“The Gift of Lilies”
If angels plucked up blossoms In endless, light-drowned skies, With curved sextuple petals Glowing radiant white, Pearlescent in noon’s light, They shine before my eyes. […]
“Two Hearts”
Two hearts beat in two separate breasts, Two separate souls with separate quests, Each to each unseen, unknown. They beat alone. They beat alone. […]
Shelley’s “Ozymandias” and the Immortality of Art
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” remains one of the best-crafted sonnets, as much for its vivid description as for the breadth and depth of its meaning. It is about much more than the futility of tyranny: It is about the power of art. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is one of his shortest works, but also one [...]
Behind the Lines: Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice”
For all the poem’s structural simplicity, Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” perfectly encapsulates the poetic concept of complex metaphor. The metaphor, in which the universe mirrors the human soul, has two contrasting components: fire and ice, the personal and the cosmic, the real and the theoretical, desire and hate. Anyone who has ever attended a [...]
“Thermidor: An Ode to Reaction”
I The Dog-Star’s and the Lion’s days Oppress with more than searing rays: Fear grips the land, her demons gnaw, Loosed in a frenzied craze Now made the only law. […]
“Waves”
Turquoise waves on shell-white sand Rush forth – crashing, crashing, crashing – Dying gladly as they land, Surging, breaking, foaming, splashing. […]
“The Nebula”
When my time has come And helium Weighs down on my exhausted core, Spent from shedding light Through the endless night Until the fuel could last no more, […]
“Chrysanthemums”
When torrid Summer’s greenery, Its vibrant hues and spiced perfume Lie far, fast-fading memory, Your flowers bloom. […]
“Concrete” Poetry and the Fall of Metaphor
Central to classical poetry is the concept of metaphor—metaphor not simply as a rhetorical device, but metaphor as central to the poem itself. Such use of metaphor is absent from modernist poetry. In a worldview that denies absolute truth outright or at least its knowability, nothing exists for metaphor to reveal. In my last essay, [...]
Clarity and Obscurity: The Essences of Classical & Modern Poetry
As a sustained artistic school, modernism cannot endure. But classical art is eternal because the ideas it expresses are eternal. A resurrection of classical form does not represent a return to the past, real or imagined, but instead a return to sanity, a reorientation of the artistic eye back to its natural, fully human purpose [...]