Essays

By Evan Mantyk From The Iliad, Beowulf, and Shakespearean literature in the West to the Chinese Classic of Poetry, the Indian Ramayana, and the Middle Eastern Epic of Gilgamesh, classical poetry is the foundation of literature in almost every culture historically. Today, if you can understand, appreciate, and write a...

By Jane Blanchard On December 5, 1830, Christina Rossetti was born in London to an Italian-English mother married to an Italian poet in exile.  The youngest of four children, all of whom grew up to be published authors, Rossetti became so well regarded for her work that she was mentioned...

A Quick Haiku Guide  A traditional haiku should... 1. Be three lines. The first line should have five syllables, the second seven syllables, the third five syllables. Seventeen syllables total. 2. Contain a nature or seasonal reference: the crumbling leaves, the cold air, the smell of manure, the taste of...

by Conrad Geller People are always asking "What are the best love poems?" or "Where can I find something beautiful to say to the woman I love?" or "...to the man I love?" If you are looking for love poems in more modern language, you will probably find the 10...

By Evan Mantyk Michael Curtis A classical architect, sculptor, painter, and poet, Michael Curtis is, in no uncertain terms, a Renaissance man. He has taught and lectured at universities, colleges, and museums, including the Institute of Classical Architecture and the National Gallery of Art. His pictures and statues are housed...

By Conrad Geller Poets demonstrably know nothing about death since it is, in Hamlet’s phrase, “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns.” Yet from the Egyptian Book of the Dead some 4,500 years ago to the latest agony in the current issue of your favorite literary journal, bards...

By James Sale This is a curious collection from Douglas Thornton: ambitious, epic in its style, containing many great lines and ideas, but also strangely baffling, quirky, and—I have to say—awkward.  The title, for starters, Woodland Poems, certainly led me to expect a kind of poetry that would be immediately...

By Sharon Kilarski | Originally Published in The Epoch Times A sonnet by Betsy Hughes offers unmistakable relief; you can actually understand what you are reading. Words in glistening, clear images form ideas, which gather together unostentatiously to draw you toward satisfaction. For this poet, who champions accessible language and...

By Douglas Thornton "And lo I lie between the sun and thee" (Venus and Adonis; line 194) To see the poet in the act of composition, to hear his words tell not only the story, but with imaginative zeal, recount the inner movements of his life, makes prejudice relax, and...

By James Sale In our egalitarian and democratic societies we very much hope and want all good things to be available to all people if they have a mind to have them. Indeed, in the world of personal development you can achieve whatever you believe (paraphrasing one of its leading...

By James Sale Poetry is a delicate balance of language that is prone to either too much yin or too much yang; or put another way, as the poet steers his or her course like Odysseus towards his true soul, Penelope, waiting at home, he must venture through the double...

By Wilbur Dee Case | Edited by Kent Van May Now I can see why T.S. Eliot disliked Edgar Allan Poe's verse; Eliot was trying to write a different kind of poetry; and it is no surprise that, for Eliot, Poe was no kindred spirit. Yet it was unwise for Eliot...

See full Epoch Times article on Robert Florczak.

By Damian Robin Quick, pick a good book of poems and let your soul soar. Or clip in your ear buds and listen to words by the score. Or rack up some speakers and loudly let rhetoric roar — it’s April, it’s Poetry Month, let poems take the floor. The...

By Dusty Grein and Evan Mantyk “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe remains one of the English language’s most popular and influential poems since it was written in 1845. Much of this was Poe’s own doing, as he performed it quite frequently, and wrote many essays and commentaries on it...

By Kristina Pentchoukova Right from the first email from William Ruleman, I knew that I was interacting with a classicist who upheld traditional English in all manner of communication and behavior. Every email read like a letter. Later, I was honestly surprised by his Southern accent—for some reason, I expected...

By James Sale There are two things I don’t like about “When We Were Slugs”, the new poetry collection from James Manlow, the erstwhile Poet Laureate for Bournemouth, England (pictured above). The first dislike is the cover, which to me seems a mess, a splodge. My second objection is the...

by Reid McGrath I forewarn you that these are the 10 greatest English Sonnets addressed to or concerning other poets and are not even the 10 greatest short poems concerning other poets. There are innumerable other short poems addressed to other poets which are wonderful and remarkable, from Ezra Pound’s...

By Dusty Grein Most of us enjoy poetry in one form or another. I am going to attempt to lay out the basics of writing classical style poetry in English, based on standard poetry terms and references. This discussion will focus on rhyming, metered poems. Who am I? I am...

By James Sale Frederick Glaysher claims to be an epic poet, and furthermore to have written an epic poem, The Parliament of Poets. This is a huge claim and an astonishing ambition. Is he? Has he? Before responding to these two important questions by reviewing his book, let me outline...

Updated: April 26, 2024 10 Greatest Poems Ever Written An Ambitious "Best Poems" List Limited to Poems Originally Written in English and of 50 Lines or Less by Evan Mantyk What is poetry? What is great poetry? The poems below answer these questions. From least greatest (10) to greatest greatest...

Updated January 9, 2020 A Quick Sonnet Guide.  A traditional sonnet should have... 14 lines. X Rhyming. The most common is the Shakespearean rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. These 14  letters represent the sonnet's 14 lines and the same letter means those lines rhyme with each other. The more...

Review By James Sale This weekend two different things coincided. First, I finished reading ‘Poetry Is: Jose Garcia Villa’s Philosophy of Poetry’ edited by Robert L King (Ateneo University Press), which incidentally is one of, if not, the best book about writing poetry that I have ever read (and I...

Poetry, arguably the most powerful form of communication ever devised by mankind, has died. It was thousands of years old. Poetry died yesterday after a prolonged illness. Trapped in a meaningless, vegetative state for some time, feeding tubes were removed, allowing Poetry to die with dignity. Aristotle once wrote, “Poetry...

When you are 62 years old things may begin to be clearer; you begin realise to the full extent what territory you are in and demarcating; and I now know what for me is important in poetry and has always been important even as I go back and review work...

There are a number of reasons for writing poetry, and alas they are not all good; for not all poetry is good, and indeed some ‘poetry’ is not poetry at all. This is not to denigrate anyone’s effort, but you don’t want to pay for a gold ring and get...

Imagine that you were lost in a wilderness and had to find your way out. Fortunately, you have with you a number of things, or tools if you will. In the first instance you have a kitbag, which is itself useful. Within it are various articles: a bottle of water,...

“He strove to resuscitate the dead art/Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"/In the old sense. Wrong from the start  …” –Ezra Pound, “Hugh Selwyn Mauberly” “Adolf Hitler was a Jeanne d'Arc, a saint.” –Also Ezra Pound An immigrant Jew, an old woman, her tattoo peeking from under a billowed sleeve,...

Verse Forms as Evokers of Poetry I wish to dispute the notion that a “poem” arrives in the formal poet’s mind as if it were a compressed computer file, which he or she then expands into the poem proper by versifying it.  Somewhat similar to this conception of versecrafting is...

Review By Christopher Nield / Image by Liza Voronin/The Epoch Times The Riddles of Merlin As I was walking Alone by the sea, “What is that whisper?” Said Merlin to me. “Only,” I answered, “The sigh of the wave”— “Oh, no,” replied Merlin, “’Tis the grass on your grave.” As...

Poetry should be metered, because metered poetry is, quite simply, better than free verse.  This is for the same reason that realist art trumps impressionist art and that Baroque music trumps rock and roll and hip-hop. It is because art, in its best state, is not about the experience of...

  By Kara Lysandra Ross I was in Epcot Center in Disney World last year, and in the Innovations Center they had a computerized survey, which had already been taken by thousands of people. The survey was based on what broad issues or groups the participants thought were going to...

. Writing Poetry with Meter---Beginners' Level and Beyond by Evan Mantyk There is very little difficulty behind writing classical poetry from a technical perspective. Classical poetry is simply poetry that is metrical (also called metered), thus contrasting with unmetered poetry, known as free verse. There is no requirement to rhyme...