Essays

  A not infrequent problem that a poetry editor must face is a contributor’s intransigence. Sometimes this resistance is on metrical issues or diction, but there are a few poets who dig in their heels on questions of “truth” and “honesty,” as if a poem were a legal deposition or...

by Michael Curtis | excerpted from Occasional Poetry Tradition grows from wisdom, from the accumulated experience of millennia; in poetic practice, our classic tradition grows from the craft of Ages. Change is slow, development slower; five-hundred, six-hundred, a thousand years might pass before language, our language, Shakespeare’s language becomes to...

by James Sale Sonnets, 2nd edition. Shanti Arts, 2020 Jesus and Eros, Bardsinger Books, 2014 Theresa Rodriguez is a relatively new and exciting poet on the pages of The Society of Classical Poets. As a classically trained singer and teacher, she has a particularly fine voice and a tremendous presence...

Black Cat a poem derived from "Schwarze Katze" by Rainer Maria Rilke, as translated by Martin Hill Ortiz A crash! I spot a ghost that bumps Eliciting my startled stare. A shadow shifts; a black pelt jumps— Soon all I see is darkness there. In fullest rage, the mad thing...

This piece is sponsored by KidSecured by Evan Mantyk and Kathy Brellan Lord Byron was born George Gordon Byron in London on January 22, 1788 and died just 36 years later in 1824. Yet, despite his short time on Earth, he remains known as one of the greatest English poets...

by T.M. Moore   Our Image-hungry Age Increasingly, our postmodern generation prefers its communications to be in as few words and as many images as possible. Hence, the curious success of Facebook—a medium of images—and Twitter—a medium of few words, as well as of the numerous other communication technologies. Hence...

A breeze came out of the North one day, and cried, "September's begun!" A breeze came out of the North one day, declared, "The Summer is done!" by Jack Ahlers You know the fall air—it is somehow clearer than that of dead summer's heat. Sounds take on a different tone...

by T.M. Moore I had just finished teaching one of the adult classes at our church on the meaning of Christmas, using John Milton’s Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity as my text. We examined many aspects of this great poem—themes, development, structure and rhyme scheme, poetic devices, and...

  One interesting question is ‘why poetry, specifically?’ I am currently writing an ‘epic’ called The English Cantos, and I have chosen to write my epic in terza rima. There are many forms of story-telling in the modern world, so why write poetry, when in real terms, it is such...

Roots in the Sky, Boots on the Ground: Metaphysical Poems C.B. Anderson, Kelsay Books, 107 pages paperback, ISBN-10: 1949229688 2019, $17.00 by Carol Smallwood Smallwood: Joseph S. Salemi commented on Roots in the Sky, Boots on the Ground: Metaphysical Poems: “On the one hand it aspires to a high level...

  This interview was conducted by Carol Smallwood with poet Theresa Rodriguez following the release of the first edition of Sonnets by Rodriguez; the second edition is published by Shanti Arts, 2020; the work is 77 pages and retails on Amazon for $12.95. Carol Smallwood: Your latest collection, Sonnets covers many topics among...

The Society of Classical Poets successfully holds its first symposium in New York City (Press Release)   NEW YORK—A growing movement is calling for the return of meter and rhyme in poetry in a bid to bring the once widely popular art form back to the mainstream. The non-profit Society...

A Poet’s Lament - for Charles Southerland, whose brilliant prose style I so painfully tried to imitate and incorporate Nobody cried when poetry died a long, slow death - a final breath, maybe even a last word that no one heard. She’d run her course, so with no remorse the...

by Lew Icarus Bede The way I dealt with T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland was to write a poem, equally desperate, in that same allusive style—with notes. That unpublished poem Cicadas' Voices, written in the mid-1970s, though unsuccessful on so many levels, remains the most Eliotic poem I have ever...

Read the poetry of the recently departed John Whitworth at Trinacria or The Poetry Archive. by Sally Cook Any ordinary poet composing a landscape piece might easily imagine a dull blue sky, one small white cloud, and a narrow strip of grass from which a single stump protrudes. That sort...

William Ruleman: Profane and Sacred Love, Feather Books, 2002 and reprint 2014 by James Sale Having read some excellent poetry by William Ruleman on the pages of the SCP I determined to buy a collection so that I could take a bigger view of his work. I mention this because...

The Bad The first video of Hannah Silva instructs us on the abyss that poetry reading has found itself in today. The irrationality and baseness of slam poetry has given way to experimental poetry that doesn't even involve words at all (sent in my M. P. Lauretta). If you find...

  Who Killed Poetry? A Critique of Modernism and Post-Modernism (Part I) by Edward C. "Ted" Hayes A Prefatory Poem (or a Gaggle of Goosefeathers) Some will judge this essai the exact thing it’s not – Distilled, unvarnished, contemned tommyrot For asserting mod poets’ sad lack of discernment And non-Sense...

by Evan Mantyk As the border wall with Mexico that President Trump is building gains greater and greater attention, so too has the early 20th century poem, “Mending Wall,” by American poet Robert Frost. The poem takes issue with the old proverb “good fences make good neighbors,” which happens to...

by Gregory Spicer “Death and taxes” bemoan us now, as ever. Yet as I bask in the fading embers of Christendom's most sentimental season, my mind freshly equips itself for the new year by conjoining three of the most extraordinary poems of yesteryear. The "ladies first" ideal has me wanting...

by James A. Tweedie My interest in Sapphic verse arose from a discussion thread on an SCP post some months ago. I researched the subject and decided to try my hand at it. Recently, I submitted my poem to SCP and had it returned along with a suggestion that I...

Presented by Monty Phillips Given that the recent days have been rightfully occupied by the remembering of the humans who never made it home from World War 1, I thought I might highlight a less represented species; many of whom also never made it home from that War. It’s said...

When formal poets come to me for advice, I do my best to be helpful. I can comment on metrics and diction and syntactical choice. I try to avoid discussing subject matter since that is in the realm of personal invention and inspiration. Nevertheless, if a poet earnestly asks about...

by James Sale Carol Smallwood In the Measuring is a substantial new collection of 77 poems by Carol Smallwood. Carol is well-known to readers of The Society of Classical Poets, as her poems regularly appear on its site; and furthermore, she is a well-respected and widely published poet throughout the...

by Evan Mantyk Where is Homer? The epic poems of the famous Greek bard were the cornerstone of education for young Socrates, Alexander the Great, Roman emperors, William Shakespeare, and every serious scholar in the Western world until the last 50 years. Yet, today they have nearly disappeared from school...

by Joseph Charles MacKenzie Read the Selected Poems from Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal online. Email [email protected] for details on purchasing the book. Two arts are beautifully displayed in Helen Palma’s Selected Poems from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (Pivot Press, New York, 2014). The first and most obvious is...

by Manfred Dietrich The world is riddled with riddles. Riddling is as old and as ubiquitous as language itself. When God invited Adam to name the beasts and the beauties of creation, he showed that each naming was an answer to the universal riddle, “What am I called?” Much later,...

by Charles Eager William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1770—the same year as gave us Beethoven, Hegel, and Hölderlin—and died at the age of eighty, rich in the knowledge of his huge accomplishments, in Rydal Mount, Westmorland, in 1850. In those eighty years, Wordsworth brought a unique poetry...

by James Sale Wind in the Cave, Finishing Line Press, 2017 Out of Nothing, Shanti Arts Publishing, 2018 Recently in a poetry review of another poet on these pages I commented that the poet had included 33 poems in his collection and speculated whether or not that had any significance;...

Paradox as Explanatory Paradigm in Norman MacCaig’s ‘Summer Farm’ by Phillip Whidden   Summer Farm Straws like tame lightnings lie about the grass And hang zigzag on hedges.  Green as glass The water in the horse-trough shines. Nine ducks go wobbling by in two straight lines. A hen stares at...

An earlier version of this piece was published in The Epoch Times By Evan Mantyk When Jon McNaughton released his new painting, “Crossing the Swamp,” on July 31, he probably wasn’t expecting to get as much attention as he did, including over 14,000 Twitter comments, 20,000 likes, and news coverage...

Organ Harvest by Damian Robin, published by Fulton Verse, 2018. Read three sonnets from the work here.  by James Sale Damian Robin is well known to readers of the Society of Classical Poets web pages.  His poetry is frequently published there, as are his comments on others' poetry; and also, like...

by James Sale FORMAL COMPLAINTS by Joseph S. Salemi, Somer Rocks Press, 1997 MASQUERADE by Joseph S. Salemi, Somer Rocks Press, 2005 SKIRMISHES by Joseph S. Salemi, Pivot Press, 2010 I first encountered Joseph Salemi’s work on the pages of The Society of Classical Poets, and a great discovery it...

by Con Chapman Nyla Matuk and I have a few things in common; we are both poets (or in my case, claim to be), and we both know what sumptuary laws are, she having written a book of poems using that term as its title.  Me?  I wrote a white paper comparing...

By James A. Tweedie Call me a snob but I am generally attracted to what is commonly referred to as “great art” or the “masterpieces.” Over the years I have looked at famous paintings and I have looked at less famous paintings. I have decided that famous paintings are famous...

''A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.'' —Dylan Thomas By Gideon Cecil We are living in an unpoetic age; poetry for many people in Guyana and globally is of very little significance...

  by James Green “Come live with me and be my Love, And we will all the pleasures prove That hills and valleys, dale and field, And all the craggy mountains yield.” —Christopher Marlowe These fervent lines are some of Marlowe’s most famous, and serve as an encapsulation of the...

By David B. Gosselin William Shakespeare (baptized April 26, 1564 - died April 23, 1616) is arguably the greatest writer in any language. His poetry is not only one of the most exalted examples of what an immortal sense of creative identity can accomplish, but it is in a sense...

by Jane Blanchard George Herbert was born into a well-to-do and well-doing family of Montgomery, Wales, in 1593. When he was three years old, his father died, leaving a wife and ten children. Herbert nevertheless received a marvelous education, including studies at Westminster School in London and at Trinity College...

By Con Chapman It has been a little more than eight years since poet Rachel Wetzsteon committed suicide at the age of 42 following the end of a three-year romance. At the time of her death Wetzsteon (pronounced “whetstone”) was the poetry editor of The New Republic and a faculty...