On 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,...
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By Adam Sedia
- Jan 27, 2021
- 6 min
Beyond the Lines: Ode on Melancholy
An ode on melancholy might conjure the worst stereotypes of poetry: restless youth agonizing over imagined existential crises – a...
By Daniel Leach
- Dec 6, 2020
- 20 min
An Evening in the ‘Simultaneity of Eternity’—with Shakespeare, Keats, and William Warfield
The 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 Chung
- Oct 26, 2020
- 10 min
Why the Poetic Principle is Imperative for Statecraft
Today, 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. Gosselin
- Sep 16, 2020
- 5 min
Book Review: Fatal Women by Kevin Roberts
The poems of Kevin Roberts (1969-2008) are indeed an anomaly among the sea of “Modernist,” “Formalist” and “Contemporary” verses that...
By Adam Sedia
- Sep 15, 2020
- 41 min
Clarity and Obscurity: Eliot's Masks
T.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. Gosselin
- Aug 28, 2020
- 9 min
Profiles 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. Gosselin
- Aug 26, 2020
- 4 min
Book Review: Voices on the Wind by Daniel Leach
It 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. Salemi
- Jul 18, 2020
- 6 min
Plain English
The poetry scene, like every human activity, has its cant and its catchwords. As Robert Louis Stevenson said in his Virginibus...
By James Sale
- Apr 13, 2020
- 8 min
Poetry and the Muses Part IV
Poetry, as we have discussed in earlier parts of this article series, depends upon the Muses and accessing the deeper self or soul within...
By Adam Sedia
- Mar 16, 2020
- 4 min
Beyond the Lines: Frost's "Fire and Ice"
Anyone who has ever attended a commencement ceremony in the United States has certainly heard Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” often recited...
By Siham Karami
- Dec 21, 2019
- 24 min
Ghazal Culture: Exalted Nomads and Love’s Elusive Gate
Although known as a unique poetic form with roots in Arabia, the ghazal’s history suggests it is also a cultural phenomenon with an...
By Adam Sedia
- Oct 30, 2019
- 28 min
Clarity and Obscurity IV: Yeats and the Occult
Modernism produces obscure poetry because it denies the existence of absolute truth. Without a fundamental truth to reveal, poetry is...
By David B. Gosselin
- Oct 5, 2019
- 14 min
Edgar Allan Poe and the Mask of the 20th Century
BUT for the cruel aspersions upon the character and life of America’s poetic genius, EDGAR ALLAN POE, this volume would have remained...
By James Sale
- Sep 23, 2019
- 8 min
Poetry and the Muses III
It has long been observed that whilst the ego is useful in making daily and ordinary decisions in our life, it is less effective when it...
By James Sale
- Jul 29, 2019
- 6 min
Poetry and the Muses Part II
The Muses we understand from Part 1 of this article are the daughters of the future and the past, and more specifically of memory, light,...
By James Sale
- Jul 1, 2019
- 7 min
Poetry and the Muses Part 1
Republished with permission from the author We live in a post-modernist world and its values are everywhere around us; and everywhere...
By David B. Gosselin
- Apr 22, 2019
- 12 min
The Power of Metaphor
Contrary to the sundry definitions of metaphor proffered by school teachers and dictionaries, Metaphor is not some mere literary device;...
By Adam Sedia
- Apr 13, 2019
- 5 min
Beyond the Lines: “Mont Blanc” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
In his essay “A Defence of Poetry,” Shelley described a poem as “the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth.” His sweeping...
By Adam Sedia
- Mar 17, 2019
- 20 min
Clarity and Obscurity: The Essences of Classicism and Modernism Compared Part II -''Concreteness''
In my last essay, I discussed the difference between classical and modernist poetry as a difference of worldviews. Classicism views the...