Culture

The Lord: "Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand." (Jeremiah 18:6) Swiftly He kicks the wheel, rotating steadily— Lump on bat, now pressed flat, muddy-slick clay. Spinning the shapeless mess which responds readily Letting the Master frame urn for display. Look! The...

A little baffling it's, a bit insane and funny too, this whole God-farm affair. You sow invisible seeds in ghostly plain and wait for hallowed rains through silent prayer! You wait and wait to reap the grain; but lo one season runs one long lifetime, if not few births more...

καὶ κραναᾶς Βαβυλῶνος ἐπίδρομον ἅρμασι τεῖχος καὶ τὸν ἐπ᾽ Ἀλφειῷ Ζᾶνα κατηυγασάμην, κάπων τ᾽ αἰώρημα, καὶ Ἠελίοιο κολοσσόν, καὶ μέγαν αἰπεινᾶν πυραμίδων κάματον, μνᾶμά τε Μαυσώλοιο πελώριον ἀλλ᾽ ὅτ᾽ ἐσεῖδον Ἀρτέμιδος νεφέων ἄχρι θέοντα δόμον, κεῖνα μὲν ἠμαύρωτο † δεκηνιδε νόσφιν Ὀλύμπου ἅλιος οὐδέν πω τοῖον ἐπηυγάσατο. I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging gardens, and the colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the vast tomb of...

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) Crossing the Swamp by Jon MacNaughton by Caud Sewer Bile "If freedom of speech is taken away...we may be led, like sheep to...slaughter." —George Washington The boat of freedom of MacNaughton follows Leutze's pic of Washington upon the Delaware, grave, foggy, thick. Don Trump...

In the Poetry Writing Workshop “Milton conceived the Paradise Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for the Muse having ‘dictated’ to him the ‘unpremeditated song’, and let this be answer to those who would allege the fifty-six  various readings of...

—from A Gallery of Ethopaths* The computer is a simple tool— It cannot change an arrant fool Into a brilliant, thoughtful scholar, Although the damned thing costs top-dollar. It cannot help someone to write Whose prose is just a total blight Nor delineate a topic For someone naturally myopic. It...

Sonnet on the Death of Teeth I’m amused by a brush with Death In the depths of my bathroom mirror. His grimaces shrink into grinning, His ruthlessness fades to bad breath. His rot had once fogged me with terror; Now his gnashing is rootless and blithe; His gargling grotesques are...

. . The Federal and the Doric The Federal and the Doric Combined a stern austere; They frowned upon the quad; They spread a healthy fear. Corinthian and Victorian Looked at the ground downcast; No one liked their whimsies; Their fancies would not last. . . Mars Mars, the stars...

  Pink has become a favored cultural color, more subtle, less primitive than red: black mixed with pink is considered seductive, innocent when used with white and acquired its own name just in the late 17th century it’s commonly read. In the 1940s, blue for boys, pink for girls became...

Aldeyjarfoss If, in some grim sensory exercise In a laboratory, behind a screen Where staunch technicians memorialize Their findings, everything we’ve heard and seen, Or smelled and tasted, or in our hearts felt As hope, an urgency to touch these walls Of snow and ice, as groaning glaciers melt, We...

Translations from Belarusian by the poet's son Ihar Kazak.    The Explosion May mayhem never strike our good Earth; The fertile one deserves tranquility and gratitude, So that on earth where in ruins weeds give birth, There would be no malevolent attitude. But evil— an explosion… Again a wormwood* spill....

  Out of the crooked timber laid by man, No straight foundation may ever be built. While Reason clinkers on across the span, The tunes of Sin jaunt forward with a lilt. To lie, to steal, to feel in ill no guilt, To follow Peter’s thrice denial there Before the...

“. . .  lest when thou hast eaten and art full  . . . then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt  . . .who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were...

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...

Oak In quiet awe before a solid oak in summer bloom, I thought: to such as these my Saxon kin of long ago bespoke their pagan prayers—a source of great unease to Charlemagne, these heathens and their trees! He killed all those beyond baptism’s hope, Then celebrated Christmas with the...

  My candle burns at both ends Late into the night, And flickers fast, And bounces in my sight. My pen lies docile in my hand. The page is silent now. My eyes transfix; My thoughts do mix; The flame moves like her gown. I see her sway In silken...

I. But yesterday, your noble fathers bled Upon the fields of France, where countless dead Had found among the vines their final rest, To gild with fame a venerated crest Whose princely brandishing from age to age Outlasted armies and the tyrant’s rage. But yesterday, you bravely fought and won...

Sail Fever I knew some terms, the merest germs Of illness called ‘Sail Fever’: Tack starboard, port, keep mainsail taut, Steer boat by tiller lever! One Saturday, beside the bay, A salesman full of running Cast practised spiel of salty zeal, Sheer confidence and cunning. He said, “This boat will...

Where a lamppost spreads a white spot light Nursing silent night with canny purr, A racoon crosses there in sudden flight. Where an old man walks his dog this hour With a leash that’s buckled to his hand, The dog stands briefly pat in belled collar. Where a beggar sits...

Alzheimer's Disease I can feel your deep darkness closing in, With its harrowing sense of helplessness, Soon obscenity sours tongues gathering; Havoc’s wrought by every hellish djin As chaos kicks aside your selflessness, Guilt, aplenty, glee guilds in fathering: Flaunting tones of stricken folk fail true faith, Whilst naught stands...

Bristlecone Longevity The beauty of the tree is not how old, Indeed how ancient in its gnarling now, Not in its silent history yet untold, Nor in the pre-historic roots and bough— Their age—but in its newness ever new, Its torqued refusal to be caught by death, Rejection of defeat...

Translator's Preliminary Note This is an original translation of a poem by Sappho (630-580 BC), traditionally known as the “old age poem” or the “Tithonus poem” (in the standard numbering by Lobel and Page, it is “Fragment 58”). Tithonus, mentioned in the poem, was a mortal whom the goddess Dawn...

Heritage I like to say I’d an Egyptian father If that is too obscure for you, I’d rather Explain it just by citing preservation. They preserved mummies, he his indignation At how the world had gone awry, once all Ethics, society had gone on stall. My father then stepped gingerly...

Poet’s Note: I wrote this poem in the same metrical form as the song “America the Beautiful” (but without the internal rhyme). You can sing it if you want, but I think it is most effective when simply read out loud. This year our nation’s birthday seems a tad bit...

Two Lives by Michael Maibach When soldiers die, They give two lives. The one they had, And the one denied. The spouse not met, The child unknown, The life unsaved, The welcome home. The hill unclimbed, The beach unseen, The books unread, The field un-gleaned. The chance to see Their...

Garden Waltz a terza rima sonnet in dactylic pentameter with a truncated foot at the end of each line Radishes sway to the rhythm of sunlight and rainfall, Carrots to minerals present in alkaline soil. Onions, however, invite a due process most painful, Opening eyes to the sting of their...

You pushed Grace hard so you could have your book. She did the layout, made the pdf. I bought the thing so I could take a look but, when I read it, I found blatant theft. You’d stolen poems from anthologies of poets who had won the Nobel Prize. You...

The Lord’s Supper They’re gathered round, astonished, full of dread, round him who like a wise man must decide, and who leaves those with whom he’s broken bread, and who comes like a stranger from outside. Old solitude haunts him, Gethsemane, though once it bound him to astounding acts; now...

The Fall Revisited The implications of the fall are endless in their reach; that lowly serpent had such gall, Eve's failure to beseech. Though what they chose when they did bite that infamous red fruit was bad enough for God to smite them; He withheld pursuit. Preferring then to extricate...

Guess who is not invited to come to a dinner here? Rights are just for some people. Others have to disappear. There is no bias in denials of our services; we shall not break bread with those who do not think just like us. Injustice anywhere's a threat to justice...

“Only fools are positive.”  “You sure about that?” “I’m positive.” ―The Three Stooges “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” "Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.” “In a time of deceit telling the truth is...

  While strolling around an illustrious lair, I was caught by a breeze of regret in the air, For gazing I was on old buildings of stone, All graced with such courage and dignity their own, With worthy exploits and a mind once refined, These guardians of masses, once seeking...

Winners announced here. Scroll down and read the comments section to enjoy all of the submissions. What has no subject one can tell, Yet tries to make it ring a bell? What makes you scratch your head and think, “How does this blather even link?” RULES: Write a rhyming riddle...

03.27.18 A smattering of rain above a hall That holds her earthy fragments, broken, spent, A woman who, in life, out-did them all, And e’en in death defies the elements. O, what would she make now of her dear France, Beset by enemies who walk among us, Tracing our very...

Written upon reading the book How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World. The beast once foretold for the end of days Crouched in a Karl Marx statue erected Last month in Germany, where it displays A villain’s face now praised and respected. The beast’s scales are the merchandise...

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...

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) Confucius Institutes "Three things cannot be hidden long: the sun, the moon and truth." —paraphrase of a Buddhist quote by Lu "Reed ABCs" Wei The Chinese Party-Communists use wily socialites, constructing a network of spying, propaganda sites, for outposts called evasively Confucian Institutes, attempting...

  I may have borne them each, but it was you, Whose shoulders carried weight I never knew, You set the bar so high, so straight, so true, The surest, strongest Dad?  Well, that was you. I may have dried their tears, but it was you, Who made them get...

Form Sonnet Turn the page and write again today Make something come out of an eager mind Make something in a new and different way In something both of earthy and refined For when I strive it seems that I can find What I am looking for in forms like...

See notes below for background and allusions. Olivia: Daughter, shall we sit and grieve together, And tie our two bêtes noires up with a tether? You had Ezra Pound and I had Yeats: Two poets now enshrined among the greats. God knows it was no picnic. We both fell For...