Essays

. Henny and Sal by Joseph S. Salemi My father, Salvatore J. Salemi, was a noncommissioned officer in G-2 (Military Intelligence) during the Second World War. Although he was 29 years old in 1942, he was...

. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: A Restorative from the Restoration by Joseph S. Salemi John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, stands out because of his double-barreled reputation: he was a savage satirist, and...

. Obedience by Giuseppe Gioachino Belli (1791-1863) translated from Romanesco by Joseph S. Salemi It’s not true, Christians, what you have been told— That you need endless patience to obey. Obedience...

. by Susan Jarvis Bryant This is a word of encouragement to all those poets out there who use their art to get a grave point on current issues across. Never let those who criticize you shut you down. Never...

. A Conceit or Just a Similitude? Two Brief Illustrations from Sir John Suckling by Joseph S. Salemi One of the earliest things one learns in poetry is the distinction between a simile and a metaphor. In...

. POEMS THAT BUILT A NATION PART II. Persia, Ferdowsi, and the Shahnameh by Adam Sedia A previous essay highlighted how the Finnish national epic poem, the Kalevala, spurred the development of Finnish culture...

. Creativity, Originality, and Eccentricity by Joseph S. Salemi I don’t know why it should be so, but I have a propensity to attract the attention of eccentric persons. Three times, at three separate...

. A Definition of Formal (or “Classical”) Poetry by James A. Tweedie One of the frequent comment threads on SCP involves the subject of the nature of poetry, including what it is and how it exists as an...

by Margaret Coats The required 5-7-5 syllable form alone does not make a haiku. A good haiku ⦁ presents an observation of nature, or of human activities in nature ⦁ uses present tense (“goes” or...

. Classical Poetry and the Martial Ethos by Andrew Benson Brown . The Heroic Age Towards the end of “Egil’s Saga,” one of the masterpieces of Icelandic literature, the eponymous hero composes a verse to...

. Expansive Poets, Classical Poets, and the Future of Poetry by Michael Curtis Modern poetry is not—it is neither poetry nor modern.  Poetry is words lined in measure, of some three seconds length, the...

. Reviewed Book: Modern Art: An Exhibition in Criticism, by Michael Curtis, National Civic Art Society, 2022 by Evan Mantyk On May 12, 2021, a terrible painting somehow sold for $103 million. It depicts a...

. Crank Out a Few, Please by Joseph S. Salemi Many years ago, when I was in graduate school, I attended a seminar on Vergil’s Eclogues. These are the lovely bucolic verses that Vergil modeled on the earlier...

. A Call for Secession by Adam Sedia The fine arts currently lie atrophied in utter decline and degradation. Poetry is no exception. Ever since the advent of modernism in the decades leading up to the First...

. A Clamshell in Concrete  I was a child in kindergarten class. My mother held my hand as we trod on The sidewalk leading to the boulevard. This was 1951. The path Was paved in smooth cement, and at the...

. From The Burkean: Icarus magazine currently holds the reputation of being Trinity College’s — if not Ireland’s — premier poetry journal… with contributions from Seamus Heaney and John...

. "I Heard Chapman Speak Out Loud and Bold" by Margaret Coats My title quotes “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” a sonnet by John Keats. When Keats first read Homer, the voice he heard was not...

. The Poem that Built a Nation: Finland and the Kalevala by Adam Sedia Nowhere perhaps is the power of poetry more apparent than in its ability to unite a culture---literally to build a nation. Homer’s epics...

. Rescuing Contemporary Poetry from Vers Libre The conservative & informal vs. the free Before addressing my thesis, let me explain my choice of the word conservative in identifying a category of poetry,...

. There are a number of ways to go wrong in poetry. Unfortunately, the Poetry Establishment is only willing to admit the existence of a select few of them. The others are either kept under wraps, or disguised...

. Reviewed Book: A Thing With Feathers, by J. John Nordstrom, independently published, 2021 by Andrew Benson Brown A Thing With Feathers is the debut novel of J. John Nordstrom (the pen name of Joseph J....

. Many years ago I gave a talk at a scholarly conference at Queens College, C.U.N.Y. My section of the conference was dedicated to contemporary translation, and the bulk of the papers presented were deadly...

. Below is an excerpt from a Crisis Magazine article "Reading Poetry Will Save the World" by Auguste Meyrat, published November 13, 2021. (The article was passed to me by poet Joe Tessitore.) . For those who...

Following the introduction below is a translated version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in PDF made free for download for teachers, students, and interested readers by the Society of Classical Poets. It...

. Pope Sylvester II and Meridiana Pope Sylvester II, born Gerbert de Aurillac (946-1003), is said to have had a demonic succubus named Meridiana who not only satisfied his sexual needs but also served as his...

A version of this interview originally appeared in The Epoch Times by Evan Mantyk A widely published translator of ancient Latin texts, a former high-ranking government bureaucrat, and an incredible poet who...

. Most schoolgirls, street-people, attorneys, and Bachelors of Art are aware that Thomas Jefferson composed what is likely the most widely-known, oft-repeated sentence in American history: . We hold these...

by Adam Sedia The life of Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) spans earthshattering changes in history and art. The England into which he was born was a colonial empire stretching across the globe. Horse-drawn...

. "American pragmatism insists that words are for use, not enjoyment; American puritanism insists that expression is a duty, not a pleasure." —Richard A. Lanham Everyone knows that poems work on different...

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...

. A widespread distemper in modern life is the insistent need that many people feel to justify themselves and their activities. Countless persons are defensive about all sorts of things that in the past you...

by Adam Sedia Contemporary poetry is plagued by several characteristic vices: obscurity, banality, nihilism---each a topic for examination in its own right. But its most glaring and even characteristic vice...

Reviewed Book: Light In the Darkness—The Poetry of Peter Hartley, Dunecrest Press, 2021. by James A. Tweedie Peter Hartley writes poems. Good poems. Poems that sing, dance, and soar with the rhyme and...

Fires of Heaven, published by Shanti Arts, 2020, can be purchased here. by James Sale James B. Nicola is one of America’s brightest poetry stars. His poetry is restless, searching, and soaring. There is,...

. The Carnelian Ring: A Still-Life Footfalls echo in the memoryDown the passage which we did not takeTowards the door we never openedInto the rose-garden. —T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton I think of a walled...

. Persons devoted to formal, metrical poetry are susceptible to a specific disease, much in the same way as light-skinned persons are apt to get bad sunburns, and sedentary persons are prone to hemorrhoids and...

Reviewed Book: The Gift of Life: An Epic in Verse by Amanda Hall, 2021. by Margaret Coats So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. ---Shakespeare, "Sonnet...

Originally published in The Epoch Times by James Sale Very recently, I hosted a live online poetry event for New York’s Society of Classical Poets (SCP). I introduced six American poets, of whom two were...

American historian Victor Davis Hanson and Canadian professor Jordan Peterson recently commented on the decline of American universities. Though they did not specifically mention poetry, the mainstream poetry...

by Daniel Kemper “Metrical variation” is widely used in discussing late twentieth and early twenty-first century poetry writing. Although this term technically includes both random variation and...