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...
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...
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...
Review: ‘The Stargazers,’ A First Book of Poems by James McKee The Society April 9, 2020 Essays, Poetry, Reviews by T.M. Moore James McKee, The Stargazers (Atmosphere Press, 2020), $17.99 James McKee’s inaugural foray into verse publishing offers a panoply of poetic forms, themes, images, and delights. The Stargazers...
Review: Poetry by Theresa Rodriguez The Society November 26, 2019 Essays, Poetry, Reviews 7 Comments by James Sale Sonnets, 2nd edition. Shanti Arts, 2020 Jesus and Eros, Bardsinger Books, 2014 Theresa Rodriguez is a relatively new and exciting poet on the pages of The Society of Classical Poets. As a...
On Wendy Cope’s Wasteland Limericks (Essay) The Society May 15, 2019 Culture, Essays, Humor, Poetry, Reviews 5 Comments by Lew Icarus Bede The way I dealt with T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland was to write a poem, equally desperate, in that same allusive style—with notes. That unpublished poem Cicadas' Voices, written in the...
Review: “Profane and Sacred Love” by William Ruleman The Society March 14, 2019 Beauty, Essays, Poetry, Reviews 2 Comments William Ruleman: Profane and Sacred Love, Feather Books, 2002 and reprint 2014 by James Sale Having read some excellent poetry by William Ruleman on the pages of the SCP I determined to buy a collection so...
Review: In the Measuring, Carol Smallwood, Shanti Arts 2018 The Society November 3, 2018 Beauty, Essays, Poetry, Reviews 12 Comments by James Sale Carol Smallwood In the Measuring is a substantial new collection of 77 poems by Carol Smallwood. Carol is well-known to readers of The Society of Classical Poets, as her poems regularly...
Review: Selected Poems from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, Translated by Helen Palma The Society October 17, 2018 Beauty, Culture, Essays, Poetry, Reviews 10 Comments by Joseph Charles MacKenzie Read the Selected Poems from Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal online. Purchase the book here. Two arts are beautifully displayed in Helen Palma’s Selected Poems from...
Review: Two Poetry Books by James B. Nicola The Society September 24, 2018 Beauty, Culture, Essays, Humor, Poetry, Reviews 3 Comments by James Sale Wind in the Cave, Finishing Line Press, 2017 Out of Nothing, Shanti Arts Publishing, 2018 Recently in a poetry review of another poet on these pages I commented that the poet had included 33...
Review: ‘Organ Harvest’ by Damian Robin The Society July 20, 2018 Culture, Essays, Human Rights in China, News of Note, Poetry, Reviews 5 Comments Organ Harvest by Damian Robin, published by Fulton Verse, 2018. Read three sonnets from the work here. by James Sale Damian Robin is well known to readers of the Society of Classical Poets web...
Review: Three Poetry Books by Joseph S. Salemi The Society June 20, 2018 Culture, Essays, Poetry, Reviews 33 Comments 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...
Rediscovering Percy Shelley’s Greatest Work: ‘Prometheus Unbound, with Other Poems’ The Society January 25, 2018 Beauty, Culture, Essays, Poetry, Reviews 7 Comments 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...
Review: What Is Shen Yun All About? The Society January 19, 2018 Beauty, Culture, Deconstructing Communism, Essays, Human Rights in China, Music, Performing Arts, Poetry, Reviews 38 Comments 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...
Book Review: Groans From Old Bones by William F.E. Morley (1920 – ) The Society September 25, 2017 Essays, Poetry, Reviews 4 Comments Click here to download the entire book as a pdf file. By Leonard Dabydeen In the fraternity of poetic minds we can luxuriate joyously on the richness of old age, or on becoming old but fresh as sunshine...
Review: Wolfe and Other Poems by Donald Mace Williams, Wundor Editions, 2017 The Society September 2, 2017 Classical Literature, Essays, Poetry, Reviews 3 Comments By James Sale Donald Mace Williams Wolfe and Other Poems is an extraordinarily good collection of poems, clearly written by a veteran writer. The underlying credo of the collection is very aptly summed...
Classical Book Review: The Icelandic Sagas: Tales of Kings and Heroes (Folio) Joshua Philipp August 16, 2017 Classical Literature, Essays, Poetry, Reviews By Joshua Philipp Abbie Farwell Brown described the far north in his 1902 book, "In The Days of Giants," as "the land of the midnight sun, where summer is green and pleasant, but winter is a terrible time...
Essay: Leo Yankevich: un Coup d’œil (A Glance) The Society July 27, 2017 Deconstructing Communism, Essays, Reviews 48 Comments This essay was written in 2007 and has remained unpublished until now. by Ludiew E. Sarceb Few of the contemporary poets with whom I am familiar have any profound sense of history (and, therefore, of our...
Classical Book Review: John Keats: Poetry of Quiet Longing and Natural Beauty (Folio) Joshua Philipp July 12, 2017 Essays, Poetry, Reviews 1 Comment By Joshua Philipp The poetry of John Keats is known for its light and dreamy nature. Even in his time, in the early 1800s, he was considered old-fashioned, both in his topics and in his style of writing. He...
Classical Book Review: Dante’s Vita Nuova and Reflections on Divine Love (Folio) Joshua Philipp June 20, 2017 Classical Literature, Essays, Poetry, Reviews, Translation 4 Comments By Joshua Philipp The Italian poet Dante Alighieri is best known for his journey into hell, purgatory, and heaven which he told of in his "Divine Comedy." But before he took that journey, he took a very...
Book Review: Hare Krishna by Mahathi, Prowess Publishing, 2017 The Society June 14, 2017 Classical Literature, Essays, Poetry, Reviews 7 Comments By Sandeep Kumar Mishra There are two things that came to my mind when I read the book Hare Krishna by Mahathi: First, in this modern era in which every person thinks himself a poet, the shape, size and...
Review: The Lyre Speaks True, James Sale, 2016 The Society June 5, 2017 Essays, Poetry, Reviews 2 Comments By Joseph Charles MacKenzie James Sale, whom I happen to consider England’s best on the subject, states: “To write poetry with any degree of power, and to create true beauty without which the effort is...
Classical Book Review: A Brief Look at ‘The Kojiki’ (Tuttle) Joshua Philipp May 18, 2017 Classical Literature, Essays, Poetry, Reviews, Translation 3 Comments By Joshua Philipp The Japanese creation story begins in a time of primordial chaos, and from this the god Izanagi and the goddess Izanami emerge to create the Japanese islands. This is the first tale in The...
Review: In Hubble’s Shadow by Carol Smallwood, Shanti Arts Publishing, 2017 The Society April 24, 2017 Essays, Poetry, Reviews By Alex Phuong The night sky has served as the inspiration for many poets and writers, from Longfellow’s “The Light of Stars” to “Stars” by Robert Frost, and still does. Profoundly and...
Review: Apocalypse by Frederick Turner, Ilium Press, 2016 The Society March 19, 2017 Epic, Essays, Poetry, Reviews 30 Comments By James Sale There are nine Muses of poetry, daughters of Zeus or some say Apollo, and the Titaness, Mnenosyne, goddess of memory, past and future. And of these nine the most important is Kalliope, she of...
Book Review: Woodland Poems by Douglas Thornton The Society August 15, 2016 Essays, News of Note, Poetry, Reviews 1 Comment By James Sale This is a curious collection from Douglas Thornton: ambitious, epic in its style, containing many great lines and ideas, but also strangely baffling, quirky, and—I have to say—awkward....
Poetry Book Review: James Manlow’s When We Were Slugs from Parkgate Press The Society February 17, 2016 Essays, News of Note, Reviews By James Sale There are two things I don’t like about “When We Were Slugs”, the new poetry collection from James Manlow, the erstwhile Poet Laureate for Bournemouth, England (pictured above). The...
Review: The Parliament of Poets by Frederick Glaysher, Earthrise Press, 2012 The Society January 25, 2016 Epic, Essays, News of Note, Reviews 9 Comments By James Sale Frederick Glaysher claims to be an epic poet, and furthermore to have written an epic poem, The Parliament of Poets. This is a huge claim and an astonishing ambition. Is he? Has he? Before...
Book Review: ‘Poetry Is’ by Jose Garcia Villa The Society November 6, 2015 Essays, News of Note, Reviews 2 Comments Review By James Sale This weekend two different things coincided. First, I finished reading ‘Poetry Is: Jose Garcia Villa’s Philosophy of Poetry’ edited by Robert L King (Ateneo University Press),...