curriculum of the Poetry Concentration in the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Western Colorado University, which offered a close emphasis on poetic form. He designed the founding curriculum of the Poetry Concentration and led that concentration from...

. The New York Times' Attack on Shen Yun Is an Attack on Arts and Culture by Evan MantykSCP Editor & President In the last six months or so, the New York Times has completely lost its senses and run a series of articles, many on its front page, trying...

. The Potentate and the Pontiff by Joseph S. Salemi I have often argued that the formalist techniques of traditional poetry are ideologically neutral, and can be made to serve any agenda or cause. I still believe that. If the Communist Pablo Neruda, the Fascist Ezra Pound, and the High...

. Jupiter Hammon’s Christmas Poem by Michael Curtis 1761 was a slow, yet interesting year for poetry. The imposter Macpherson announced the discovery of Ossian’s Gaelic Epic and the collected works of the rotted rake Wilmot, Earl of Rochester was published. Romantic passion was seeded, and creative destruction was soon...

. Six Great Dramatic Monologues by Robert Browning by Brian Yapko The dramatic monologue is a unique type of poem: the poet enters the mind of a specific character---usually historic or literary---and then crafts the poem to be entirely in that character’s voice. This allows for many types of monologues,...

. When Poems Are Lyrics and Vice Versa by James A. Tweedie Lyrics are poems written to join with music to form a unity in the hope that the two together will transcend what either the words or music can achieve by themselves, alone. Sometimes, the music is composed first...

. Book Reviewed: Uttering the Unutterable: Aristotle, Religion, and Literature by Louis Groarke, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2023 by Margaret Coats Literature is shortchanged in the modernist and postmodern sphere of professors and critics. Traditional literary forms, including formal verse, tend to be ignored or devalued. The idea of a literary...

. The Trochaic Poems of Dorothy Parker by Joseph S. Salemi A few poets become famous, while most go down into oblivion. But a small scattering of them are eventually categorized as “minor poets,” whose work may be just as good as those who are well known, but who for...

. Great Expectation Classical Poets Student Edition The summary and introduction below is from a newly adapted (UK spellings Americanized and punctuation updated), illustrated, and annotated version of Great Expectations by the Society of Classical Poets. A preview containing the first chapter is below. A free PDF of the complete...

. https://youtu.be/B9aMXFVpFEk . . Andrew Benson Brown's epic-in-progress, Legends of Liberty, chronicles the major events of the American Revolution. He writes history articles for American Essence magazine and resides in Missouri. Watch his Classical Poets Live videos here.

. New Directions, or Deviations? by Joseph S. Salemi Many years ago I read an account of a discussion between Ezra Pound and an interviewer concerning his poetic career. I don’t recall where it was printed or the interviewer’s name, so I cannot give a reference, but I do know that...

. https://youtu.be/o4TS45A7KEM . Tools for Writing Classical Poetry ---adapted from the video by Andrew Benson Brown Do you want to be forgotten forever? Do you want to be obscure in the annals of history, like all of your ancestors probably are? Do you want to die without a single achievement...

. Postmodernism and Poetry: Final Disintegration and Hope for Renewal “The only way forward from Postmodernism is as a reaction against it—not a reaction in the sense of destruction (what could be more Postmodernist than destruction of destruction?), but reaction as 'backing away from the edge.' Postmodernism is the abyss...

. A Formalist Poet at the Open Mic Part V: Nose Blind by Daniel Kemper After a stressful day, because of issues with which you, dear reader need not concern yourself, I decided to swing by the Capital Gardens and rove over to the section of roses to de-stress a little....

. A Formalist Poet at the Open Mic Part IV: Becoming a Poet Laureate by Daniel Kemper Inflationary times. The invisible hands of markets or of governments have synchronized in some secular mysterium to take something from me. They’ve synchronized so that their stuff is worth more than my stuff. If...

. A Formalist Poet at the Open Mic Part III: Something in the Rafters by Daniel Kemper I wander into the incandescent glow of the poetry center and Patrick is muttering as I walk in the door. He’s wiping his forehead, which means, despite his otherwise abundant curly brown, silver-tipped hair,...

. The Universal Horoscope and Zodiac Twelve figures in the blazoned zodiac Set by the gods in their unchanging track Spin in a regulated, yearly round Until an infant’s primal, wailing sound Puts an end to labor’s strained dilation. Transparencies of detail, implication Refract to a single jewel: this hour,...

. In Spring 2024, UK poets Jeff Eardley and Peter Hartley crossed paths with American poets James A. Tweedie and Margaret coats in England. . . The Day That I Met Jim by Jeff Eardley The rain was horizontal on this English summer’s day. He’d flown in from Seattle and...