Beauty

Blasted granite marks the trail Guttered through eternal rock. Windborne smoke and ashes veil Mountain peaks through which we walk. Upward blue sky’s endlessness; Downward glimpse of lakes below. High Sierra wilderness— Gleaming stone bedecked with snow. Onward towards our destination, Passing juniper and pine, To the place called Desolation,...

by Evan Mantyk Where is Homer? The epic poems of the famous Greek bard were the cornerstone of education for young Socrates, Alexander the Great, Roman emperors, William Shakespeare, and every serious scholar in the Western world until the last 50 years. Yet, today they have nearly disappeared from school...

Birthday Greetings As themes show signs of nature's stay, And time’s propitious dates hold sway, The evidence augurs your bloom, From sculptured years that now have hewn A shapened belle upon a theme, Appears today, your beauty’s seam, Enjoined! auspicious perfect pair, The past, has futured you so fair.  ...

Sonnet 201. The Force that Through the Green Fuse Pulls the Poem. Written in the Dylan Thomas Museum, Swansea. July 2017 Oh to be the Poet! Love the words And see them wound around the teeth and tongue, To shake the shingle from the seas-absurd, To dance upon the dragons’...

Solid Ground Our greatest philosopher David Hume, Whose logical doubts leave naught to assume, Used skeptical arguments he had found To leave nothing on solid ground Until a Kant came walking along And pointed out where David went wrong With help from a little a priori The world was just...

by Joseph Charles MacKenzie Read the Selected Poems from Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal online. Email submissions@classicalpoets.org for details on purchasing the book. Two arts are beautifully displayed in Helen Palma’s Selected Poems from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (Pivot Press, New York, 2014). The first and most obvious is...

  I woke this day beside the two-way Wye, at peace with wars too often waged inside between the push of how, the pull of why. The river, calm against the ebbing tide, displayed an ease I had not seen before, and I was easy too (or close, at least, for one with...

United They Fall Exhausted armies cling to noble trees along the margin of a meadow mown two weeks ago.  It's fifty-five degrees, and summer's long campaign is at an end, the bugles stilled, except when taps is blown -- for here and there a feckless golden horde, a red brigade...

Ah, now comes the mellow season, Marks its time with jackdaws caws. Autumn with its rusty reason Offers forth its season’s laws. Now no more the pretty laces, Florals found along the way. Brackish forms in darker traces, Longer shadows, shorter day. Autumn wears its gown of orange Trampling out...

  For Elizabeth La Cienega slept on a muted afternoon At old Las Golodrinas, when I spied a nest Of swallows beneath the age-worn latias, hewn By a hand that is gone with the days that were blessed; And I promised to knit for you a pair of gloves From...

In his bedsitter years, he was alone And all his dreams were haunted by some girl More wonderful than any precious stone Who’d bring fulfilment to his empty world. The loneliness pressed on him, dense as coal. Thinking of her was all that kept him strong. She was the magic...

by Charles Eager William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1770—the same year as gave us Beethoven, Hegel, and Hölderlin—and died at the age of eighty, rich in the knowledge of his huge accomplishments, in Rydal Mount, Westmorland, in 1850. In those eighty years, Wordsworth brought a unique poetry...

Death Is the Cooling Night by Heinrich Heine Death is the cooling night, Life is the sultry day, But now darkness settles And I long for respite. Outside my window looms a tree; In it sings the young Nightingale. She sings only of Love— Even in dreams, it reaches me....

For John McCain, Ernest C. Brace, & Alexander Solzhenitsyn I season my pen with the sonnet's blood, And do not reason with a moonless sky, Thus, in durance, we hearken to the wry Whisper of words from the drifting brood Of dreams courting a wistful brotherhood; Ah, now I need...

a Petrarchan sonnet Life’s hills have been trampled since first we met, That mad, magic moment long years ago, When your smile lit fires in the candle’s glow And trapped me forever in Venus’ net. Though with time we’ve mellowed, grown peaceful, yet Your power’s still as potent. Wherever I...

  Pure of any mortal mote ___and boundless (but for sight): The deep dry sky of Autumn ___inscribes the shadows bright. (For what could dusty leaves conceal ___from such an endless eye? What crackled branch could hide the earth ___from all-consuming sky?) Replete with light, devoid of warmth: ___a strong...

  The butterfly, the sea anemone, And snowflake, though possessive of the true Design of grace and perfect symmetry, Seem crude and ugly when compared to you. The stars that line the deep, black sky like grains Of salt, the sun that ripens like a peach, The Northern Lights that...

The Coworker A “need-to-know” it’s called in Personnel and I’m just high enough to need to know she’s going through that quiet hell of watching someone’s life she loves recede. A bit more hollowed every day, a bit more bleakly by his suffering obsessed, she does her work, she types,...

Painted, woody there it stands, this door behind which kingdom fans. Bright with order, calm with ease, a wooden plank with hidden seas. A plight to pick which path is best, the fallen stairs or the door’s behest. I write to you in ink to say, take the path which...

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 poems in his collection and speculated whether or not that had any significance;...

. The Country Club To think about a country club Begun for whisky in a tub, Distilled from fields of golden corn In a town where I was born, For folks to gather, have a blast In golden days, in time long past. . Rushing There is no right way...

Check-Mate by a Pawn for my sons We parry, thrust: This game of wits, Where each pawn must Deflect your hits. My mounted knight Skips overhead, First back, then right; Your knight is dead. But you riposte, With bishop swift, My rook, engrossed, Forgets to shift. And then, I spot...

Sonnet for a Cosmetic Company Ah Youth! To whom each maiden plights her troth To coax and woo each winsome charm to stay ‘Tis difficult to match your coat to cloth So ill designed and irksome in its way. Synthetic paints can never reproduce The artistry of Nature’s first success...

I. I’ve awed at the Atlantic’s bluest depths, and peered at the Pacific’s deepest blues; the warm blue summer waters of Key West, and cold blue winter on the Charles, too. I’ve watched the moon rise up above the Thames, the stars upon a Minnesota lake; I’ve seen the morning...

Lay your hand in mine dear, ___Lay your hand in mine; If you will lay your hand in mine We shall like eager, fruitful vines ___Intertwine: Then I’ll be yours ___And you’ll be mine. Place your lips to mine dear, ___Place your lips to mine; If you will place your...

Ye boundless vaults of heaven without an end, __Thy silvery fields of azure stars unfold Above the earth, and verdurous spruces bend __Toward the western halls of mellow gold; There, through their branches, amber rays illume __The resting place of an old gothic tower ____That once stood firmly rooted ‘gainst...

I Taught a Lesson to My Toes I taught a lesson to my toes, They’d overstepped the mark, Escaping time and time again From nylon prisons dark. I warned them of the consequence Should they destroy more socks - I’d bare them to the public gaze, Like prisoners in stocks....

a rondeau Cape Disappointment, battered and distressed, Besieged, beset, by brute-force waves hard-pressed As broad and deep Columbia collides With Chinook-whipped Pacific Ocean tides— Leviathans unchained, their fury unsuppressed. Above the windswept surge of trough and crest A sentinel’s cyclopic eye turns west, Revealing what the fading daylight hides; Cape...

Left to Write It isn't difficult to find __the works the masters left behind, and others too have written verse, __some for the better, some for worse. So can there still be ground to break, __and are there chances yet to take; secrets that haven't been revealed, __emotions that remain concealed?...

. Written: March 27, 2022 A Wedding Sonnet To those true cultivators of Zhen Shen Ren,* There is no common form we cannot take: The vows of love said by the finest men Know of no finer sound than what we make. We know the greatest love flows as a...

Three Loves in One We've gathered Love, but only insofar As we have reaped a crop from seeds we've sown. Those hours we cherished our beloved are The most rewarding times we've ever known, Which bears a certain similarity To what occurs through strangers we behold: Each freely-given act of...

a Petrarchan sonnet Highlighting midnight across darkened skies flies the Supermoon hidden in all of its glory; though sightless and somber, a maker of stories soon reaching its perigee, near us it flies. Celestial body whose mystery lies in a facial expression now laden with quarries to whom we confess...

A Life Well Lived a rondeau A life well-lived begins and ends surrounded by the love of friends. The air breathed in and out each lung are signals that songs should be sung, for life’s a blessing God intends A person who can make amends, his honor and his name...

Nobody came today to ask me questions, nor has anyone asked me for anything this afternoon. I have not seen a single graveyard flower In all this merry procession of lights. Forgive me, Master; how little I have died! —César Vallejo (Agape) 1918. Yesterday I heard the Catalan tongue, Some...

Musical Comedy or Doggerel for Dilettantes The Sonata Like a Classical sonata, our day opens with a theme, Whether thrown from bed by thunder or lulled softy from a dream. With our breakfast comes a second theme, which contrasts with the first, And includes both toast and cereal and juice...

Canto 3 is the third canto in the sequence of the English Cantos, the first two of which are available to read on the SCP website. James Sale is attempting in this poem to emulate Dante, and this begins, initially, by descending into a modern day hell. Whilst the poem...

in tribute to James Sale and in memory of Joe M. Ruggier (1956-2018), who first published this poem in The Eclectic Muse (December 2017) Those Thracian hordes who grabbed your garment’s hem— Were they mere slaves to Bacchus’s command? I rather think your song incited them. Your love was one...

Paradox as Explanatory Paradigm in Norman MacCaig’s ‘Summer Farm’ by Phillip Whidden   Summer Farm Straws like tame lightnings lie about the grass And hang zigzag on hedges.  Green as glass The water in the horse-trough shines. Nine ducks go wobbling by in two straight lines. A hen stares at...

Meaningful. Active and interesting. Strong. ___Simply not counting the days, as if stray, ______dreary, unworthy, but making them count, serve, be remembered and blest all along. ___Challenges ought to be faced on the way, ______obstacles scattered for us to surmount. We would meander through deserts at length, ___probe the abysses...

  They stood on the porch, Eyes over the land. The young and old man, Making their plans. The old man spoke out Between his long spits. Tobacco and words Spilt from his lips. “I reckon I’ll cut Those trees over there. They’re blocking the view From Grandmother’s chair. Cut...