The Chained Muse

Clarity and Obscurity:The Essences of Classicism and Modernism Compared

Classical and modern poetry are inarguably different. Indeed, modernism’s chief boast is its break with classicism and tradition more...

Late Summer

Late summer, and the silvery undersides Of the leaves shimmer in the hazy air, And the cicadas’ song wells up in tides That wash over my...

Van Eyck: True Beauty, a Foretaste Of Divine Wisdom

Jan Van Eyck (1390-1441). How might we grasp the intention of this great Flemish painter, despite the five hundred years separating us?...

Death Letter

The barrel stave was riven where she drank. Knots nestled, she lay on the cooling board a trestle made of evenly sawed planks. I’d built...

Listening to "Little Gidding"

It would seem with the opening of “Little Gidding” that Eliot has relapsed once again into his habit of opaque language, obscure...

Safe Harbor

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts (1969-2008) The sea at night seems an alembic of dreams— the moans of the gulls, the foghorns’ bawlings. A...

Poetry, Art and Civilization Today: Reflections on Shelley's "A Defence of Poetry"

In honor of the 200th anniversary of Percy Bysshe Shelley's death, The Chained Muse is proud to present a month-long celebration of life...

Lines from Laolao Pavillion & Other Poetry

Lines from Laolao Ting Pavilion by Li Bai (701-762) loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch The spring breeze knows partings...

Song of the Somme

(1st July - 18th November, 1916) to commemorate an omniversary May Seamus Heaney drown in his own mud! His way of writing isn't what I...

Child in the Café

Sat in the toy corner, withdrawn from the conversations around him. He opens a world of imagination, where the wooden blocks are windows...

To Do List

Laundry. Vacuum. Roar at the sky. Get cat food. Get Pentagon de-funded. Win imaginary argument with God. Lose actual argument with God....

Beyond the Lines: Shelley's "Ozymandias"

In honor of the 200th anniversary of Percy Bysshe Shelley's death, The Chained Muse is proud to present a month-long celebration of life...