Essays

. On the Musical Language of Poetry In Defense of the Classical Style . by A.J. Illingworth The historical connection between music and poetry is no secret. Homer, in the first line of the Iliad, instructs his muse with the word ἄειδε, “sing!” which itself is connected to the root...

. Modernism and the Murder of the People’s Poetry and Art In Response to “Poetry Died 100 Years Ago this Month” by Matthew Walther in the New York Times . by Phillip Whidden First, let’s have a sonnet about the difficulty imposed by Modernism as regards literature: . A Sonnet about...

. Transgression, Fake and Genuine       by Joseph S. Salemi When Henry Harland and Aubrey Beardsley brought forth their groundbreaking periodical The Yellow Book in 1894, its very first issue contained the semi-facetious essay “In Defence of Cosmetics” by Max Beerbohm.  A delightful excursion into the resurgence of...

. I Met a Shepherdess  by Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1250-1300) translated by Joseph S. Salemi I met a shepherdess in a small copse. More beautiful than starlight, the girl seemed. Her hair was blonde-ish, with a swirl of curls. Eyes full of love, and face-blush like a rose, She guided...

. Calendar Poems by Margaret Coats January loves what goblets hold, And February complains of cold. March plows the fields with furrows new, And April nurtures each flower’s hue. Dew on the grass, and leaves above, prepare May’s beds for sylvan love. June produces its fresh, sweet hay; July makes...

. Henny and Sal by Joseph S. Salemi My father, Salvatore J. Salemi, was a noncommissioned officer in G-2 (Military Intelligence) during the Second World War. Although he was 29 years old in 1942, he was drafted for a specific reason. The American Army knew that an invasion of North...

. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: A Restorative from the Restoration by Joseph S. Salemi John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, stands out because of his double-barreled reputation: he was a savage satirist, and a serious rakehell. His short life of thirty-three years (1647-1680) was packed with excitement and energy,...

. Obedience by Giuseppe Gioachino Belli (1791-1863) translated from Romanesco by Joseph S. Salemi It’s not true, Christians, what you have been told— That you need endless patience to obey. Obedience gives great rest to man, I say. That’s why the custom of obeying’s old. Listen: God blessed and joined...

. by Susan Jarvis Bryant This is a word of encouragement to all those poets out there who use their art to get a grave point on current issues across. Never let those who criticize you shut you down. Never self-censor. To use a quote from Andrew Breitbart: . Walk...

. A Conceit or Just a Similitude? Two Brief Illustrations from Sir John Suckling by Joseph S. Salemi One of the earliest things one learns in poetry is the distinction between a simile and a metaphor. In clearest terms, a simile makes use of the word like or as to...

. POEMS THAT BUILT A NATION PART II. Persia, Ferdowsi, and the Shahnameh by Adam Sedia A previous essay highlighted how the Finnish national epic poem, the Kalevala, spurred the development of Finnish culture and even of Finland as a nation. That is hardly the only instance of a poem...

. Creativity, Originality, and Eccentricity by Joseph S. Salemi I don’t know why it should be so, but I have a propensity to attract the attention of eccentric persons. Three times, at three separate academic conferences, I have been cornered by earnest little nerds who insisted on telling me their...

. A Definition of Formal (or “Classical”) Poetry by James A. Tweedie One of the frequent comment threads on SCP involves the subject of the nature of poetry, including what it is and how it exists as an identifiable and distinct literary form. Aristotle, Keats and everybody else who has...

. How to Write Haiku What Makes a Good Haiku? by Margaret Coats The required 5-7-5 syllable form alone does not make a haiku. A good haiku ⦁ presents an observation of nature, or of human activities in nature ⦁ uses present tense (“goes” or “going,” not “went” or “has...

. Classical Poetry and the Martial Ethos by Andrew Benson Brown . The Heroic Age Towards the end of “Egil’s Saga,” one of the masterpieces of Icelandic literature, the eponymous hero composes a verse to eulogize a fallen friend: . Their numbers are dwindling, the famous warriors who met with...

. Expansive Poets, Classical Poets, and the Future of Poetry by Michael Curtis Modern poetry is not—it is neither poetry nor modern.  Poetry is words lined in measure, of some three seconds length, the length of breath, and this is true across cultures throughout history, as Frederick Turner demonstrated in “The...

. Reviewed Book: Modern Art: An Exhibition in Criticism, by Michael Curtis, National Civic Art Society, 2022 by Evan Mantyk On May 12, 2021, a terrible painting somehow sold for $103 million. It depicts a heavily outlined blob reminiscent of a woman in a chair. The painter clearly had set...

. Crank Out a Few, Please by Joseph S. Salemi Many years ago, when I was in graduate school, I attended a seminar on Vergil’s Eclogues. These are the lovely bucolic verses that Vergil modeled on the earlier Greek pastoral poets who were prestigious in his day: Bion, Moschus, and...

. A Call for Secession by Adam Sedia The fine arts currently lie atrophied in utter decline and degradation. Poetry is no exception. Ever since the advent of modernism in the decades leading up to the First World War, traditional aesthetic, which features realism in narrative and depiction and adherence to...

. A Clamshell in Concrete  I was a child in kindergarten class. My mother held my hand as we trod on The sidewalk leading to the boulevard. This was 1951. The path Was paved in smooth cement, and at the edge The numbers 1 - 9 - 4 - 0...

. From The Burkean: Icarus magazine currently holds the reputation of being Trinity College’s — if not Ireland’s — premier poetry journal… with contributions from Seamus Heaney and John Montague. …our writers concocted various alter egos … to send in the most woeful poetry imaginable, hoping our diverse credentials would...

. "I Heard Chapman Speak Out Loud and Bold" by Margaret Coats My title quotes “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” a sonnet by John Keats. When Keats first read Homer, the voice he heard was not Homer’s, but that of English translator George Chapman. Verse translations are original poems;...

. The Poem that Built a Nation: Finland and the Kalevala by Adam Sedia Nowhere perhaps is the power of poetry more apparent than in its ability to unite a culture---literally to build a nation. Homer’s epics forged a bond of cultural unity between the various city-states of the Greek...

. Rescuing Contemporary Poetry from Vers Libre The conservative & informal vs. the free Before addressing my thesis, let me explain my choice of the word conservative in identifying a category of poetry, basically that which employs meter, often rhyme, and addresses traditional themes. Most would use the word formal....

. There are a number of ways to go wrong in poetry. Unfortunately, the Poetry Establishment is only willing to admit the existence of a select few of them. The others are either kept under wraps, or disguised as acceptable options. Let’s start with the common errors—that is, the ones...

. Reviewed Book: A Thing With Feathers, by J. John Nordstrom, independently published, 2021 by Andrew Benson Brown A Thing With Feathers is the debut novel of J. John Nordstrom (the pen name of Joseph J. Jablonski, Jr.). A mixture of prose and poetry—something one does not see very often...

. Many years ago I gave a talk at a scholarly conference at Queens College, C.U.N.Y. My section of the conference was dedicated to contemporary translation, and the bulk of the papers presented were deadly dull rehashes of critical theory (as is usually the case at academic events of this...

. Below is an excerpt from a Crisis Magazine article "Reading Poetry Will Save the World" by Auguste Meyrat, published November 13, 2021. (The article was passed to me by poet Joe Tessitore.) . For those who missed it, October 17th was National Black Poetry Day It would be easy enough...

Following the introduction below is a translated version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in PDF made free for download for teachers, students, and interested readers by the Society of Classical Poets. It can be purchased in book form on Amazon here. If you download, please consider making a...

. Pope Sylvester II and Meridiana Pope Sylvester II, born Gerbert de Aurillac (946-1003), is said to have had a demonic succubus named Meridiana who not only satisfied his sexual needs but also served as his counselor and advisor in many political and ecclesiasticalmatters. An account of this strange relationship...

A version of this interview originally appeared in The Epoch Times by Evan Mantyk A widely published translator of ancient Latin texts, a former high-ranking government bureaucrat, and an incredible poet who just released his book Wonder and Wrath last September, A.M. Juster is a man at the confluence of...

. Most schoolgirls, street-people, attorneys, and Bachelors of Art are aware that Thomas Jefferson composed what is likely the most widely-known, oft-repeated sentence in American history: . We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable...

by Adam Sedia The life of Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) spans earthshattering changes in history and art. The England into which he was born was a colonial empire stretching across the globe. Horse-drawn carriage was the only means of local transportation. Tennyson was poet laureate, and Matthew Arnold, Robert...

. "American pragmatism insists that words are for use, not enjoyment; American puritanism insists that expression is a duty, not a pleasure." —Richard A. Lanham Everyone knows that poems work on different levels. Even if you just believe that a poem implies or suggests a bit more than it says...

Reviewed Book: Legends of Liberty Volume 1, by Andrew Benson Brown, T A J Classics, 2021 by James Sale Legends of Liberty is an important new poem from the American poet, Andrew Benson Brown. The nearest work that one might compare it to is probably Byron’s mock-epic, Don Juan. It is...

. A widespread distemper in modern life is the insistent need that many people feel to justify themselves and their activities. Countless persons are defensive about all sorts of things that in the past you wouldn’t have given a second thought to. Suppose you ask somebody how he makes a...

by Adam Sedia Contemporary poetry is plagued by several characteristic vices: obscurity, banality, nihilism---each a topic for examination in its own right. But its most glaring and even characteristic vice is an omnipresent solipsism---a narcissistic navel-gazing by which the poet elevates superficial autobiographical detail to the level of a poetic...

Reviewed Book: Light In the Darkness—The Poetry of Peter Hartley, Dunecrest Press, 2021. by James A. Tweedie Peter Hartley writes poems. Good poems. Poems that sing, dance, and soar with the rhyme and rhythm of formal, classical verse. Poems that open our eyes to see the world in new and...

Fires of Heaven, published by Shanti Arts, 2020, can be purchased here. by James Sale James B. Nicola is one of America’s brightest poetry stars. His poetry is restless, searching, and soaring. There is, perhaps, no overarching "poetics," except to the pragmatic, which works; in other words, Nicola is not...

. The Carnelian Ring: A Still-Life Footfalls echo in the memoryDown the passage which we did not takeTowards the door we never openedInto the rose-garden. —T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton I think of a walled garden, graced with trees:Magnolia, fig, and cherry, while grapevines(Just pruned enough to be under control)Intertwine with...