By Gerald TherrienAug 21, 202110 minShall We Allow Poets in the Republic? Part IIIAt the end of part 2 of ‘Shall We Allow Poets in the Republic’, we came upon the proposition that poets either must be ‘possessed and...
By Louis MarkosAug 16, 20215 minDante on FreedomAuthor’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages...
By David B. GosselinAug 15, 202115 minLessons from a Grecian Urn Part II: The Paradox of the “One” and the “Many”This is Part 2 to the series on Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn”. Part 1 can be found here. Chapter II: What is Poetry? The yearning for...
By Adam SediaAug 8, 20214 minBeyond the Lines: Shelley's "Ozymandias"Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is one of his shortest works, but also one of his best known, anthologized to the point of ubiquity....
By David B. GosselinAug 5, 202118 minLessons from a Grecian Urn Part I: Truth and Beauty in ArtAn object is perfect, when everything manifold in it accords with the unity of its concept; it is beautiful, when its perfection appears...
By Louis MarkosJul 9, 20215 minDante: On LustImagine if Dante had been given the gift, not only to peer into the twenty-first century, but to correspond with we who live in that most...
By Gerald TherrienJun 12, 20217 minShall We Allow the Poets in the Republic? Part IIAt the end of the article – ‘Shall We Allow Poets in the Republic’ – we saw that reason obliged us to ban poetry from our republic, and...
By Gerald TherrienMay 16, 202110 minShall We Allow Poets in the Republic?Much has been written and read about Plato banning poets from the republic – why would he do that? The poet John Milton wrote a humorous...
By Mathew EhretApr 4, 20216 minLeaping from Despair into Hope: The Lesson of Rembrandt’s Resurrection for Today’s Troubled WorldToday, the world finds itself moving through a turbulent transformation between two systems. Collapsing at a faster rate every day are...
By Cynthia ChungFeb 15, 202122 minOn Optimism: A Chant of Darkness“So my optimism is no mild and unreasoning satisfaction. A poet once said I must be happy because I did not see the bare, cold present,...
By Adam SediaJan 27, 20216 minBeyond the Lines: Ode on MelancholyAn ode on melancholy might conjure the worst stereotypes of poetry: restless youth agonizing over imagined existential crises – a...
By Daniel LeachDec 6, 202020 minAn Evening in the ‘Simultaneity of Eternity’—with Shakespeare, Keats, and William WarfieldThe following is a workshop and dialogue on the art of classical poetic recitation. We at The Chained Muse believe that a revival of...
By Cynthia ChungOct 26, 202010 minWhy the Poetic Principle is Imperative for StatecraftToday, perhaps more so than at any time in history, we are experiencing a divide between what is considered to be the “domain” or...
By David B. GosselinSep 16, 20205 minBook Review: Fatal Women by Kevin RobertsThe poems of Kevin Roberts (1969-2008) are indeed an anomaly among the sea of “Modernist,” “Formalist” and “Contemporary” verses that...
By Adam SediaSep 15, 202041 minClarity and Obscurity: Eliot's MasksT.S. Eliot means many things to many different people. Like Yeats he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. In the academy he numbers among...
By David B. GosselinAug 28, 20209 minProfiles in Poetry: Johann Wolfgang Goethe"The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation." —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) remains...
By David B. GosselinAug 26, 20204 minBook Review: Voices on the Wind by Daniel LeachIt is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can...
By Joseph S. SalemiJul 18, 20206 minPlain EnglishThe poetry scene, like every human activity, has its cant and its catchwords. As Robert Louis Stevenson said in his Virginibus...
By Daniel LeachMay 10, 202019 minPercy Bysshe Shelley and the Motivführung Principle in English PoetryFrom the beginning of mankind’s existence, as a truly human culture, Man has struggled to express the seemingly inexpressible—the idea...
By James SaleApr 13, 20208 minPoetry and the Muses Part IVPoetry, as we have discussed in earlier parts of this article series, depends upon the Muses and accessing the deeper self or soul within...