Essays

. "American pragmatism insists that words are for use, not enjoyment; American puritanism insists that expression is a duty, not...

Reviewed Book: Legends of Liberty Volume 1, by Andrew Benson Brown, T A J Classics, 2021 by James Sale Legends of...

. A widespread distemper in modern life is the insistent need that many people feel to justify themselves and their...

by Adam Sedia Contemporary poetry is plagued by several characteristic vices: obscurity, banality, nihilism---each a topic for examination in its...

Reviewed Book: Light In the Darkness—The Poetry of Peter Hartley, Dunecrest Press, 2021. by James A. Tweedie Peter Hartley writes...

Fires of Heaven, published by Shanti Arts, 2020, can be purchased here. by James Sale James B. Nicola is one...

. The Carnelian Ring: A Still-Life Footfalls echo in the memoryDown the passage which we did not takeTowards the door...

. Persons devoted to formal, metrical poetry are susceptible to a specific disease, much in the same way as light-skinned...

Reviewed Book: The Gift of Life: An Epic in Verse by Amanda Hall, 2021. by Margaret Coats So long as...

Originally published in The Epoch Times by James Sale Very recently, I hosted a live online poetry event for New...

American historian Victor Davis Hanson and Canadian professor Jordan Peterson recently commented on the decline of American universities. Though they...

by Daniel Kemper “Metrical variation” is widely used in discussing late twentieth and early twenty-first century poetry writing. Although this...

. When I was eighteen years old, something happened that had a profound effect on my view of the world....

by Michael Curtis When next you float down the Yangtze River through Jingzhou City, likely you will notice Guan Yu,...

. The Bibliophile’s Birth Certificate Marius Michel (1846-1925) was one of the most prominent and gifted bookbinders in France. He...

. “A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” ---Robert Frost An Essay by Adam Sedia To many in...

I went to my first opera when I was six years old. My mother took me to the world premiere...

. Girolamo Savonarola Here we are at circus, you and me and all the others, facing each and every way...

. A Teaching Tool for High School English Language Arts or Global History Teachers by Evan Mantyk . Background of...

Reviewed Book: Mostly Sonnets: Formal Poetry in an Informal World by James A. Tweedie, Dunecrest Press, July 2019 by Theresa...

by Adam Sedia The origin of poetry is inextricably tied to music. The earliest poems---the Homeric epics, the Chinese Book...

by Andrew Benson Brown Theresa Rodriguez, Sonnets. 2nd edition. Shanti Arts, 193 Hillside Road, Brunswick, ME, 04011, 2020. 75 pp....

. The Death of Today’s Sequoia Flecte ramos, arbor alta, tensa laxa viscera: Et rigor lentescat ille, quem dedit nativitas,...

  Why are many young persons so bad at writing formal poetry? Why do they struggle and labor and twist...

  You’ve grown up in the public school system, and it shows. You are sensitive to the world around you,...

Juvenalia by Reid McGrath, Kelsay Books, 2019 by James Sale Regular readers of The Society of Classical Poets’ pages will...

On Troublemakers: Two Translations* from the Latin Poet Phaedrus, Freedman of Augustus (first century A.D.) Translator’s Prologue These little tales...

Memoirs of a Witness Tree, by Randal A. Burd, Jr. Kelsay Books, 2020 by Andrew Benson Brown Reading Aristotle’s Poetics...

by Andrew Benson Brown James Sale’s HellWard is the first volume of a planned trilogy entitled The English Cantos. If...

by Joseph S. Salemi The poetic effusions of some people are so incompetent that they cross the line into unexpected...

by Adam Sedia John Dryden In 1688, John Dryden, England’s first official poet laureate, was deprived of that title for...

  The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and...

I recently discarded some unnecessary texts, and among them were two past editions (the 17th and the 20th) of Len...

by David Whippman In 1984, Philip Larkin was asked to become the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. This position...

by Sultana Raza In April 1820, Keats was already aware that he had tuberculosis, and in spring of that year,...

Clarity and Obscurity Part III Read Part I: The Essences of Classicism and Modernism Compared Read Part II: "Concrete" Poetry...

Edmund Spenser by Margaret Coats Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) wrote 121 sonnets of rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee, including 87...

by T.M. Moore James McKee, The Stargazers (Atmosphere Press, 2020), $17.99 James McKee’s inaugural foray into verse publishing offers a...

by James A. Tweedie The form of the “brief” ordinarily consists of a couplet of anapestic tetrameter with the first...

by James A. Tweedie   If a Contemporary Free-Verse Poet Wrote a Sonnet Today, because I’m early for Pilates, __I...