Review: Legends of Liberty Volume 1 by Andrew Benson Brown The Society August 18, 2021 Culture, Epic, Essays, Humor, Poetry, Reviews 3 Comments Reviewed Book: Legends of Liberty Volume 1, by Andrew Benson Brown, T A J Classics, 2021 by James Sale Legends of Liberty is an important new poem from the American poet, Andrew Benson Brown. The nearest...
‘The English Cantos: Volume 2: StairWell. Canto 3 Ex-Wife’ by James Sale The Society August 6, 2021 Beauty, Culture, Dante, 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 at pains to explain to the shocked Poet what just has...
‘The English Cantos: Volume 2: StairWell. Canto 1 Ascent’ by James Sale The Society March 7, 2021 Beauty, Culture, Dante, 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 fresh set of problems to confront. In this first section of...
Five Sonnets from ‘The Gift of Life’ by Amanda Hall The Society February 8, 2021 Art, Beauty, Culture, Epic, Poetry 7 Comments . “The Gift of Life” is a formal epic poem of 600 original Shakespearean sonnets, a tale about a love that existed in life and art with equal force. The heroine of the tale goes to the great war of words...
The Aeneid, Book I, Lines 1-50: A Rhyming Translation by Len Krisak The Society November 8, 2020 Beauty, Culture, Epic, Poetry, Translation 3 Comments The complete new translation can found from Hackett Publishing here. My poem sings of one man forced from Troy by war. Fate harried him to find a home on Latium’s shore— On some Lavinian littoral. By...
‘The American Revolution: An Epic Poem,’ Chapter III, by Andrew Benson Brown The Society November 3, 2020 Beauty, Culture, Epic, Humor, Poetry 20 Comments The American Revolution: An Epic Poem Chapter I Chapter II by Andrew Benson Brown Chapter III: The New-World Mercury The historical source material for the below installment is Paul Revere’s...
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 volume is any indication of the two forthcoming ones, then...
‘The American Revolution: An Epic Poem,’ Chapter II, by Andrew Benson Brown The Society July 4, 2020 Beauty, Culture, Epic, Humor, Poetry 9 Comments The American Revolution: An Epic Poem Chapter I by Andrew Benson Brown Chapter II: Thomas Jefferson in Hell On July Fourth of Eighteen Twenty-Six, Old Thomas Jefferson was sent to Hell In his...
‘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, with his guide, Dante, meets the Poetasters from America and...
‘The Unknown Circle of Hell’ by Joseph S. Salemi The Society April 8, 2020 Beauty, Culture, Dante, Epic, Humor, Poetry 28 Comments Personae and scene: Vergil and Dante, somewhere in the mid-region of Hell. Dante: Honored Vergil, tell me where we’re going— It’s hard for me to take in what you’re showing Without some...
‘The American Revolution: An Epic Poem,’ Chapter I, by Andrew Benson Brown The Society April 5, 2020 Beauty, Culture, Epic, Humor, Poetry 12 Comments Chapter I Who sings of arms these days? Or even men? The seed of Adam’s tucked inside Eve’s apple, And sits not taking root—his defect’s been Apparent since equality’s long grapple. Poor...
What Happened to Narrative Poetry?—An Opinion Piece by James A. Tweedie The Society March 5, 2020 Culture, Epic, Essays, Poetry, Short Stories 26 Comments This isn’t so much an essay as it is an opinion piece where I shoot off a few words in praise of narrative poetry or, in other words, poetry that tells a story. From Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, to...
A Poem for Black History Month: Excerpts from Two Mistakes, by Martin Hill Ortiz The Society February 3, 2020 Culture, Epic, Poetry 4 Comments Two Mistakes is a drama-length poem in metered verse for which I won second place in the Tom Howard / Margaret Reid Poetry Prize. The full work is posted here. It is based on Shakespeare's A...
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 chosen to write my epic in terza rima. There are many forms of...
Five Clerihews for the Iliad, by Raymond C. Roy The Society August 5, 2019 Clerihew, Epic, Homer, Poetry 9 Comments A Clerihew is a four-line comic poem with a rigid rhyming scheme, aabb, but no metric requirements. It stands in stark contrast to the strict metric requirements with no rhyming scheme in the Iliad. This...
Rediscovering Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ The Society October 24, 2018 Beauty, Culture, Education, Epic, Essays, Homer, Poetry 27 Comments 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...
Translation of the Iliad’s Beginning by J. Simon Harris The Society January 21, 2018 Culture, Education, Epic, Homer, Poetry, Translation 7 Comments Homer’s Iliad I.1-47. Translation in the epic hexameter, the meter of the Greek. Sing of the wrath, my goddess, of Peleus’ son Achilles, doomed and destructive, which gave the Achaeans numberless...
10 Greatest Poems Written by John Milton The Society November 7, 2017 Best Poems, Culture, Epic, Essays, Poetry 9 Comments John Milton (Born December 9, 1608 – died November 8, 1674) was an English poet of the late Renaissance period. He is most noted for his epic poem on the fall of Satan and Adam and Eve’s ejection from the...
Translation of Dante’s Inferno, Canto I and Poetry by J. Simon Harris The Society July 14, 2017 Beauty, Culture, Dante, Epic, Poetry, Terza Rima, Translation 10 Comments Dante’s Inferno, Canto I (Poem by Dante Alighieri / translation by J. Simon Harris in terza rima) In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself again in a dark forest, for I had lost the pathway...
Review: Apocalypse by Frederick Turner, Ilium Press, 2016 The Society March 19, 2017 Epic, Essays, Poetry, Reviews 30 Comments By James Sale There are nine Muses of poetry, daughters of Zeus or some say Apollo, and the Titaness, Mnenosyne, goddess of memory, past and future. And of these nine the most important is Kalliope, she of...
‘A Chinese Epic, Chapter II’ by Evan Mantyk The Society July 18, 2016 Epic, Human Rights in China, Poetry 1 Comment Chapter II: Visions and Dreams (For Chapter I click here.) THE band and locals, totaling fourteen, Retired to rest before the looming day. Some went to sleep but most in silence sat, Now meditating,...
‘A Chinese Epic, Chapter I’ by Evan Mantyk The Society May 12, 2016 Beauty, Culture, Epic, Human Rights in China, Poetry 5 Comments Chapter I: Arrival in Beijing Inspired by real events Sing to me, Muse, who flies through Heaven’s realms, Sing of that night when terror swept the land And peaceful practitioners of Falun...
Review: The Parliament of Poets by Frederick Glaysher, Earthrise Press, 2012 The Society January 25, 2016 Epic, Essays, Reviews 9 Comments 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...