The Society of Classical Poets is pleased to announce the release of its 2016 Journal! Click here to purchase a copy. It is also available on Amazon. This year’s journal is bigger and better than ever! In addition to the best poetry being written today in the English-speaking world, it includes a mini-textbook on teaching classical poetry suitable for educators of all levels.
Featured Competition Winners: Ron L. Hodges, Bruce Dale Wise, Daniel Magdalen, Dusty Grein, James Sale, Reid McGrath, Matthew Walton
Other Featured Poets: Peter Agnos, Rick Blum, Michael R. Burch, Janice Canerdy, Rachel Chen, Shannon Cong, Pamela Corbett, Cheryl Corey, Michael Curtis, Neal Dachstadter, Lorna Davis, Pamela Du, Martin Elster, Kathy Figueroa, E.P. Fisher, Colin Fredericson, Karen Gersch, John Grey, A.R. Harmon, Michael Harmon, Tony Henderson, Ruth Hill, Skip Hughes, Alan W. Jankowski, Ann Keith, Robert King, Craig Kurtz, Jason W. Larsen, Evan Mantyk, Brian Mc Cabe, Alex McKeown, Jarrett Mohn, Justin T. Monelt, Mike Munsell, Alan Nordstrom, Ella Nowicki, Gregory Palmerino, Karlee Renkoski, Dean Robbins, Damian Robin, Hugh Rose, Theresa Rodriguez, William Ruleman, Lynn Veach Sadler, Don Shook, Maya Sokolovski, Elizabeth Spencer Spragins, Andrew Szilvasy, Katherine Todd, Enri Vilmos, Ben Zwycky
Interview with:William Ruleman, Professor of English at Tennessee Wesleyan College
Featured Artists: Anna Rose Bain, Xiqiang Dong, Steven J. Levin, Zarahn Southon
Great Poets of the Past Featured: William Blake, John Donne, William Drummond, Philippe Desportes, Jaochim Du Bellay, Robert Frost, John Keats, Emma Lazarus, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Rainer Maria Rilke, John Milton, William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Joseph von Eichendorff, William Wordsworth
Great Artists of the Past Featured: August Leopold Egg, Guido Reni, Henry Holiday, Michael Dahl
Featured Image: “Metamorphosis” by Steven J. Levin
Excellent, and Big Congrats to all involved here. I’ll have to make it a point to pick this one up myself…
Old and new together;
new poets and old, from high school to retired;
new essays on traditional poetry and poetry for the here and now;
lists and examples of great old poems, and great new poems;
great old art and new art;
altogether how to mix the great of the past with what can remain great in the future.
What a whoppa. No wonder it needed at least two editors.
My words are out, are old, are said;
now to my future , this must be read!
Congrats to the featured poets, well do! And good work on the journal.
This review appears on Amazon and I strongly recommend all lovers of the Journal to post Amazon reviews: The editor of 2016 Journal is Evan Mantyk who has done a remarkable job and seems to be on a one-man crusade to realign the public’s perception of what poetry is. There is some fascinating research in the Introduction to this Journal on “poetry’s downward trend”. In brief, to cite one statistic Mantyk uses, in the USA in 1992 17% of Americans said they read or had listened to a poem in the last 12 months; by 2012 that figure was only 7%, which as Mantyke observes is “the worst decline of any literary genre”. The reasons are not hard to find – Modernism, Post-Modernism – pretentious, incomprehensible poetry written by a phoney elite who justify their incoherent, solipsistic scribblings on the grounds of ‘democracy’ as if writing without any form or structure at all meant ‘freedom’! Oh! – if only we were, and if that is freedom then the public has clearly to do without it. Without form, without discipline, there is no poetry; indeed, there is no beauty, and the characteristic of virtually all ‘mainstream’ poetry is either its cleverness or its ugliness, and usually both.
This Journal then sets out to be an antidote to all that. there are sections on beauty, humour, children, love, and a small part on the politics of oppression, especially as this relates to China and Falun Gong. As you would expect, there are some weaker poems in the collection,, but there are also some amazingly good ones, and overall the collection is an antidote to the bleakness of modern verse. Two poets I am particularly beginning to like and admire who feature prominently in this collection are Robert King and Reid McGrath. Technically, they are both excellent, and King, who was taught by the great Jose Garcia Villa, has a real knack of penetrating to the core of some issue in the simplest possible way:
“Can lyric poetry be restored?
Not unless we hear the words
They’ll make beauty as they find their form”
I strongly recommend this collection.
Hi James, have you thought of putting this good review on amazon? Best, D
You seem to say you have, but I can’t find it there.
Ah Damien – that’s because it’s on co.uk rather than AmazonDOT com – try that. I put it on amazon first and then transferred it to website!
I never take publication by the Society for granted. However, I feel honored when my poems are selected because of the quality of the poems the Society selects. I only hope the effort to rejuvenate the art of poetry is gaining momentum as a result of the Society’s efforts.
I had no difficulty in accessing James’ review at amazon.co.uk. It, along with Evan’s Introduction to the 2016 Journal are two more small steps in the effort to rejuvenate poems as art, which we should all get behind.
Thanks Robert – so right!
well I’ve sold a copy or two
time to buy one for myself