StairWell Canto 8: ‘Covid-Priest’ by James Sale The Society January 28, 2023 Covid-19, Culture, Epic, Poetry 30 Comments . Canto 8: Covid-Priest from The English Cantos Volume 2: StairWell StairWell is the Poet’s Purgatory, and as in HellWard where we met with...
StairWell Canto 10 Extract 2 by James Sale The Society September 19, 2022 Beauty, Culture, Epic, Poetry 44 Comments . StairWell Canto 10 extract 2 Context: In the 10th Canto of HellWard we met 4 poets condemned to Hell. Now in the 10th Canto of StairWell, we meet...
StairWell Canto 10 Extract by James Sale The Society September 5, 2022 Beauty, Culture, Epic, Poetry 55 Comments . StairWell Canto 10 extract Context: In the 10th Canto of HellWard we met 4 poets condemned to Hell. Now in the 10th Canto of StairWell, we meet...
‘To Winter’ and Other Poetry by James Sale The Society July 31, 2022 Beauty, Poetry 27 Comments . . To Winter for John Keats Where are the songs of spring? Now moving west All of us are into winter finally: Threadbare, lackluster, shorn-sheer,...
An Extract from Canto 4 of James Sale’s StairWell The Society January 21, 2022 Beauty, Culture, Epic, Poetry 13 Comments . The English Cantos: StairWell Canto 4 Leaving a broken relationship of the past behind in Canto 3, the poet enters a new world of education and...
A Brief Poem on Joe Biden and Afghanistan, by British Poet James Sale The Society August 20, 2021 Culture, Humor, Poetry 19 Comments . The Commander-in-Chief How Biden sucks---I mean the man, Who being wholly characterless Will criticize Afghanistan "Cowards"---when he can’t face...
‘The English Cantos: Volume 2: StairWell. Canto 3 Ex-Wife’ by James Sale The Society August 6, 2021 Beauty, Culture, Epic, Poetry 20 Comments . The Argument: The Poet, with Dante and Virgil, has arrived on the third step of the StairWell, or Purgatory. Dante at the start of Canto 3 has been...
‘No Letters’ and Other Poetry by James Sale The Society June 16, 2021 Beauty, Culture, Poetry 29 Comments . No Letters "An odd thought strikes me: we shall receive no letters in the grave." ---Dr. Johnson, from Boswell’s Life Of all the things which I...
‘The English Cantos: Volume 2: StairWell. Canto 1 Ascent’ by James Sale The Society March 7, 2021 Beauty, Culture, Epic, Poetry 13 Comments . The poet has now escaped Hell, and has arrived in Purgatory or what he calls the StairWell. But he seems to have been abandoned by Dante, and has a...
‘Verbum Dei’ by James Sale The Society January 25, 2021 Beauty, Culture, Poetry 51 Comments . The Verbum Dei Retreat Centre on the Isle of Wight aims to be a place of encounter with God We took the ferry; darkness closed; Warm lights ahead;...
The Rebirth of Epic: A Review of James Sale’s HellWard The Society August 22, 2020 Beauty, Culture, Epic, Essays, Poetry, Reviews 31 Comments by Andrew Benson Brown James Sale’s HellWard is the first volume of a planned trilogy entitled The English Cantos. If the quality of the current...
‘HellWard Canto 11: Poetasters,’ From James Sale’s English Cantos The Society May 8, 2020 Beauty, Culture, Epic, Humor, Poetry 12 Comments The Argument: The Poet, having escaped the HellWard of European and corrupt politicians, emerges into the penultimate HellWard depth where he,...
‘Diomedes Speaks’ by James Sale The Society April 29, 2020 Beauty, Culture, Poetry 4 Comments We meet Diomedes, the Greek hero of Troy, trapped in a flame with Odysseus in Canto 26 of Dante’s Inferno. Odysseus speaks but Diomedes remains...
‘Being Ducks’ by James Sale The Society March 12, 2020 Beauty, Culture, Humor, Poetry 32 Comments for Mark F. Stone and all his pets The duck has special properties: Like water off its back; If only we as humans could Perfect the...
‘Thank You Sonnet’ and Other Poetry by James Sale The Society January 23, 2020 Beauty, Culture, Poetry 15 Comments Thank You Sonnet This thanking you in sonnet form might seem Somewhat unusual, but I think it best, Simply to show how simply lines are...
Extract from Canto 9 of James Sale’s English Cantos The Society December 8, 2019 Beauty, Culture, Poetry 24 Comments In Canto 8 the poet and Dante, accompanying him, encounter the next-door neighbour, Peter, who brutally murdered his wife for money. Escaping...
‘Keeping the Door’ and Other Poetry by James Sale The Society September 21, 2019 Beauty, Culture, Poetry 25 Comments Keeping the Door Ant hordes scurried in purposeful files; Angry, alert, full to demonic marching: They came in batteries to batter: _____But I...
Poetry, Beauty and the Modern Era: Essay by James Sale The Society August 12, 2019 Beauty, Culture, Epic, Essays, Poetry 20 Comments One interesting question is ‘why poetry, specifically?’ I am currently writing an ‘epic’ called The English Cantos, and I have...
SCP Symposium Readings (Videos): Joseph S. Salemi, James Sale, Adam Sedia, Michael C. Maibach The Society August 7, 2019 Beauty, Culture, From the Society, Humor, Poetry, Readings, Symposium, Video 1 Comment ...
‘Taxi from Mohonk’ by James Sale The Society July 18, 2019 Beauty, Culture, Poetry 13 Comments The taxi driver took us down From great Mohonk, New Paltz and such; And every mile we got to touch We felt the pull of New York...
‘I Am One, Then’ and Other Poetry by James Sale The Society June 7, 2019 Beauty, Culture, Poetry 4 Comments I Am One, Then "In the midst of my days I shall go to the gates of Hell" - Isaiah 38.10 I am one, then, who's been to hell: __Cut down in my old...
Three Poems from Divine Comedies, by James Sale The Society March 29, 2019 Culture, Poetry 41 Comments The following are excerpted from James Sale's upcoming book Divine Comedies. Exit from Hell I did well in life. But everything is real in...
‘Canto 3’ by James Sale The Society August 30, 2018 Beauty, Culture, Poetry, Short Stories 19 Comments Canto 3 is the third canto in the sequence of the English Cantos, the first two of which are available to read on the SCP website. James Sale is...
‘Canto 2’ by James Sale The Society June 7, 2018 Beauty, Culture, Poetry, Terza Rima 39 Comments Canto 2 is part of a sequence of 33 Cantos called The English Cantos that James Sale is attempting to write in the style – and using the terza rima...
‘Canto 1’ by James Sale (with Video) The Society April 10, 2018 Beauty, Poetry, Readings, Terza Rima, Video 71 Comments Canto 1 is the provisional name for a sequence of 33 Cantos that James Sale is attempting to write in the style - and using the terza rima - of...
‘The First Funeral’ and Other Poetry by James Sale The Society December 26, 2017 Beauty, Culture, Poetry 6 Comments The First Funeral It is with wonder when I think Of Adam, Eve, no childhood grown, Standing before the living God, Alive with language,...
‘Re-visiting Dante’ and Other Poetry by James Sale The Society September 22, 2017 Beauty, Culture, Poetry 5 Comments Re-visiting Dante “For Dante it was a strict rule not to rhyme the word ‘Christ’ with any other word except itself” – Clive...
Essay: ‘Poetry and the Muses Part 4’ by James Sale The Society August 24, 2017 Beauty, Essays, Poetry 19 Comments Poetry, as we have discussed in earlier parts of this article series, depends upon the Muses and accessing the deeper self or soul within each...
Essay: ‘Poetry and the Muses Part 3’ by James Sale The Society July 22, 2017 Beauty, Essays, Poetry 18 Comments It has long been observed that whilst the ego is useful in making daily and ordinary decisions in our life, it is less effective when it comes to...
Essay: ‘Poetry and the Muses Part 2’ by James Sale The Society June 24, 2017 Beauty, Culture, Essays, Poetry, Popular Poetry Archives 75 Comments The Muses we understand from Part 1 of this article are the daughters of the future and the past, and more specifically of memory, light, truth and...
Review: The Lyre Speaks True, James Sale, 2016 The Society June 5, 2017 Essays, Poetry, Reviews 2 Comments By Joseph Charles MacKenzie James Sale, whom I happen to consider England’s best on the subject, states: “To write poetry with any degree of...
‘Hell Arrives in Manchester’ by James Sale The Society May 28, 2017 Poetry, Terrorism 18 Comments If I had words grating and crude enough That really could describe this horrid hole Supporting the converging weight of hell … Canto XXXII,...
Essay: ‘Poetry and the Muses Part 1’ by James Sale The Society May 23, 2017 Essays, Poetry 25 Comments We live in a post-modernist world and its values are everywhere around us; and everywhere these values are almost largely unexamined, and because we...
‘They’re Giants: On America and North Korea’ by James Sale The Society April 17, 2017 Culture, Poetry 13 Comments "For even in the beginning, when arrogant giants were perishing, the hope of the world took refuge on a raft … for blessed is the wood by...
‘One Near-Death Experience at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital’ and Other Poetry by James Sale The Society April 5, 2017 Beauty, Poetry 15 Comments One Near-Death Experience at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital To be dazed out, phased out, near to dying In a hospital bed Somewhere in a...
Poet Bio: James Sale The Society March 11, 2017 . James Sale is the creator of Motivational Maps, which operates in 15 countries. He is also a feature writer for New York’s The Epoch Times and...
‘Obi-Wan Bin Laden RIP’ and Other Poetry by James Sale The Society December 10, 2016 Beauty, Culture, Humor, Poetry, Terrorism 1 Comment Obi-Wan Bin Laden RIP Let’s remember what God wants: Killing people’s never right, So Obi-Wan Bin Laden then Cannot be a Jedi...
‘Such Was My Prayer’ and Other Poetry by James Sale The Society August 29, 2016 Beauty, Culture, Poetry 8 Comments Such Was My Prayer Such was my prayer. And she, so far away, Or so it seemed, looked down at me and smiled; Then to Eternal Light she turned once...
Imitating Three Shakespeare Sonnets, by James Sale The Society May 27, 2016 Beauty, Poetry, Shakespeare, Translation 3 Comments Original Shakespeare followed by imitation. Sonnet 49 Against that time, if ever that time come, When I shall see thee frown on my...
‘The Port of Tears’ by James Sale The Society February 3, 2016 Beauty, Poetry We left the Port of Joy so long ago, And ebbed so much the while and knew no flow, But still another strait we headed to. Whatever we...
