Poetry

It's first of sweaty, sweltering daybreaks of summer new. The fewer trailing steps of parting spring are still moist-fresh with drakes' claw prints and redolent green pollen specks. The waters in the troughs and dew on leaves bid their tearful adieus with vapour-hands looking athwart through narrow foliar sieves at...

“Only fools are positive.”  “You sure about that?” “I’m positive.” ―The Three Stooges “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” "Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.” “In a time of deceit telling the truth is...

  While strolling around an illustrious lair, I was caught by a breeze of regret in the air, For gazing I was on old buildings of stone, All graced with such courage and dignity their own, With worthy exploits and a mind once refined, These guardians of masses, once seeking...

Winners announced here. Scroll down and read the comments section to enjoy all of the submissions. What has no subject one can tell, Yet tries to make it ring a bell? What makes you scratch your head and think, “How does this blather even link?” RULES: Write a rhyming riddle...

by Dusty Grein Like many of the old French refrain forms, the kyrielle originated in the 15th century with the traveling troubadours. It is a rhymed form, written in either 2 line couplets, or 4 line stanzas (also known as quatrains). Each couplet or quatrain contains a repeating line or...

Born at Constantinople in 1762 of a French father and Greek mother, André Chénier grew up in pre-revolutionary France and studied at Paris. Well-read, and enamored with ancient Greece, he is considered one of the last classicists in verse, and for his sentiment, a precursor to the romantics. He was executed...

03.27.18 A smattering of rain above a hall That holds her earthy fragments, broken, spent, A woman who, in life, out-did them all, And e’en in death defies the elements. O, what would she make now of her dear France, Beset by enemies who walk among us, Tracing our very...

Written upon reading the book How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World. The beast once foretold for the end of days Crouched in a Karl Marx statue erected Last month in Germany, where it displays A villain’s face now praised and respected. The beast’s scales are the merchandise...

Little Girl She's fishing in a rock pool just abandoned by the sea She's too engrossed within her world to notice you and me. She sprawls to draw a picture open book upon the sand Great masters never wielded so delicate a hand. Her rainbow spreads across the page to...

Note: Joseph Charles MacKenzie would like to offer a 25% discount on the first edition hardcover of Sonnets for Christ the King to his fellow poets and readers of the Society of Classical Poets, in gratitude for their many edifying comments. Just click here or on the book cover image...

by James Sale FORMAL COMPLAINTS by Joseph S. Salemi, Somer Rocks Press, 1997 MASQUERADE by Joseph S. Salemi, Somer Rocks Press, 2005 SKIRMISHES by Joseph S. Salemi, Pivot Press, 2010 I first encountered Joseph Salemi’s work on the pages of The Society of Classical Poets, and a great discovery it...

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) Confucius Institutes "Three things cannot be hidden long: the sun, the moon and truth." —paraphrase of a Buddhist quote by Lu "Reed ABCs" Wei The Chinese Party-Communists use wily socialites, constructing a network of spying, propaganda sites, for outposts called evasively Confucian Institutes, attempting...

Congratulations to the following winners! Thank you to judges Joseph S. Salemi, James Sale, and Damian Robin.   First Place $100 Prize: Ben Foreman, Cascabel, Arizona Cheesemaking Find a way To weigh The whey.   Second Place: James B. Nicola, New York, New York Trip of a Lifetime The place within. Shall...

To Make a Poet “A man can learn the art of poetry,” You say, “and many learn this art by me.” Poetry teacher, render something clear: Tell me, how do you teach a man to hear?   The Erudite Poet Strange use of words, Professor! And a stranger way to...

  I may have borne them each, but it was you, Whose shoulders carried weight I never knew, You set the bar so high, so straight, so true, The surest, strongest Dad?  Well, that was you. I may have dried their tears, but it was you, Who made them get...

Form Sonnet Turn the page and write again today Make something come out of an eager mind Make something in a new and different way In something both of earthy and refined For when I strive it seems that I can find What I am looking for in forms like...

See notes below for background and allusions. Olivia: Daughter, shall we sit and grieve together, And tie our two bêtes noires up with a tether? You had Ezra Pound and I had Yeats: Two poets now enshrined among the greats. God knows it was no picnic. We both fell For...

A short film by Gleb Zavlanov. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxnDmkKqaF4&feature=youtu.be Sonnet 18 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,...

  Everlasting Chesterton The author, G.K. Chesterton: A playful epigramist, A master of the terse bon mot, And witty dithyrambist. He loathed pomposity and claimed (And I believe quite rightly) That angels fly simply because They take themselves so lightly. A staunch defender of his faith, He was a Roman...

  I Love This Life a rondeau I love this life in spite of all the trying times and every wall I must tear down to find success, although sometimes my happiness is thwarted, slowing to a crawl. When lofty expectations fall back to the earth, when I feel small...

Curtain Up! Sunset and the robins sing, nightingales reply song that summer evenings bring, weeping willows sigh from lawns and from thickets a chorus of crickets ____serenades but remains out of sight as we stroll hand-in-hand while this heavenly band ____entertains in the silver moonlight.   The Dance of Life Performance of unending grace,...

  The sky boiled, As the earth ruffled, Clouds blew past, And the soil buckled. The dead came forth, And stood in wait, Believers noticed, Heavens Gate. As they watched, It opened wide, He bid them come, They stepped inside. They floated light, Went up above, Now eternity, To spend...

These three sonnets come from the newly released poetry book Organ Harvest, by Damian Robin, which exposes the murder of prisoners of conscience, particularly peaceful Falun Gong practitioners, for their organs in communist China today. For more information about this atrocity visit Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting.   Hard To...

by Con Chapman Nyla Matuk and I have a few things in common; we are both poets (or in my case, claim to be), and we both know what sumptuary laws are, she having written a book of poems using that term as its title.  Me?  I wrote a white paper comparing...

Canto 2 is part of a sequence of 33 Cantos called The English Cantos that James Sale is attempting to write in the style – and using the terza rima – of Dante. His aim is to create a contemporary epic of heaven and hell that stands four-square against the...

Wild Strawberry On summer strolls, I often find. Wild strawberry flowering in the wood, White leaf, gold bud, my cheerless mood Is ruffled clear, as fragrant wind Blows equally through flower, through mind, And makes it plainly understood, That I am one with nature's brood, To cone, am fused, to...

I have not been to Medford, nor Milan; I have not seen a war, nor won the peace; I’ve risen to six thousand cloudy dawns that – not once – promised sun, and storms to cease. I have not stood to spurn the March of Time; nor have I dreamed...

Sometimes, when the light and the mists of the day _Settle holy and soft on the edge of the night, When the sights and the sounds of the world melt away, _And the vision that lives in the soul takes flight, __That feeling comes on I felt since I was...

for Czesław Miłosz For a moment as brief and long as eternity he sees what the blind man sees in the blink of an eye: a sun that never sets, forms wrought from gold, purity before it falls or is restored to grace, the grey sky beheld from the far...

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) The Cat in the Red MAGA Hat by Carb Deliseuwe Eugenior Joseph took girlfriend and mom on Mother's Day to Cheesecake Factory, Miami, for a piece of cake. Though he was simply having a good day, how dare he flaunt and bring a bright...

My Garden Lush, fresh-pruned verdure shades the cobbled path, It bursts with rich-hued blossoms strewn about Whence sweet aromas waft, blend, and enswathe, And droops with luscious, nectar-swollen fruit. But leaves spread greedily to hoard the light; And tendrils curl to choke a rival stem. And upstarts rise amid the...

The intricacies of script and figure are amazing. Kudos to the faithful who made contributions large or small. By far this volume is the greatest ever to present illuminated gospel. Ink was carefully applied to skins of calves bred for this very purpose. Just to think of such devotion—nothing done...

The Seabirds Seagulls, on the air they glide, Over the waves to the land; Soaring across the sky, so wide, To softly land on the sand. Pelicans, floating in the sky, Upon the wind, so free; Across the sunset, up so high, Then dive down to the sea. Invisibly, the...

Translation by David B. Gosselin   If I from this darkened valley Where the gloomy vapors creep Might by some wonder swiftly flee My soul could blessedly weep! Gazing upon this pure serene Eternal hills through heaven fare, Had I wings to climb this scene My spirit would scale the...

. . Boasted Viridian Said Viridian Green to Cerulean Blue, “The waves would be boring without me and you, The crashing unflashing, the sheen without glow, Silver unplugged: not luminous Bro.” . . Of Weeding and Air Conditioning No facial expression announcing the work No special confession "look I didn't...

Song of Us Face to face, polite and careful, Tentative we were, and prayerful, Neither one of us would dare pull More from this than met the eye. . . . Yet Side by side we worked together, Hands of flesh with hands of leather, And we slowly pondered whether...

  Napoleon in New Orleans So the sun of Austerlitz has set. I had many triumphs, but it’s the few defeats – Leipzig, Waterloo especially – I struggle to forget. I struggled to rearrange all of Europe as I alone saw fit. Quite reasonably, it didn’t submit. Was I Jacob...

Poet's Note: In this sonnet I'm paying tribute to the patriotic bikers who make their annual pilgrimage to Washington DC to participate in Rolling Thunder's First Amendment Demonstration Run every year on the Sunday before Memorial Day.  While the bike run through the capital does get its minute of news...

By James A. Tweedie Call me a snob but I am generally attracted to what is commonly referred to as “great art” or the “masterpieces.” Over the years I have looked at famous paintings and I have looked at less famous paintings. I have decided that famous paintings are famous...

Heritage as Hope I saw the cricket scene in evening light, In Windsor light with calm men moving through The evening air and dressed in cricket white. Long centuries are contained beneath the blue Of evening sky which folds the chestnut blooms In its embrace as two teams play by...