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Essays

Home
Essays

An Interview With Leading Poet and Petrarch Translator A.M. Juster

The Society
September 21, 2021
Essays, Interviews, Poetry, Translation
6 Comments
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...

Thomas Jefferson, Poet: An Essay by Michael Curtis

The Society
September 5, 2021
Beauty, Culture, Essays, Poetry
4 Comments
. 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...

Neglected Gems: The Poetry of Walter de la Mare

The Society
August 30, 2021
Essays, Poetry
11 Comments
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...

A Major Problem: An Essay by Joseph S. Salemi

The Society
August 27, 2021
Culture, Essays, Poetry
89 Comments
. "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...

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...

When Poetry Matters, and When It Doesn’t: An Essay by Joseph S. Salemi

The Society
July 27, 2021
Culture, Essays, Poetry
59 Comments
. 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...

Whitman’s Curse: Contemporary Poetry as Solipsism

The Society
July 17, 2021
Essays, Poetry
28 Comments
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...

Review: ‘Light In the Darkness—The Poetry of Peter Hartley’

The Society
July 7, 2021
Clerihew, Essays, Poetry, Reviews
19 Comments
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...

A Review of James B. Nicola’s ‘Fires of Heaven’

The Society
July 2, 2021
Essays, Poetry, Reviews
7 Comments
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’ by Joseph S. Salemi, and ‘A Note on the Objective Correlative’

The Society
June 29, 2021
Art, Beauty, Blank Verse, Essays, Poetry
11 Comments
. 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...

The Perils of “Perfection”: An Essay by Joseph S. Salemi

The Society
June 12, 2021
Essays, Poetry
40 Comments
. 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...

A Review of Amanda Hall’s The Gift of Life: An Epic in Verse

The Society
June 12, 2021
Essays, Poetry, Reviews
31 Comments
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...

What’s Writing Classical Poetry All About?

The Society
June 4, 2021
Beauty, Culture, Education, Essays, Poetry, Readings
11 Comments
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...

Comments on the Decline of American Universities

The Society
June 2, 2021
Culture, Education, Essays, Poetry
4 Comments
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...

Metrical Variation: Part I, Freedom from Concession

The Society
May 29, 2021
Essays, Poetry
35 Comments
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...

‘Precious Procedure and Process’ by Joseph S. Salemi

The Society
May 9, 2021
Essays, Poetry
55 Comments
. When I was eighteen years old, something happened that had a profound effect on my view of the world. Next door to us in Woodside there lived an Irish family with two daughters, both of them under ten years...

Reflections on China’s God of War Statue on International Workers Day—May 1

The Society
May 1, 2021
Culture, Deconstructing Communism, Essays, Poetry
8 Comments
by Michael Curtis When next you float down the Yangtze River through Jingzhou City, likely you will notice Guan Yu, God of War, looking rather ambitious, rather restless; at 190 feet in height, a bit...

Two More Poems with ‘Conceits’ by Joseph S. Salemi

The Society
March 27, 2021
Beauty, Blank Verse, Essays, Humor, Poetry, Poetry Forms
10 Comments
. The Bibliophile’s Birth Certificate Marius Michel (1846-1925) was one of the most prominent and gifted bookbinders in France. He produced work in strikingly beautiful and unique designs, and today his...

A Beacon in the Darkness: The Poetics and Poetry of Robert Frost

The Society
March 26, 2021
Essays, Poetry
9 Comments
. “A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” ---Robert Frost An Essay by Adam Sedia To many in America, Robert Frost is the grandfatherly originator of “The Road Not Taken,” and a few other...

‘Pain, Product, and Poetry’ by Joseph S. Salemi

The Society
March 22, 2021
Essays, Poetry
24 Comments
I went to my first opera when I was six years old. My mother took me to the world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Saint of Bleecker Street, on the condition that I be a good boy and behave. It was some...

An Essay on the Canceling of Dr. Seuss: ‘If I Ran the Circus’ by Michael Curtis

The Society
March 9, 2021
Culture, Essays, Humor, Poetry
5 Comments
. Girolamo Savonarola Here we are at circus, you and me and all the others, facing each and every way in the Age of Absurdity. Rather alike some Swiftian satire, some Aesopian consequence, some Seussian...

‘The White Man’s Burden’ by Rudyard Kipling: Poem, Background, and Analysis

The Society
March 4, 2021
Culture, Education, Essays, Poetry
60 Comments
. A Teaching Tool for High School English Language Arts or Global History Teachers by Evan Mantyk . Background of Kipling and British India Rudyard Kipling The poet, Rudyard Kipling, was born in British India...

A Review of James A. Tweedie’s Mostly Sonnets: Formal Poetry in an Informal World

The Society
March 3, 2021
Beauty, Essays, Poetry, Reviews
13 Comments
Reviewed Book: Mostly Sonnets: Formal Poetry in an Informal World by James A. Tweedie, Dunecrest Press, July 2019 by Theresa Rodriguez As a fellow sonneteer, I felt like I was reading the words of a kindred...

The Power of One: Monosyllables in Classical Poetry

The Society
February 18, 2021
Essays, Poetry, Poetry Forms
18 Comments
by Adam Sedia The origin of poetry is inextricably tied to music. The earliest poems---the Homeric epics, the Chinese Book of Songs---were all lyrics to be sung. Because vowels allow the open voice to sing...

The Singing Lines of Theresa Rodriguez: A Review of Sonnets

The Society
January 12, 2021
Essays, Poetry, Reviews
13 Comments
by Andrew Benson Brown Theresa Rodriguez, Sonnets. 2nd edition. Shanti Arts, 193 Hillside Road, Brunswick, ME, 04011, 2020. 75 pp. $12.95. In his literary criticism, William Empson showed a subtle...

Two Poems Making Use of ‘Conceits,’ by Joseph S. Salemi

The Society
January 9, 2021
Beauty, Blank Verse, Culture, Essays, Poetry
26 Comments
. The Death of Today’s Sequoia Flecte ramos, arbor alta, tensa laxa viscera: Et rigor lentescat ille, quem dedit nativitas, Ut superni membra regis miti tendas stipite. —Venantius Fortunatus (c. 530-609...

The Struggle for the Formalist Tradition: An Essay by Joseph S. Salemi

The Society
December 13, 2020
Deconstructing Communism, Education, Essays, Poetry
58 Comments
  Why are many young persons so bad at writing formal poetry? Why do they struggle and labor and twist and turn when trying to compose formal verse? OK, I’ll grant you this: every beginning poet has...

Essay: ‘Portrait of a Millennial Art Student’ by Sally Cook

The Society
October 24, 2020
Art, Beauty, Culture, Deconstructing Communism, Essays, Poetry
22 Comments
  You’ve grown up in the public school system, and it shows. You are sensitive to the world around you, and in touch with your “feelings”—a perfect little guilt-ridden example of a...

A Review of Juvenalia by Reid McGrath

The Society
October 12, 2020
Essays, Poetry, Reviews
12 Comments
Juvenalia by Reid McGrath, Kelsay Books, 2019 by James Sale Regular readers of The Society of Classical Poets’ pages will be familiar with the name of Reid McGrath; he has been extensively published...

On Troublemakers: Two Translations from Phaedrus, by Terry L. Norton

The Society
September 24, 2020
Children's, Culture, Essays, Poetry, Translation
9 Comments
On Troublemakers: Two Translations* from the Latin Poet Phaedrus, Freedman of Augustus (first century A.D.) Translator’s Prologue These little tales from ancient Rome Concern those who would foment...

Ekphrastic Economy: A Review of Memoirs of a Witness Tree, by Randal A. Burd, Jr.

The Society
September 20, 2020
Essays, Poetry, Reviews
6 Comments
Memoirs of a Witness Tree, by Randal A. Burd, Jr. Kelsay Books, 2020 by Andrew Benson Brown Reading Aristotle’s Poetics is in some ways a curious experience for the practitioner of poetry. In this...

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...

Understanding Bad Poetry: The Verse of William Topaz McGonagall

The Society
August 16, 2020
Culture, Essays, Humor, Poetry
27 Comments
by Joseph S. Salemi The poetic effusions of some people are so incompetent that they cross the line into unexpected humor, and thereby become valuable. Such is the case with the work of William Topaz...

The Spice of Life: Metric Variation in Formal Verse (An Essay by Adam Sedia)

The Society
July 13, 2020
Culture, Essays, Poetry, Poetry Forms
15 Comments
by Adam Sedia John Dryden In 1688, John Dryden, England’s first official poet laureate, was deprived of that title for remaining Catholic and replaced with the laughably inferior Thomas Shadwell. Dryden...

An Analysis of ‘The Gods of the Copybook Headings’ by Rudyard Kipling

The Society
June 9, 2020
Beauty, Culture, Deconstructing Communism, Essays, Poetry
12 Comments
  The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place. Peering through...

A Smorgasbord of Craziness: An Essay by Joseph S. Salemi

The Society
June 8, 2020
Beauty, Culture, Essays, Humor, Poetry
15 Comments
I recently discarded some unnecessary texts, and among them were two past editions (the 17th and the 20th) of Len Fulton’s Directory of Poetry Publishers. This venerable publication, from Dustbooks in...

Philip Larkin: A Very English Bleakness (An Essay)

The Society
May 26, 2020
Essays, Poetry
20 Comments
by David Whippman In 1984, Philip Larkin was asked to become the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. This position is, in principle, the most prestigious that any British poet can attain: in effect, court...
John Keats

Keats in the Time of Coronavirus: An Essay

The Society
May 20, 2020
Beauty, Covid-19, Culture, Essays, Poetry
34 Comments
by Sultana Raza In April 1820, Keats was already aware that he had tuberculosis, and in spring of that year, he was experiencing fever, a bad chest, and lots of anxiety, specially about not being able to...

William Butler Yeats and the Occult: An Essay by Adam Sedia

The Society
May 19, 2020
Beauty, Culture, Deconstructing Communism, Essays, Poetry
29 Comments
Clarity and Obscurity Part III Read Part I: The Essences of Classicism and Modernism Compared Read Part II: "Concrete" Poetry and the Fall of Metaphor by Adam Sedia Modernism produces obscure poetry...

Ten Great Spenserian or Scottish Sonnets

The Society
May 15, 2020
Beauty, Culture, Essays, Love Poems, Poetry
22 Comments
Edmund Spenser by Margaret Coats Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) wrote 121 sonnets of rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee, including 87 in his love sequence Amoretti. The Spenserian sonnet differs from the...
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  1. Roy Eugene Peterson on Formal Aspects of Free Verse: A Video by Andrew Benson BrownJune 13, 2025

    Brian, John Milton would be a good place to start. I remember in high school having to read “Paradise Lost”…

  2. Roy Eugene Peterson on Formal Aspects of Free Verse: A Video by Andrew Benson BrownJune 13, 2025

    Mike, I believe you are correct about redefining literary history.

  3. Roy Eugene Peterson on Formal Aspects of Free Verse: A Video by Andrew Benson BrownJune 13, 2025

    Dr. Salemi, thank you for elucidating a prior “definitionism” debate sometime in the SCP past that may have been before…

  4. Roy Eugene Peterson on Formal Aspects of Free Verse: A Video by Andrew Benson BrownJune 13, 2025

    Susan, this was just a proposal, but it does reflect my view of writing poetry. The categories do fit how…

  5. Margaret Coats on ‘Double Rondel for Pentecost’ by Margaret CoatsJune 13, 2025

    You're right, Gary, that kind of boldness (unknown before) reveals an unquenchable fire of courage obtained from beyond the self.…

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