Poetry

By Carter Davis Johnson In a period where American literature was considered peripheral and amateur, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) helped create a national literature to challenge European...

Jeremiah 52 When Judah rebelled against the Chaldean horde, They sought to gain freedom without help from the Lord, Trusting, instead, in the massive stone of their walls, Like Jericho had before the...

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) Hylas and the Nymphs by Beau Ecs Wilder John William Waterhouse's "Hylas and the Nymphs" must go; enchanting, pretty, water nymphs are far too much to show. Manchester...

I’m born from a forked tongue’s hissing mutter, An ungrounded half-truth, forceless and tame. Just like a spark struck from flint I shudder At greater forces, a delicate flame, But human speech kindles...

  Sun slowly dipping in the western sky; the winds are light and the pine boughs tossing. From their warm, peaceful beds the meek and shy, walk to the river; time for the crossing. To the fields...

  A robin should fly south before the snow, With others in the flocks of migrant birds, Quite safe amid this seas’nal ebb and flow— To miss the chance would surely be absurd! Yet some stay on...

First Place ($500 Prize): C.B. Anderson, Massachusetts “Stonewalls Sometimes a Prison Make” “Praise for the Mother of Summer” “Meritocracy” "Verification" Second Place: Adam Sedia, Indiana “At...

Read about last night's lunar eclipse here. Thoughts on January 31, 2018’s Complete Lunar Eclipse Reflected Glory, full and bright, Transforming inky, blackest night To wonderland of silver-grey, A...

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I wandered, drunk and weary, Over many a quaint and dimlit alley of forgotten doors— While I plodded, barely standing, suddenly I heard a chanting, As of someone softly...

  The Last Time I Saw Paris You have imagined how it was, I expect: Troy’s famous towers burning, the city wrecked, the lines of weeping captives marched away, the streets strewn with corpses, the...

    Sort of Old I take my senior discount at restaurants and stores. I cover up my gray hairs with Clairol reservoirs My bathroom’s filled with potions I slather on my face. AHAs and...

At Lincoln’s Tomb Springfield, Illinois, 2016 Be glad you cannot rise to life and stand Outside that tomb to die again from shame At Illinois, your home, your prairieland, Transformed, yet quick to...

Truman Capote was fired from his job as a copy boy for The New Yorker after he angered Robert Frost. Whose kid this is, I do not know, He seems to have a job here, though. He’s irritating, and quite...

By David B. Gosselin The nature of the subject matter discussed in Dante Alighieri’s lyric poetry, his canzoni, has been debated time after time, generation after generation. While the Dantisti as they...

By Brett Forester Writing but one fine, enduring poem is a remarkable achievement. Writing a book of great poems is an even rarer triumph. Yet in 1820, British Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (born...

  Stone Walls Sometimes a Prison Make What might have happened once in Carolina To folks whose only wish was for some peace Is commonplace within the Wall of China, Where persons are abused without...

  The Garden of the Gods A Cywydd Llosgyrnog When storm clouds hid the Manitou*, They cloaked invaders from his view: Giants* who engendered fright With fearsome height and thundered tread. Their...

  Perked Coffee Things today are bad and getting worse, examples always seem to us abound: service for consumers seems perverse, and music does not have that vinyl sound. My garden pruners, they...

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...

  Lips, soft as velvet, primrose pink, Are rent the blue of bruising ink. They rive and crackle in the cold, Retract in tissue paper folds; Corroded strips as flayed as zinc Teased grey and gaunt,...

  On Reading Ginsburg’s “Howl” Once, I possessed an open mind, Which I assure you was my own. I used it to read Ginsberg’s “Howl” Well, I don’t wish to be unkind But those words seemed...

By Evan Mantyk Advertising for it is everywhere. If you haven’t seen it, you just haven’t been paying attention. A brilliantly colored image depicts a Chinese woman striking an airborne pose. But what is...

  On President Trump’s First Year in Office An earlier version of this poem was published with an explication in The Epoch Times. In Donald Trump we’ve found a man Who can the tides of time...

  The Old Westerns No more heroes on horses named Trigger No more rugged, chapped, white hatted figures The bad guys today do not always wear masks At least not the exact kind they did in the...

We New Yorkers love our real estate. We measure our bliss by the size of our rooms. We all need a place to park our freight. We apartment hunt on our first date in vacated spaces swept with a broom New...

  The Oddity My pen and me set off to sea but washed up feeling useless; the cadent swell invoked a spell and story of Odysseus. While pen-wrecked there I would not hear those rhythmic words...

  Dreams as a Child Remember our lives in dreams as a child, When tingled excitement tickled inside, Surging in giggles which shivered our nerves, As hands clasped in joining’s which laughs only...

By James A. Tweedie These days, William Cowper (November 26, 1731 - April 25, 1800) isn’t likely to be found on anyone’s list of “Top Twenty English Poets.” Fifty years after his death, however,...

  Glacier Sleeping mistress of the land, Whose long repose the ages span, We tread across your fissured gown Until we find in looking down, We can at last discern and trace The chiseled beauty of...

When Horae's icy carpets sweep the dale And the heavy boughs shed their frozen tears, The earth is covered with her icy veil And mortals lashed with Time’s cold sneers. Yet let us not run from such...

  A Great Divide "...to form a more perfect union" I walk to the edge of a great divide and I try to talk with the other side but they do not reciprocate they tell me that I'm filled with hate I...

  I have been here before, when heaven cried, All my love and longing locked up inside, Where the green grass glowed in the falling rain, So why have I come to this place again? To the place where...

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) The Filtering of English in Iran by Delir Ecwabeus "...nor did anything terrify the people so much as those encomiums on his Majesty's mercy..." -Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's...

  Beauties sashay across the sand Norma Jean look-a-likes hand in hand Times before bikinis and thongs Transistor radios blaring songs Sunny shoreline lush and palmy Simpler times when thoughts...

Whenever Terror Strikes Whenever terror strikes, wherever death enshrouds the land, its people live in fright of crowded places. Masses hold their breath. Perhaps another truck will crash tonight. We...

Where have the roses gone from my garden? Look how those left freeze in cold winter wind; Nothing I can do nor ask for pardon To save the lovely petals as they’re thinned. Here in the kitchen I gaze in...

Sonnet XLI - Gifts of the Magi A grander throne than Solomon’s of old, Though wrought of rough-hewn wood and winter hay, Received the royal deference of gold From one who watched a star, by night and...

  Winter Wore a Raiment White Winter wore a raiment white, Checkered blue as snow in shade, As he worked, amid the leaves, In the Autumn golden sheaves, Soon my season’s time will come, Ever...

  Nature’s pillars, which have borne Earth’s breath for ages, Are now crumbling into dust... Still, more keep falling, Shattered by our storm of wants, as outer changes Echo those inside us,...

  The Exclusive Inclusive I heard about a tender troop, Whose commission was to give Love like a ministry serves soup; They seemed, oh, so inclusive. This sounded like the group for me; Yes, I...