Culture

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...

A Riot Limerick by Joe Tessitore The Most Evil has cast the first brick And his antics make decent folk sick. Though he rant and he rail His best efforts all fail--- He’s in fact the Most Impotent...

  Astride the Golden Horn, where Occident __And Orient collide, the silhouettes __of minarets co-mingle with the scent __of spice and sound of drums and castanets. The medieval mosques of...

  “London BLM riot: Cenotaph vandalised on the 76th anniversary of the D-Day Landing” –UK News headline, June 6, 2020 In nineteen forty-four, this very day, the barbarous bite of bullets felled...

  Dear Editor, My odes are grandiose and overblown With pudgy gluts of stodgy adjectives In floods of flabby babble prone to drone, All topped with tired, archaic additives. Forsooth, methinks the...

  The Dizi Gui (弟子规) is an ancient Chinese text for children that was written in the Qing Dynasty during the reign of Emperor Kangxi (康熙帝) (1661-1722) by Li Yuxiu. Below are excerpts from the...

  The Director General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom by Sarban Bhattacharya His accent’s weird, his hair is pretty grey, He is too calm to get into a fray. His moustache bears the villainy of the...

  The room fills with a charming melody— A choir of violins in soaring flight With basses, cellos pulsing—one, two, three— Drum-snaps, flute-trills, horn-calls, rich and bright— A dance of...

Poet's note: This poem is built upon an episode from Xenophon’s Anabasis, in which the Ten Thousand, Greek mercenaries in the employ of Cyrus the Younger, the ambitious brother of the king of Persia, are...

  When reading Irish hagiography, a few instructions should be borne in mind: First, don’t mistake this for the history you’ve read before, or might expect to find in some thick tome....

  Video and reading by Rob...

  A Grave Sin by Satyananda Sarangi How grave's this sin of man to shatter man! The human touch is dreaded, faith has fled; I think of God to find a way and scan How grave's this sin of man to...

  Domain of Pain A piercing migraine or a throbbing toothache, A splinter underneath a fingernail, An upset stomach caused by too much fruitcake, And waiting for responses in the mail Are typical...

  Fake Checks by Esca Webuilder As Twitterites do fact-checks, which are really only fake, confusing truths with their opinions is their main mistake. But censoring the voices that they do not want...

  The Stranger Above the dark hill in the still Spanish night, The moon, a lone fountain of watery light, Demurely ascends, as she hides her fair face Behind misty veils of gossamer lace. Below,...

  Endless Dream I walk the trail, in hopes of reaching you, As winter sheds her tears of crystal ice. I rise above snow drifts, the trail to view, But find my steps alone do not suffice. On knees...

The Climber inspired by and dedicated to Chris Bonington and my erstwhile heroes Don Whillans and Dougal Haston He has conquered crags and chimneys Only eagles would have seen And the frozen lofty...

  At the Cemetery “Drowned together while playing with a sled on the ice of the Saw Mill Pond at Kensico. Dec. 5, 1871.” ---gravestone inscription She pauses here, what has been done? One...

Solemn Silent Soldiers Rest by Roy E. Peterson, written May 22, 2020 Solemn, silent soldiers rest Beneath the green earth’s sheltering breast. The bodies that were once in pain Became the ghost...

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  17 March 2019 When bleeds the heart with heartache harsh and deep, And coiling loins are toiling, boiling hot, And tears descend across the landscape steep, Cascading in their anguish, frail and...

  Mastering Magic Set the questing mind on fire with magic, Learn the ancient lore then follow through. Effortlessness must be automatic, Forcing sorcery will never do. Wizardry well done is...

  Oh, What Is Prayer? Oh, what is prayer? Is it a mystery, that bridges earth and heaven in a cry, that reaches to the infinite? A sigh, A groan, a whisper, tears that come to be admixed from faith...

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...

Hummingbird Communion I watch them play at dawn of day, as molten gold is splashed their way, on feathers flecked with flashing green and rubies fused in morning’s beam, where sleepers dream and...

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...

  O do not chasten me with tales of fine __Fresh wells of wisdom and of warriors bold, __Or sacred veins of Ethiopian gold, Your more than oracles or muses nine, For I've drunk deep of a more...

  My Last Duchess The Duke of Ferrara recalls his last wife. by Robert Browning That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now: Fra...

  I. The rats infesting Kathmandu Airport Appear to co-exist in peace with man And have, it seems, since local time began, Been treated each like some great Juggernaut. Their teeming numbers...

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...

  New York poet Joe Tessitore challenges poets to begin a poem with these words:   My country used to be...   Post your poem in the comments section below. (Poems should be...

  I Loved You... I loved you, and I probably still do, and for a while, the feeling may remain, But let my love no longer trouble you... I do not wish to cause you any pain I loved you, and the...

FIRST PLACE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F96xN0VV7JU The Virus and the Cure by Rob Crisell One hundred years of tyranny, One hundred years of pain and lies. If communists of China win, The...

all poems by Bruce Dale Wise   The Pilot by Air Weelbed Suc I saw him flying overhead, a pilot in a plane, and looking down, he gazed upon the anguish and the pain. Although I saw compassion in...

  Piracy is now endemic to the Somali coast, since the West will do nothing to stop it. —News item, 2008 I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. —T.S. Eliot Mermaids, sing me pirate...

Better Stock Than You after Henry Lawson’s "Prouder Man Than You" by Beverly Stock Your tome of pride be shattered, I’m from better Stock than you. You don’t treat all as equals, And I think...

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...

  Tennyson thought it better “to have loved and lost, than…” Well, you know the rest. Of course this begs the question most of us can only guess. Is losing ever really good, or is this just...

St. Piran (Feast Day: March 5) A rhupunt Irish heathens, Unbelieving, Strapped poor Piran To a stone then Rolled him over. A cliff! Cut-throats They came to gloat. Though stones don’t...

  In the midst of free-verse critics’ Smug, inchoate analytics __Seasoned with self-righteous pedantry, There are poets who are striving To achieve success reviving __Classical and formal...