Beyond the Lines: Shakespeare's ''Phoenix and the Turtle''
This is a poem I have known and loved for as long as I can remember. It has exerted a charm and fascination for me simply by virtue of...
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By David B. Gosselin
- Apr 13
- 14 min
The World Needs a Renaissance, Not a Reset
Humanity has always had a story and it always will. Depending on our understanding of that story, individuals or humanity as a whole,...
By Adam Sedia
- Apr 2
- 9 min
Why Amanda Gorman Is Not a Poet
Amanda Gorman became something of a phenomenon, fêted as a celebrity from the moment she read her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” amid the...
By Ryan Hamadeh
- Mar 31
- 17 min
Retracing Art
So long have historians traced the beginnings of man, so long have they found the traces of art alongside him. The story of art can also...
By Karel Vereycken
- Mar 27
- 6 min
Some Remarks on Chinese Painting and Its Influence on the West
Between 700 to 1700, and in particular during the Chinese Renaissance under the Song Dynasty (960-1279), China’s greatest contribution to...
By Johnny Payne
- Mar 10
- 3 min
Beyond the Lines: Leda and the Swan
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his...
By Daniel Leach
- Feb 25
- 10 min
Beyond the Lines: Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”
It was out of an atmosphere of intensive study of the classics, impassioned dialogue with his collaborators on creative method, and a...
By Adam Sedia
- Jan 25
- 11 min
The Spice of Life: Metric Variation in Formal Verse
In 1688, John Dryden, England’s first official poet laureate, was deprived of that title for remaining Catholic and replaced with the...
By Karel Vereycken
- Jan 2
- 20 min
On the Track of the Sublime With Hieronymus Bosch
The following article is an edited version of a conference presentation at La Chapelle en Vercors, Spring 2002. “We are ravished by the...
By Philip Nikolayev
- Dec 19, 2021
- 4 min
On Pushkin's Genius
In the West, or at least in the Anglo-Saxon world, the idea of literary genius has fallen by the roadside in our postmodern civilization....
By Mathew Ehret
- Nov 20, 2021
- 7 min
Why Aesthetics Must Govern A Society Worthy Of Political Freedom? Ask the CIA
In the mid-1990s, a series of exposés featured on the London Independent and elsewhere brought a dark secret to light. Many were startled...
By Rosa Tennenbaum
- Nov 13, 2021
- 23 min
1797, The"Year of the Ballad"—In the Poets’ Workshop
The year is 1797. Eight years after the beginning of the French Revolution, all hopes which had initially been placed in this uprising...
By John H. B. Martin
- Nov 6, 2021
- 26 min
De Gustibus (Et Pulchristudinis)
I remembers once leafing through a volume of Allen Ginsberg's poems and coming across one poem with the word “butterfly” in it and...
By Louis Markos
- Nov 1, 2021
- 5 min
Dante: On the Beatific Vision
Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages...
By Adam Sedia
- Oct 29, 2021
- 23 min
Whitman’s Curse: Contemporary Poetry as Solipsism
Contemporary poetry is plagued by several characteristic vices: obscurity, banality, nihilism—each a topic for examination in its own...
By Karel Vereycken
- Sep 24, 2021
- 9 min
Leonardo da Vinci: Painter of Movement
The impact of Leonardo’s artwork on us today reproduces an effect which he himself experienced when looking at the opening of a dark...
By Adam Sedia
- Sep 17, 2021
- 4 min
Beyond the Lines: Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night"
Robert Frost’s talent radiates best from his shorter poems. His poetic voice, naturally laconic, finds its most expressive mode in his...
By Gerald Therrien
- Aug 21, 2021
- 10 min
Shall We Allow Poets in the Republic? Part III
At 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 Markos
- Aug 16, 2021
- 5 min
Dante on Freedom
Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages...
By David B. Gosselin
- Aug 15, 2021
- 15 min
Lessons from a Grecian Urn Part II: The Paradox of the “One” and the “Many”
This is Part II to the series on Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn”. Part I can be found here. Chapter II: What is Poetry? The yearning for...