The HyperTexts

How are we doing? The HyperTexts has received approximately 1.9 million page views since January 2010 and is currently on pace to have around 1.2 million page views over the next twelve months. If you'd like to see our most popular poets and pages, please click here for a snapshot. Also Tom Merrill's latest book, Time in Eternity, can be purchased from Ancient Cypress Press by clicking the hyperlinked book title.

May 2013: This month we are spotlighting the following poets and pages:

We lead off with Best Mother's Day Poems.

Lana Hanson boasts no college degree(s), no awards, no “touring poet” accolades. She’s blessed to run a brush through multiplying grey head-hairs, to feel crows’ feet deepening grooves around her eyes. She’s finally started to admire herself. She aims to help women rise up and repair their spirits.  Born in Flint, Michigan, Lana Hanson now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her two sardonic (10- and 14-year-old) sons and three perpetually vomiting cats.

Anne Reeve Aldrich was an American poet and novelist who has been called an "American Sappho."

And of course one can't go wrong with the original Sappho.

April 2013: This month we are pleased to spotlight the following poets and pages:

Cherokee Poems, Proverbs and Blessings

Paul Stevens passed away on March 22, 2013. He will be greatly missed. In addition to being a much-published poet, Paul also founded and edited three online literary magazines: Shit Creek Review, The Flea and The Chimaera. You can click on his hyperlinked name to visit our memorial page, which features Paul's poems and tributes by other poets.

We are also dedicating our Heresy Hearsay page to the memory of Paul Christian Stevens, who frequently published poetic heresies as the editor of The Flea, The Chimaera and Shit Creek Review.

John Whitworth's "God Squad" Interview

Edgar Allan Poe: "The Heresy of the Didactic" and "The Courtship of Poe"

Nurit Peled-Elhanan is an Israeli peace activist and the daughter of Matti Peled, an Israeli Aluf (Major General) who was called Abu Salam (“Father of Peace”) by the Palestinians who came under his jurisdiction when he was the military governor of the Gaza Strip. She is the sister of Miko Peled, a peace activist who has written book called The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, in which he has supported his father’s and his sister’s views.

Lana Hanson boasts no college degree(s), no awards, no “touring poet” accolades. She’s blessed to run a brush through multiplying grey head-hairs, to feel crows’ feet deepening grooves around her eyes. She’s finally started to admire herself. She aims to help women rise up and repair their spirits.  Born in Flint, Michigan, Lana Hanson now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her two sardonic (10- and 14-year-old) sons and three perpetually vomiting cats.

Corey Harvard is joining THT as our newest and youngest editor. We are glad to have him aboard and look forward to his contributions.

Anne Reeve Aldrich was an American poet and novelist who has been called an "American Sappho."

The Best Erotic Poems

Pope Francis Poems

NRA Cartoon: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

The Best Lines from Songs and Poems

Paul Ray Burch Jr. Memorial

March 2013: This month we are pleased to be able to spotlight the following poets and pages:

Anne Reeve Aldrich was an American poet and novelist. She was born April 25, 1866, in New York, NY; she died June 22, 1892, also in New York. Her books included The Rose of Flame (1889), The Feet of Love (1890), Nadine and Other Poems (1893), A Village Ophelia and Other Stories (1899) and Songs about Life, Love, and Death (1892). She wrote a number of poems in which she seemed to prophesy an early death, then died at the tender age of 26. According to the preface of the last book above, whch was published posthumously, at the time of her death she was so weak that she couldn’t lift her pen, and thus had to dictate her last poem, “Death at Daybreak.” Reeve Aldrich's grand-uncle was the poet James Aldrich. She published her first volume of poetry, The Rose of Flame in 1889; it was not well received (critics cited its "unrestrained expression"). She was also said to have written “erotic” poems. But she persevered, publishing a novel, The Feet of Love, in 1890, and was working on her final volume of poetry, Songs about Love, Life, and Death, on her deathbed.

Peter Austin returns to the Spotlight with several new poems.

Basil Chadwick was a high school classmate of THT poets Richard Moore and David Burnham. He died at age 19 and to our knowledge only two of his poems survive, but fortunately for poetry lovers they are commendable.

Corey Harvard is a poet and songwriter from Mobile, Alabama. His work can be found in publications such as Pirene's Fountain, Sense Magazine and Literary Mobile. He has served as associate editor for Sonnetto Poesia and editor-in-chief for Oracle Fine Arts Review. In 2009, he was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He graduated from the University of South Alabama with a B.A. in English and philosophy. In his free time, he enjoys cooking and learning.

Marcus Read, born in Chicago in 1968, now teaches American History in a small community college in New England. He lives in a two-hundred-year-old Shaker barn with his wife, four sons, and a capybara named Bennet. His hobbies are keeping tropical fish, wood-working, and collecting antique firearms. Marcus informs us that he would rather be writing poetry than grading papers, but would never give up teaching for anything.

American Sapphos

Carl Sandburg's Revolver

American Fascism

Whoso List to Hunt: a Modern English Translation

Notorious Artists: the Bad Boys and Girls of Poetry and Literature

Famous, Notorious and Luminous Beauties

Rondels and Roundels

Best Images in Poetry

The Best Realist, Ultra-Realistic and Photo-Realistic Art

The Best Poems for Kids

Pope Francis Poems

February 2013: This month we continue to feature the following pages:

Basil Chadwick was a high school classmate of THT poets Richard Moore and David Burnham. He died at age 19 and to our knowledge only two of his poems survive, but fortunately they are good ones.

Carl Sandburg's Revolver

American Fascism

Whoso List to Hunt: a Modern English Translation

Notorious Artists: the Bad Boys and Girls of Poetry and Literature

Famous and Notorious Beauties

Rondels and Roundels

The Best Valentine's Day Poems of All Time includes poems you can share with that special someone, entirely free of charge.

Sappho was one of the earliest and best love poets.

The Best American Poetry

The Best Poems of Modernism

Poetry Quotes

The Best Conservative Jokes, Quotes and Epigrams

The Best Song Covers, Remakes and Re-releases

Was Hell in the Original Bible?

Israel: "Good fences make good neighbors" ... or do they?

January 2013: This month we continue to feature the following pages:

New Year Poetry: the Poetry of Endings and New Beginnings

Sandy Hook Poems is a page dedicated to the memory of the students and teachers who died so needlessly and unjustly.

Columbine Poems is a similar page of poetic tributes and memorials.

Aurora Poetry is another similar page.

Courtni Webb's Sandy Hook Poem and Possible Expulsion

Carl Sandburg's "A Revolver"

Notorious Artists: the Bad Boys and Girls of Poetry and Literature

Richard Blanco's Inaugural Poem: “One Today”

Basil Chadwick was a high school classmate of THT poets Richard Moore and David Burnham. He died at age 19 and to our knowledge only two of his poems survive, but fortunately they are damn good ones.

Nicole Caruso Garcia was born in New Jersey in 1972 and currently resides in Connecticut. She was educated at Fairfield University in English and Religious Studies, and after seven years in corporate industry, she left to earn her M.S. in Education from The University of Bridgeport. Her poetry has appeared in both in print and online in journals such as Mezzo Cammin, Willow Review, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Soundings East, The Ledge, Poetry Midwest, and Small Pond Magazine of Literature. She received the Spring 2010 Willow Review Award. She teaches Poetry and Creative Writing at Trumbull High School. Despite her penchant for formalism, her rapping alter ego, Capital G, often visits to bust a rhyme for her students. Her first video, "Plagiarism Rap," debuted on YouTube in 2012.

Duncan Gillies MacLaurin was born in Glasgow in 1962. He studied Classics at Oxford, left without a degree, and spent two years busking in the streets of Europe. He met a Danish writer, Ann Bilde, in Italy in 1986 and went to live in Denmark, where he teaches English and Latin.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight with three new poems.

Rick Mullin’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Arts Quarterly, The Raintown Review, Unsplendid, Méasŭre, The Flea, and Ep;phany. His chapbook, Aquinas Flinched, was published by the Modern Metrics imprint of Exot Books, New York City, in 2008, and his book-length poem, Huncke, was published by Seven Towers, Dublin, Ireland, in 2010.

Kamal Nasser was a much-admired Palestinian Christian poet, who due to his renowned integrity was known as "The Conscience." He was a member of Jordan's parliament in 1956. He was murdered in 1973 by an Israeli death squad whose most notorious member was future Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who dressed as a woman and pretended to neck with another male assassin before opening fire. Two women were also murdered during the attack.

Rachel Joy Scott Poetry, Quotations and Art

What is Poetry?

Poetry Definitions by major poets, critics and even an American president or two!

Sports Shorts

Best Celebrity Poems

English Poetry Timeline

The Best Poetry Magazines and Literary Journals for Submissions (if you want "Recognition")

December 2012: This month it is our honor and pleasure to feature the poetry of T. Merrill, who remains in the Spotlight with three new poems.

Rick Mullin’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Arts Quarterly, The Raintown Review, Unsplendid, Méasŭre, The Flea, and Ep;phany. His chapbook, Aquinas Flinched, was published by the Modern Metrics imprint of Exot Books, New York City, in 2008, and his book-length poem, Huncke, was published by Seven Towers, Dublin, Ireland, in 2010.

Nicole Caruso Garcia was born in New Jersey in 1972 and currently resides in Connecticut. She was educated at Fairfield University in English and Religious Studies, and after seven years in corporate industry, she left to earn her M.S. in Education from The University of Bridgeport. Her poetry has appeared in both in print and online in journals such as Mezzo Cammin, Willow Review, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Soundings East, The Ledge, Poetry Midwest, and Small Pond Magazine of Literature. She received the Spring 2010 Willow Review Award. She teaches Poetry and Creative Writing at Trumbull High School. Despite her penchant for formalism, her rapping alter ego, Capital G, often visits to bust a rhyme for her students. Her first video, "Plagiarism Rap," debuted on YouTube in 2012.

Duncan Gillies MacLaurin was born in Glasgow in 1962. He studied Classics at Oxford, left without a degree, and spent two years busking in the streets of Europe. He met a Danish writer, Ann Bilde, in Italy in 1986 and went to live in Denmark, where he teaches English and Latin.

Kamal Nasser was a much-admired Palestinian Christian poet, who due to his renowned integrity was known as "The Conscience." He was a member of Jordan's parliament in 1956. He was murdered in 1973 by an Israeli death squad whose most notorious member was future Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Sandy Hook Poems is a page dedicated to the memory of the students and teachers who died at the hands of yet another madman allowed to purchase assault weapons thanks to the NRA, its political lackeys and the "Moral Majority."

The Best Christmas Poems of All Time range from nursery rhymes to Christmas carols to poems written by major poets.

Christmas 1956: Angel from Heaven by Sándor Márai is an inspirational poem about human courage and bravery in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

The Ballad of the Christmas Donkey, and a Message of Hope is the Christmas wish and encouragement of Beth Burch, the wife of THT editor Mike Burch, for anyone who may be struggling with depression, bullying or a feeling of being "different" in a negative way. Beth's message is that being different is good, so "take back the power" from people who say otherwise.

In a somewhat darker spirit of the season, we are re-featuring our page of Heretical Christmas Poems, with contributions by Ann Drysdale, T. Merrill and other poets.

We also continue to feature the poetry of Wanda Lea Brayton.

Jesus was born a Palestinian child for whom there was "no room" to be found. Here are the stories of two Palestinian children for whom there also was "no room" ...

Raneen Yousef Arafat is a four-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by an Israeli airstrike on Gaza in the ghastly new military operation "Pillar of Fire." Since she cannot speak for herself, I have spoken for her.—Michael R. Burch, editor

Omar Masharawi was the 11-month-old son of a BBC correspondent who was also incinerated by Israel's "Pillar of Fire."

The Mashal and Jabari Affairs: Déjà Vu, All Over Again?

William Dunbar Modern English Translations

Best Didactic Poems

The Most Influential Poets of All Time

American Fascism

November 2012: This month we are featuring the poetry of Wanda Lea Brayton, a former college librarian and construction news reporter. She has written poetry since 1973. Her poems have been accepted by Hudson View Poetry Digest, The Pedestal Magazine, Oak Bend Review, Aquill Relle, Main Street Rag and Clackamas Literary Review. She was the featured poet in March 2011 on the World Poetry site and her work has been read on the World Poetry Cafe Radio station in Vancouver, placed on display at various WP exhibitions (including at the Pablo Neruda celebration) and two other poems were then further exhibited at the John Lennon Peace Tower in Iceland. She has also been a featured poet on the Aquill Relle website and has 18 poems featured in the anthology On Viewless Wings vol. 5. Her book The Echo of What Remains: Collected Poems of Wanda Lea Brayton is available from Lulu.com.

Einstein on Palestine: the Prophet of Peace

Amud Annan "Pillar of Fire"

Raneen Yousef Arafat is a four-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by an Israeli airstrike on Gaza in the ghastly new military operation "Pillar of Fire." Since she cannot speak for herself, I have spoken for her.—Michael R. Burch, editor

Omar Masharawi was the 11-month-old son of a BBC correspondent who was also incinerated by Israel's "Pillar of Fire."

Jimmy Carter: "Israeli policy is to confiscate Palestinian territory."

Noam Chomsky: Who is doing the killing in Gaza?

Laura Khoury, even in her eighties, is concise and clear: "It is we, the Palestinians, who have the right to defend ourselves."

T. Merrill returns to the Spotlight with three new poems.

Ilan Pappé: The boycott will work, an Israeli perspective.

Oliver Tambo was a leader of the African National Congress in its fight to end apartheid in South Africa.

S**t Republicans Say

Time to End the Neocon Con Game by Bruce P. Cameron.

The Reagan Doctrine

Why Israel is Wrong: The Case Against Israel’s System of Apartheid and Ethnic Cleansing.

Israel’s Transfer Committee and its goal of ethnic cleansing.

Israeli Prime Ministers who were Terrorists include Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon and David Ben-Gurion.

Pages of interest: A Brief History of Epigrams with Examples, Puns and Wordplay, Political Epigrams, Epigrams about Sex and Marriage, Humorous Epigrams, One-Liners and Zingers, Chiasmus, Tweets, Tax Quotes of the Rich and Famous, The Dumbest Things Ever Said, The Best Insults Ever, Famous Last Words, The Best Epigrams, The Best Symbols, The Best Metaphors and Similes

October 2012: This month we are featuring the poetry of Paul Stevens, the founder and editor of three literary journals: Shit Creek Review, The Flea and The Chimaera. A transplanted Englishman, he now lives on the New South Wales coast with his wife and numerous children, dogs, trees and raucous birds.

Lily Allen is an English recording artist, actress and fashion designer. We would like to dedicate her immensely popular song "Fuck You" to Romney and the Romulans, and to all the other haters out there who discriminate against non-heterosexuals, women, minorities, and anyone else who isn't lily-white, straight and richer than Midas.

Greta Berlin is our nominee for the next Nobel Peace Prize, the co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement, and the co-editor of FREEDOM SAILORS, a riveting book about the ships of the Gaza Flotilla which were attacked and boarded in international waters by Israeli commandos, resulting in the deaths of nine peace activists (eight Turkish and one American).

Rachel Corrie was a young American peace activist who was killed by the Israeli military when she used her body as a "human shield" to defend the house of a Palestinian pharmacist and his family from destruction by a Caterpillar DR9 armored bulldozer.

William Dunbar Modern English Translations

The Best Singers of All Time

September 2012: This month we are featuring the following writers and artists:

Lily Allen is an English recording artist, actress and fashion designer. We would like to dedicate her immensely popular song "Fuck You" to Romney and the Romulans, and to all the other haters out there who discriminate against non-heterosexuals, women, minorities, and anyone else who isn't lily-white, straight and richer than Midas.

Greta Berlin is our nominee for the next Nobel Peace Prize, the co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement, and the co-editor of FREEDOM SAILORS, a riveting book about the ships of the Gaza Flotilla which were attacked and boarded in international waters by Israeli commandos, resulting in the deaths of nine peace activists (eight Turkish and one American).

Rachel Corrie was a young American peace activist who was killed by the Israeli military when she used her body as a "human shield" to defend the house of a Palestinian pharmacist and his family from destruction by a Caterpillar DR9 armored bulldozer.

The Best Light Verse of All Time

The Best Nonsense Verse

The Best Children's Poems of All Time

William Dunbar Modern English Translations

Mitt Romney's War on Teachers, Students and Education

August 2012: This month we are featuring THT's Essays & Assays page, which features essays by and interviews with poets like Michael R. Burch, Jack Butler, Dana Gioia, R. Nemo Hill, Quincy R. Lehr, Tom Merrill, Richard Moore and Joseph S. Salemi.

We are currently featuring a review of Tom Merrill's new book of poems, Facing the Remains.

Greta Berlin is our nominee for the next Nobel Peace Prize, the co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement, and the co-editor of FREEDOM SAILORS, a riveting book about the ships of the Gaza Flotilla which were attacked and boarded in international waters by Israeli commandos, resulting in the deaths of nine peace activists (eight Turkish and one American).

Rachel Corrie was a young American peace activist who was killed by the Israeli military when she used her body as a "human shield" to defend the house of a Palestinian pharmacist and his family from destruction by a Caterpillar DR9 armored bulldozer.

Chris Bullard is a native of Jacksonville, FL. He lives in Collingswood, NJ, and works for the federal government as an Administrative Law Judge. He received a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University. Plan B Press published his first chapbook, You Must Not Know Too Much, in 2009. Big Table Publishing published his second chapbook, O Brilliant Kids, in 2011. WordTech has agreed to publish Back, his first full-length book, in November of 2013.

Dr. Joseph S. Salemi returns to the Spotlight, with a new poem dedicated to certain of his contemporaries, "Going Along to Get Along."

Dante Paradiso Canto I: loose English translation by Michael R. Burch.

Michael R. Burch Epigrams

Mehmet Akif Ersoy (1873-1936) was a Turkish poet, author, academic, member of parliament, and the penner of the Turkish National Anthem.

Erich Fried was a major German poet who opposed Nazism, Stalinism, Zionism and the Vietnam War.

Mary Elizabeth Frye penned one of the best-loved poems of the English language, under mysterious circumstances.

Attilâ İlhan (1925-2005) was a Turkish poet, novelist, journalist and reviewer. He was born in Menemen in İzmir Province, Turkey. At age 16 he enrolled in İzmir Atatürk High School, where he ran into trouble for sending a poem by Nazım Hikmet, a famous dissident communist Turkish poet, to a girl he was in love with. He was arrested, taken into custody for three weeks, dismissed from school and jailed for two months. After his imprisonment, İlhan was forbidden from attending schools in Turkey, interrupting his education. Following a favorable court decision in 1941, he received permission to continue his education and enrolled in Istanbul's Işık High School. During his senior year, his uncle entered one of his poems in a poetry competition without telling him. The poem, "Cebbaroğlu Mehemmed," won second prize, beating poems written by famous poets. He graduated from high school in 1942 and enrolled in İstanbul University's law school. However, he left midway through his legal education to pursue his own endeavors and publish his first poetry book, Duvar (The Wall).

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight with yet another stellar poem, "A Sad Instance of History for Once Not Repeating Itself."

We continue to feature the poetry of Henry George Fischer [1923-2006], the Metropolitan Museum of Art curator emeritus of Egyptology who helped the Temple of Dendur find a new life in New York.

The Best Imagery

The Best Metaphors and Similes

Paul Ryan Quotes

The King of Pain: Mitt Romney, Bane of Medicare

Mitt Romney’s $101 Million Cayman Island IRA

Mitt Romney Quotes

Mitt Romney Poems, Parodies, Songs and Epigrams

July 2012: This month our first spotlight poet is Mehmet Akif Ersoy (1873-1936), a Turkish poet, author, academic, member of parliament, and the poet of the Turkish National Anthem. Widely regarded as one of the premiere literary minds of his time, Ersoy was further noted for his command of the Turkish language, as well as his patriotism and piousness and his support for the Turkish War of Independence.

Cathal Óg Donnelly is an Irish peace activist with the Sinn Féin Republican Youth and Irish Friends of Palestine Freedom and Friendship Delegation.

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was perhaps the preeminent Arab poet of his day. He was born in the Galilean village of Barweh, which was razed to the ground by Israelis during the Nakba ("Catastrophe") of 1948. Darwish lived in exile for more than twenty years, until he was allowed to settle in Ramallah in 1996. But even then he spoke as if his exile continued, since he did not consider the West Bank to be his home. A central theme in Darwish's poetry is watan or homeland. His poetry earned international acclamation and has been translated into 35 languages.

Attilâ İlhan (1925-2005) was a Turkish poet, novelist, journalist and reviewer. He was born in Menemen in İzmir Province, Turkey. At age 16 he enrolled in İzmir Atatürk High School, where he ran into trouble for sending a poem by Nazım Hikmet, a famous dissident communist Turkish poet, to a girl he was in love with. He was arrested, taken into custody for three weeks, dismissed from school and jailed for two months. After his imprisonment, İlhan was forbidden from attending schools in Turkey, interrupting his education. Following a favorable court decision in 1941, he received permission to continue his education and enrolled in Istanbul's Işık High School. During his senior year, his uncle entered one of his poems in a poetry competition without telling him. The poem, "Cebbaroğlu Mehemmed," won second prize, beating poems written by famous poets. He graduated from high school in 1942 and enrolled in İstanbul University's law school. However, he left midway through his legal education to pursue his own endeavors and publish his first poetry book, Duvar (The Wall).

Austin MacRae teaches English at Tompkins Cortland Community College. He is the author of two chapbook collections, The Second Rose (FootHills Publishing, 2001) and Graceways (Exot Books, 2008). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in venues such as Atlanta Review, The Cortland Review, The Raintown Review, Rattle, Measure, Pivot, The Chimaera, Lucid Rhythms, Pivot, The Formalist, and elsewhere.

T. Merrill returns to the Spotlight with yet another stellar poem, "A Sad Instance of History for Once Not Repeating Itself."

We are also featuring a review of Merrill's new book of poems, Facing the Remains.

American Warmongering is an enlightening article by Zoltán Grossman.

Best Holocaust Poems

Best Homeless Poems

The Best Beat Poets and Poems

Why Israel Abuses and Tortures Palestinian Children

Albert Einstein's 1948 Letter to the New York Times

Zionist Quotes

Was Jesus Wise?

Bible Contradictions and False Prophecies

Bible Sexism, Republican Chauvinism

June 2012: This month our first Spotlight poet is Frederick Feirstein, a playwright with a dozen New York productions. He also writes for film and television and has had eight books of poetry published, two of which were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Among his literary awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, the Poetry Society of America’s John Masefield Award, England’s Arvon Prize for Poetry, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s OADR Award for Playwriting. He was co-founder of the Expansive Poetry movement and originated the Barnes & Noble reading series.

Hatem M. Titi is a Palestinian PhD student at Tel-Aviv University, school of chemistry. He lives in Tel Aviv-Yaffa (Yaffo) and is originally from Akka (Akko/Acre), which lies inside the 1948 borders of Palestine, but was seized by Israel during the war. He writes poems mostly in Arabic and lately has translated his poems into English and has written original poems in English. His poems mainly describe Palestinian daily life, the Nakba (Arabic for “Catastrophe”), the sea and ocean, world hunger, humanity, and freedom.

T. Merrill returns to the Spotlight with "DeGaulle's Ghost Returns to Quebec," a poem in support of students protesting the current state of affairs in Canada (sometimes in the buff). We have also featured some of Tom's other protest poems, by moving them to the top of his poetry page.

We are also featuring three new poems by David Gwilym Anthony.

Sally Cook returns to the Spotlight with a new poem.

Günter Grass is a German-Kashubian novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely regarded as Germany's most famous living writer.

We continue to feature the poetry of Henry George Fischer [1923-2006], the Metropolitan Museum of Art curator emeritus of Egyptology who helped the Temple of Dendur find a new life in New York.

Louis Emanuel Fynaut was a Flemish resistance fighter who ended up at Auschwitz.

Omer Goldman Granot is the daughter of Naftali Granot, a former deputy head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. She is a member of the Shministim, a group of young Israeli conscientious objectors or “refuseniks” (most of them 12th-graders) who oppose Israel’s military occupation of Palestine and repression of the Palestinian people.

Peleg Held is a writer and carpenter who lives with his partner and their brigand children in the southeast United States. He is a former member of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to lift the economic sanctions on Iraq and champion other failed attempts at decency.

Nayef Hashlamoun is an award-winning photographer and journalist who worked for Reuters for 20 years. He is also the founder and CEO of the ALWATAN Center in Hebron, where he specializes in conflict resolution and carries out relief and development projects for the Palestinian people. He graduated from al-Yarmouk University with a Bachelor degree in Journalism. He has given lectures and conducted workshops in the USA, Jordan and Palestine. He is the recipient of several awards and honors, including The Best Photojournalist of 2009 from Arab Youth Media Forum. He first became interested in nonviolent resistance as a child after he met Dr. Mubarak Awad while taking a class on Gandhi and the Martin Luther King Jr.

Karen Kelsay is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the editor of Victorian Violet Press, an online poetry magazine that encourages formal poetry. Her poems have been featured at The New Formalist, and have recently been accepted for publication in The Raintown Review, The Flea, The Lyric, 14 by 14 and Lucid Rhythms. She lives in Orange County, California.

May 2012: This month we lead off with Best Mother's Day Poems.

Our first new Spotlight poet is Rob Griffith, the author of four collections of poetry: A Matinee in Plato's Cave, winner of the 2009 Best Book of Indiana Award; Poisoning Caesar; Necessary Alchemy, winner of Middle Tennessee University’s Chapbook Prize; and The Moon from Every Window. His work has also appeared in magazines and journals such as Poetry, First Things, River Styx, The North American Review, The Sewanee Theological Review, Prairie Schooner and The Oxford American, among many others. He is the Associate Director of the University of Evansville Press, the Director of the Harlaxton Summer Writing Program, and one of the founding co-editors of Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry. He has a website at www.robgriffith.net.

Our second new Spotlight poet is Jan Křesadlo, the primary pseudonym used by Václav Jaroslav Karel Pinkava (1926 - 995). Pinkava was a Czech psychologist who was also a prizewinning novelist and poet. He chose his pseudonym, which means "firesteel," partly because it contains the uniquely Czech sound ř. He was also fond of creating pseudonyms such as Jake Rolands (an anagram), J. K. Klement (after his grandfather, for translations into English), Juraj Hron (for his Slovak-Moravian writings), Ferdinand Lučovický z Lučovic a na Suchým dole (for his music), Kamil Troud (for his illustrations), and others.

Günter Grass is a German-Kashubian novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely regarded as Germany's most famous living writer.

Frederick Feirstein is a playwright with a dozen New York productions. He also writes for film and television and has had eight books of poetry published, two of which were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Among his literary awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, the Poetry Society of America’s John Masefield Award, England’s Arvon Prize for Poetry, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s OADR Award for Playwriting. He was co-founder of the Expansive Poetry movement and originated the Barnes & Noble reading series.

We continue to feature the poetry of Henry George Fischer [1923-2006], the Metropolitan Museum of Art curator emeritus of Egyptology who helped the Temple of Dendur find a new life in New York.

Louis Emanuel Fynaut was a Flemish resistance fighter who ended up at Auschwitz.

Omer Goldman Granot is the daughter of Naftali Granot, a former deputy head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. She is a member of the Shministim, a group of young Israeli conscientious objectors or “refuseniks” (most of them 12th-graders) who oppose Israel’s military occupation of Palestine and repression of the Palestinian people.

Peleg Held is a writer and carpenter who lives with his partner and their brigand children in the southeast United States. He is a former member of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to lift the economic sanctions on Iraq and champion other failed attempts at decency.

Nayef Hashlamoun is an award-winning photographer and journalist who worked for Reuters for 20 years. He is also the founder and CEO of the ALWATAN Center in Hebron, where he specializes in conflict resolution and carries out relief and development projects for the Palestinian people. He graduated from al-Yarmouk University with a Bachelor degree in Journalism. He has given lectures and conducted workshops in the USA, Jordan and Palestine. He is the recipient of several awards and honors, including The Best Photojournalist of 2009 from Arab Youth Media Forum. He first became interested in nonviolent resistance as a child after he met Dr. Mubarak Awad while taking a class on Gandhi and the Martin Luther King Jr.

We also continue to feature a new poem, "Wede Away" by David Gwilym Anthony.

Terese Coe returns to the Spotlight with her translation of Heinrich Heine’s “Jetzt Wohin?”

Janet Kenny returns to the Spotlight with "Orang-utan."

Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) ranks among the greatest Russian poets of all time. Along with Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak and Osip Mandelstam, she was one of the four great poets who kept their humanity and integrity through Russia's "terrible years." Pasternak praised her "golden, incomparable genius."

"The Hardest Words" by Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu.

Never Again! to the Holocaust and the Nakba

Amnon Neumann: How Palestinians came to be ethnically cleansed into Gaza in 1948

Why is Israel denying human rights and water to Palestinian children?

Parallels between the Nakba (Arabic for "Catastrophe") and the Jewish Shoah (Hebrew for "Catastrophe"), also known as the Holocaust

Best Zionist Jokes

Famous Last Words

Einstein's Last Words

April 2012: This month we are featuring the poetry of Henry George Fischer [1923-2006], the Metropolitan Museum of Art curator emeritus of Egyptology who helped the Temple of Dendur find a new life in New York. Dr. Fischer's books and articles brought the world a deeper understanding of the culture of ancient Egypt. In particular, he contributed to the study of the previously neglected art and culture of the Egyptian provinces, as distinct from the pharaohs' more proximate spheres of influence. His published books on Egyptian art, archaeology, and hieroglyphics are still authoritative works in those fields. A graduate of Princeton, Fischer taught at Yale and the American University in Beirut. He also co-founded AMEU (Americans for Middle East Understanding) and served as its vice president. His appreciation of Middle Eastern peoples and culture extended to writing evocative poems about the suffering of Palestinians under the harsh rule of Israel and its indulgent superpower patron the United States.

Peleg Held is a writer and carpenter who lives with his partner and their brigand children in the southeast United States. He is a former member of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to lift the economic sanctions on Iraq and champion other failed attempts at decency.

We are pleased to be able to feature a new poem, "Wede Away" by David Gwilym Anthony.

Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) ranks among the greatest Russian poets of all time. Along with Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak and Osip Mandelstam, she was one of the four great poets who kept their humanity and integrity through Russia's "terrible years." Pasternak praised her "golden, incomparable genius."

We are also featuring "Bede's Death Song," a Modern English Translation by THT editor Mike Burch.

And we continue to feature Striking Parallels: Three American Holocausts.

Bible Rape, Sex Slavery and the Abuse of Girls and Women

Best Princess Diana Poems

March 2012: This month Quincy R. Lehr returns to the Spotlight, with two new poems: "Apartments" and "Minor Character." He also joins the select ranks of our permanently featured contemporary poets.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight with stellar poems like "Time in Eternity," "Orbiting a Potentially Dead Star" and "Unwithered."

We have also published an Interview of Tom Merrill by Mike Burch that we believe will be of interest to our readers, especially those who question whether remaining rigidly corseted becomes poets, or merely benumbs them.

John Marcus Powell is a poet/performer. As an actor he has appeared in London’s West End, in many Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway plays—as well as in films and television. As a writer, his poetry and fiction have been published widely. He is Welsh, but feels most at home in New York City. His chapbook Loony Lovers is available from Exot Books and, like a lot of his poetry, is concerned with the sensation of being Queer in a queer world.

We have also published Russell Bittner's Interview with Michael Burch.

"Bede's Death Song," a Modern English Translation

Striking Parallels: Three American Holocausts and the Racial Outrages of Israel

WAR WITH IRAN: Why Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is leading the United States to war with Iran, and perhaps World War III against the Muslim world

Rabbis Against War with Iran: An Open Letter

Reasons for the War with Iran: AIPAC Works for the 1 Percent

What Caused 9-11?

The Bible and the Quran of Revolution is the latest report from our Editor in Exile, the Palestinian poet Iqbal Tamimi.

GOP denies women access to abortion, contraceptives and ASPIRIN with new "Kill the Pill Bill"

Mitt Romney’s $101 Million Cayman Island IRA

Newt Gingrich Quotes, Epigrams, Quips and Poetry

Rick Santorum: Baby-faced Inquisitor

Rick Santorum: American Ayatollah

Rush Limbaugh Quotes and Epigrams

Republican Insanity

Is the United States a Christian nation?

Hell Is Child Abuse

The latest entry in our "Blasts from the Past" series is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882).

February 2012: This month we are featuring some of the best love poems of all time as well as love poems by some of our favorite contemporary poets.

The Best Valentine's Day Poems of All Time includes poems you can share with that "special someone," entirely free of charge.

Sappho was one of the earliest and best love poets.

We are pleased to welcome Dennis Greene back to the Spotlight with two new love poems, just in time for Valentine's Day.

We are equally pleased to be able to feature new love poems by Jim Dunlap.

Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873-1934), also Hayim or Haim, was a Jewish poet who wrote in Hebrew. Bialik was one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew poetry; he came to be recognized as Israel's national poet. He combined in a unique way his personal wish for love and understanding and his people’s desire for a homeland.

Betty Iacovetti was an accomplished violinist, string instructor and poet.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight with love poems like "Time in Eternity," "Orbiting a Potentially Dead Star" and "Unwithered."

We have also published an Interview of Tom Merrill by Mike Burch that we believe will be of interest to readers and lovers of poetry.

Khaled Hazem Nusseibeh is a writer, poet and translator. He graduated from Columbia and Princeton Universities and has a scholarly interest in Islamic and Arab thought and culture. He has written three poetry collections and a book of reflections in English, has authored an Arabic book of prose and verse, and has translated two books from Arabic into English, as well as numerous studies, articles and documents. He lives with his family in Amman, Jordan, where he is the Director of the Ubada Center for Translation.

John Marcus Powell is a poet/performer. As an actor he has appeared in London’s West End, in many Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway plays—as well as in films and television. As a writer, his poetry and fiction have been published widely. He is Welsh, but feels most at home in New York City. His chapbook Loony Lovers is available from Exot Books and, like a lot of his poetry, is concerned with the sensation of being Queer in a queer world.

Philip Quinlan has been published in journals such as The Flea, The Chimaera, Lucid Rhythms, The Centrifugal Eye, Shit Creek Review and Victorian Violet Press.

Saul Tchernichovsky (1875-1943), also known as Shaul Tchernichowsky, was a Russian-born Jew who wrote poetry in Hebrew. He was also an accomplished translator. During the first World War, he served as a doctor in the Russian army. In 1931 he immigrated to Palestine and settled there permanently. He died in Jerusalem on October 14, 1943, around the time that the horrors of the Holocaust were becoming more fully known.

We have also published Russell Bittner's Interview with Michael Burch.

The Best Urdu Love Poetry features English translations of poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Mirza Ghalib and Allama Iqbāl.

Some of the best love poems were written by Chinese poets:

The Best Female Chinese Poets: English Translations is a page well worth exploring.

The Best Chinese Poets: English Translations broadens the view, to include both male and female Chinese poets.

The Bible and the Quran of Revolution is the latest report from our Editor in Exile, the Palestinian poet Iqbal Tamimi.

Israeli Tail Wags U.S. Dog

The latest entry in our "Blasts from the Past" series is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Mitt Romney’s $101 Million Cayman Island IRA

Newt Gingrich Quotes, Epigrams, Quips and Poetry

Rick Santorum: Baby-faced Inquisitor

Is the United States a Christian nation?

Hell Is Child Abuse

Best Female Writers

The Best Elegies, Dirges, Laments and Poems of Mourning

The Best Poems of Modernism

Famous Holocaust Poems

Holocaust Poems for Students and Teachers

The Best Insults Ever

January 2012: Stop the presses! We hope you will take the time to read You Are No Longer Free, or Equal and consider doing what you can to help reverse the descent of the United States into a police state monitored by Big Brother. If you aren't aware that the National Defense Authorization Act was just signed into law, and that it allows American citizens to be arrested by military police without charges, hearings or fair trials, and to be whisked off to foreign countries outside the jurisdiction of American courts, judges and juries, where they can be held (and perhaps tortured) the rest of their lives ... well, perhaps it's time to read up and consider the eerie parallels to what happened to ordinary German citizens during the rise of the Nazis. Like Humpty Dumpty, the German people later had a great fall ...

This month we are featuring Poems of the Occupation: the Best Protest Poems of All Time.

Strange Liberators: Martin Luther King's Position on War is an eye-opening essay/sermon on the dangers of American-style warmongering.

Gingrich, Israel and the Palestinians by Uri Avnery exposes the racism and hubris of American politicians like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

Best Valentine's Day Poems includes poems you can share with that special someone, entirely free of charge.

The Best Female Chinese Poets: English Translations is a page well worth exploring.

The Best Chinese Poets: English Translations broadens the view, to include both male and female Chinese poets.

George Amabile is a Canadian poet whose work has appeared in over 100 publications, including The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse, The New Yorker Book of Poems, Saturday Night, The New Yorker, Harper's, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Poetry Australia, Sur (Buenos Aires), Poetry Canada Review, Canadian Literature, and Margin (England).

Yakov Azriel was born in New York in 1950, and has lived in Israel since 1971. He has published three full-length books of poetry in the USA: Threads From A Coat Of Many Colors: Poems On Genesis (2005), In The Shadow Of A Burning Bush: Poems On Exodus (2008) and Beads for the Messiah's Bride: Poems on Leviticus (2009), all published by Time Being Books. Over 120 of his poems have been published in journals in the USA, the UK and Israel, and his poems have won twelve awards in international poetry competitions, as well as two fellowships from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.

Jim Dunlap's poetry has been published extensively in print and online in the United States, England, France, India, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and New Zealand, appearing in over 90 publications such as Potpourri, Candelabrum, Mobius and the Paris/Atlantic.

Albert Einstein, Poet captures the great man in his own words, rearranged as poems by Michael R. Burch.

Sándor Márai is a poet who wrote about human courage and bravery in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight with "Spring Fever," yet another THT exclusive.

Renée Vivien was perhaps the last of the major Symbolist poets; she created quite a sensation in her day, living openly as a lesbian in less enlightened times.

James Alexander Brown was a country minister willing to stand up to the "great" Billy Graham, defending innocent children from the horrendous Christian dogma of an "eternal hell" and the "Age of Accountability." Which begs the question: Is there a "Hell" according to the Bible?

December 2011: This month, in the spirit of the holiday season, we are pleased to be able to feature Christmas at Camelot, Part I of a modernization of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" by John M. Ridland.

Christmas 1956: Angel from Heaven by Sándor Márai is an inspirational poem about human courage and bravery in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

The Ballad of the Christmas Donkey, and a Message of Hope is the Christmas wish and encouragement of Beth Burch, the wife of THT editor Mike Burch, for anyone who may be struggling with depression, bullying or a feeling of being "different" in a negative way. Beth's message is that being different is good, so "take back the power" from people who say otherwise.

In a somewhat darker spirit of the season, we are re-featuring our page of Heretical Christmas Poems, with contributions by Ann Drysdale, T. Merrill and other poets.

James Alexander Brown was a country minister willing to stand up to the "great" Billy Graham, defending innocent children from the horrendous Christian dogma of an "eternal hell" and the "Age of Accountability." Which begs the question: Is there a "Hell" according to the Bible?

What Poets Can Learn from Songwriters is an interesting, informative essay by David Alpaugh, and good food for thought.

The Israeli Palestinian Confederation [IPC] is sailing out into uncharted waters. Let's wish them bon voyage and hope they find a safe, profitable harbor.

We are pleased to welcome Dennis Greene back to the Spotlight with several new poems.

Renée Vivien was perhaps the last of the major Symbolist poets; she created quite a sensation in her day, living openly as a lesbian in less enlightened times.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight with "Spring Fever," yet another THT exclusive.

Philip Quinlan has been published in journals such as The Flea, The Chimaera, Lucid Rhythms, The Centrifugal Eye, Shit Creek Review and Victorian Violet Press.

Marcus Read, born in Chicago in 1968, now teaches American History in a small community college in New England. He lives in a two-hundred-year-old Shaker barn with his wife, four sons, and a capybara named Bennet. His hobbies are keeping tropical fish, wood-working, and collecting antique firearms. Marcus informs us that he would rather be writing poetry than grading papers, but would never give up teaching for anything.

John M. Ridland has taught writing and literature in the English Department and the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for over forty years. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic, Harper's, The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse, Spectrum, The Nation, New Zealand Books, Quadrant (Australia), River Styx, Solo, Askew, Parnassus, and The Hungarian Quarterly.

Sieglinde Wood remains in the Spotlight with several new poems.

The Best Tweets Ever examines the best (and worst) of a modern form of the epigram.

Warren "buffets" GOP Grinches asks readers to consider just whom Republican leaders are serving and protecting, and why.

Jesus Christ, Child Abuser? raises the question of how Jesus can profess to love human children, if he condemns them to hell for not "believing" in his person.

The Best War Poetry and Anti-War Poetry is a page well worth reading, and considering.

The Best Protest Songs and Poems traces the evolution of a world-transforming category of poetry.

The Best Doggerel of All Time takes a quick peek up the skirt of bawdy, irreverent, tongue-in-cheek poetry.

Tax Quotes and Epigrams of the Rich and Famous questions whether billionaires ever asked GOP Grinches to "protect" them from taxes in the first place.

November 2011: This month we are featuring an interview with the poet R. Nemo Hill, conducted by Tom Merrill.

We are also spotlighting English translations of the Urdu poetry of Ahmad Faraz, a Pakistani poet who is generally considered to be one of the greatest modern Urdu poets.

The Bible’s Satanic Verses addresses the question of Biblical "infallibility" and "inerrancy."

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight with "Spring Fever," yet another THT exclusive.

Philip Quinlan has been published in journals such as The Flea, The Chimaera, Lucid Rhythms, The Centrifugal Eye, Shit Creek Review and Victorian Violet Press.

Marcus Read, born in Chicago in 1968, now teaches American History in a small community college in New England. He lives in a two-hundred-year-old Shaker barn with his wife, four sons, and a capybara named Bennet. His hobbies are keeping tropical fish, wood-working, and collecting antique firearms. Marcus informs us that he would rather be writing poetry than grading papers, but would never give up teaching for anything.

John M. Ridland has taught writing and literature in the English Department and the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for over forty years. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic, Harper's, The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse, Spectrum, The Nation, New Zealand Books, Quadrant (Australia), River Styx, Solo, Askew, Parnassus, and The Hungarian Quarterly.

We continue to spotlight an essay, "Pain, Product, and Poetry" by Joe Salemi, along with a relevant poem, "At a Reading of Poems of a Poet's Agonies," by X. J. Kennedy.

Sieglinde Wood returns to the Spotlight with several new poems.

The Best Contemporary Poets and Poetry takes a look at the best poetry of the last hundred years, or so.

The Best Poet of All Time is a countdown to the best poet of all time, in one poetry lover's opinion.

Best (and Worst) Celebrity Poets examines the work of five celebrity contenders and five pretenders to the title "poet."

The Best Short Poems of All Time delves into ancient Greek epigrams, haiku by the Oriental masters, and English lyric poetry, including popular songs.

The Best Sad/Dark/Haunting Songs Ever considers the spectrum from traditional ancient folk songs like "Greensleeves" to modern rock anthems.

The Best Love Songs Ever contemplates the all-time best love songs, from "Greensleeves" to "Sweet Child O' Mine."

October 2011: This month we are spotlighting the work of Sunil Sharma, who is Principal at Bharat College, India. He is a bilingual critic, poet, literary interviewer, editor, translator, essayist and fiction writer. His short stories and poems have appeared in journals such as Hudson View (South Africa), The Plebian Rag and Bicycle Review (USA), Creative Saplings, Brown Critique and Kritya (India), the Seva Bharati Journal of English Studies (West Bengal), Labyrinth (Gwalior) and Poets International (Bangalore).

Ono no Komachi was a female Japanese poet who wrote tanka, the most traditional form of Japanese poetry. She is an excellent representative of the Classical, or Heian, period (794-1185) of Japanese literature, and is one of the best known and most frequently quoted poets of the Kokinshu (905), the first of a series of anthologies of Japanese poetry compiled by Imperial order.

Turkey Earthquake Poetry is dedicated to the victims and survivors of the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that recently struck Turkey.

Our Halloween Poetry page contains some the best dark, haunting, scary poems of all time.

Our Fall and Winter Poetry page contains some of the all-time best poems about fall, winter, aging, death and loss.

Ben Franklin, Poet salutes a master rhymer, wit and epigrammatist.

We are also spotlighting a new essay, "Pain, Product, and Poetry" by Joseph S. Salemi, along with a relevant poem, "At a Reading of Poems of a Poet's Agonies," by X. J. Kennedy.

Jesse Anger is a poet, musician and audio engineer. His poetry has appeared in Island Mists (an anthology of contemporary Canadian poetry), Shot Glass, Soundzine, The Fib Review and Lucid Rhythms. His interests include graffiti, stringed instruments and juggling. He attends Concordia University in Montreal where he lives with his girlfriend and newborn son Aryeh.

Renée Vivien was perhaps the last of the major Symbolist poets, and created quite a sensation in her day.

R. Nemo Hill returns to the Spotlight with poems like "Sonnet for Bill" and "A Bit of Light."

We have two essays by Norman Ball in the Spotlight and also a page of Poetry Readings and Songs by Norman Ball.

Russell Bittner returns to the Spotlight with his excellent translation of "A Letter to My Mother" by Sergei Yesenin.

Terese Coe returns to the Spotlight with a new poem, "Café Noir."

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight with "Spring Fever," yet another THT exclusive.

Emmanuel Ortiz has written a thought-provoking 9-11 poem, "Moment of Silence."

Helen Palma also returns to the Spotlight with yet another fine translation, this one of "Horreur Sympathique" by Charles Baudelaire.

Philip Quinlan has been published in some of our favorite journals such as The Flea, The Chimaera, Lucid Rhythms, The Centrifugal Eye, Shit Creek Review and Victorian Violet Press.

Flora Alexa Stevens was a teacher and a poet. During World War II she was published in a British poetry anthology which included Robert Frost, Rabindranath Tagore, Vida Sackville West, W. H. Davies, Roy Campbell, A. E. Housman, Alex Comfort, Eileen Duggan and other notables. According to her niece, the Australian poet Janet Kenny, "My parents knew nothing of this ... She received no appreciation in her own philistine family."

The Worst Song Lyrics of All Time is a tongue-in-cheek look at what certain alleged "songwriters" have been up to recently.

A Brief History of the Epigram traces the evolution of the epigram from ancient Greece to modern times.

The Best Puns of All Time delves into puns, wordplay, spoonerisms, etc.

The Best Limericks of All Time traces the often-humorous evolution of a popular art form.

Are CIA Drones Killing Children?

Rick Perry’s Unanswered Prayers is food for thought, as we contemplate the Apocalypse, as is Christian Dominionism: Blessed are the Meek?

Is the Bible infallible? Or is it worse than Mein Kampf in a number of passages?

Should Christians favor Jews over the other Children of Abraham?

September 2011: This month we have four pages related to 9-11:

Child of 9-11, a Poem for Christina-Taylor Green is a poem dedicated to a nine-year-old girl who planned to use politics to improve the world, only to be shot dead by a man full of rage against the system.

9-11 Poetry is a collection of poems dedicated to the victims and survivors of 9-11 and their families.

"Flying the Flag on 9-11" was written by THT editor Mike Burch in response to an invitation to fly the American flag on September 11th in order to remember and honor our fallen dead.

Emmanuel Ortiz has written a thought-provoking 9-11 poem, "Moment of Silence."

Our Janet Kenny Interview touches on the "state of the art" and the good and not-so-good aspects of online poetry workshops.

The Worst Song Lyrics of All Time is a tongue-in-cheek look at what certain alleged "songwriters" have been up to recently.

Rick Perry Slays questions the morals and perhaps the sanity of a leading American presidential candidate and his supporters.

We have two essays by Norman Ball in the Spotlight and also a page of Poetry Readings and Songs by Norman Ball.

Russell Bittner returns to the Spotlight with his excellent, moving translation of "A Letter to My Mother" by Sergei Yesenin.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight with "Spring Fever," yet another THT exclusive.

Philip Quinlan has been published in some of our favorite journals such as The Flea, The Chimaera, Lucid Rhythms, The Centrifugal Eye, Shit Creek Review and Victorian Violet Press.

We borrowed the title of one of his own poems while considering the heresy of John Whitworth "Thinking the Unthinkable!"

"Long Live Palestine" by LowKey is performance poetry with a purpose.

God and the Bible addresses some of the zanier assertions of Christianity.

August 2011: Our first new featured poet this month is Kalman Lis, a Polish Jew who died during the Holocaust.

Our second new spotlight poet this month is Antonia Clark. Her work has appeared in The 2River View, Anderbo, Apparatus Magazine, The Cortland Review, Soundzine, Umbrella, and elsewhere.

Our third new spotlight poet this month is Paul Lake. His poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, The American Scholar, Yale Review, Southern Review, Paris Review, Partisan Review, and Sewanee Review.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight with "Spring Fever," yet another THT exclusive.

We borrowed the title of one of his own poems while considering the heresy of John Whitworth "Thinking the Unthinkable," Free Verse?

Did Gabrielle Giffords just write The Most Beautiful Tweet Ever?

We have also published two letters sent by Kim Nguyen to Mike Burch, editor of The HyperTexts, about the horrendous racial injustices incurred by Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military and the robber barons they protect (euphemistically called "settlers").

And hot off the press, here's Boehner's Billion Dollar Boner.

If the world wants peace, we need to consider Calling Bibi’s Bluff.

Here are the latest in our "best of" pages: The Best Poem of All Time, The Best Romantic Poetry, The Best Lyric Poetry, The Best Political Quotes and Epigrams, Best Sonnets and The Best Political Poems.

July 2011: This month our first featured poet is Alice Walker, currently at sea on the Audacity of Hope.

In the spirit of July 4th, we have re-published a page (not very originally) called Let Freedom Sing! Poetic songs of freedom are often wild and dark, as our readers will see ...

We also have a related essay by THT editor Michael R. Burch, Independence Day Madness.

Seamus Cassidy returns to the Spotlight with a number of new poems.

Larry Gross's insightful essay "Reflections on Israel: From Idealism to Ethnic Cleansing" is definitely food for thought, for those not averse to rational contemplation of the facts.

T. Merrill also remains in the Spotlight, with a page brimming with THT exclusives.

Ghassan Kadi continues to cast new light on ancient dilemmas.

Will Israel attack The Audacity of Hope as it did the Liberty, the Dignity and the Spirit of Humanity?

Marching Toward Hell and World War III

The Best Love Poems of All Time

June 2011: Our first Spotlight poet this month is Dennis Greene, who was born in England, raised in Zimbabwe and currently lives in Australia.

Our second Spotlight poet, Janet Kenny, also lives down under, by the sea in Queensland.

Marcus Valerius Martial is considered the father of the modern epigram.

T. Merrill also remains in the Spotlight, with a poetry page full of THT exclusives.

Ghassan Kadi: Palestine, the State of Two States casts new light on an ancient dilemma

The Best Poets Ever is THT's attempt to pay homage to the best poets of all time, albeit in one man's personal opinion.

Best Christian Poetry features poems by William Blake, A. E. Housman and other masters of the English language, on religious and spiritual themes.

Ogaden Poetry is a page dedicated to the Ogaden people of Somalia. "Somalis have been known to the world, at least since Richard Burton's time, as a nation of poets." — Cedric Barnes, University of London

American Warmongering is a page of quotations about war by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, Tommy Franks, Madeline Albright, et al.

Arab Spring Poetry: Poems of the Arab Awakening is a page dedicated to the proposition that all human beings are created equal, with the self-evident rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Can there be a just peace for Israel? THT editor Michael R. Burch thinks not, for a surprising reason ...

Are the 1967 borders of Israel "indefensible"? or is Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu playing a shell game with world peace?

World War III ... How can we prevent it? Or has it already started?

Israeli Racism and its Cost to the United States and American Taxpayers ... Can we afford to be racists in the modern world?

Robert McNamara: "It's Just Wrong What We're Doing"

Gideon Levy has been called "the most hated man in Israel" because he writes articles that point out how brutally the government and military of Israel treat Palestinians: even completely innocent Palestinian women and children. Do apartheid walls and "Jewish only" highways and settlements inside Occupied Palestine increase Israel's "security," or only its insecurities? According to Levy, the government and military of Israel are its own worst enemies.

May 2011: This month Quincy R. Lehr returns to the Spotlight, with four new poems.

Our Interview with John Whitworth continues the debate about the virtues of formal poetry versus the vices of free verse ... or is there a lot of sound and fury, signifying little or nothing?

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight, with a new THT exclusive.

NAKBA DAY: THE PALESTINIAN DAY OF RAGE AND THE THIRD PALESTINIAN INTIFADA

What caused the Civil War? Was it slavery, states' rights, tariffs?

Terezín Children's Holocaust Poems includes two poems written by child poets of a Nazi concentration camp.

Martin Niemöller wrote perhaps the most famous of all Holocaust poems: "First they came for the Jews ..."

Moishe (Moshe) Kaufman is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who fled to Buenos Aires in 1928.

Peretz Opochinski [Opochinsky] began writing poetry at age twelve, only to die in the Warsaw Ghetto along with his wife and child.

Hershele Danielovitch also died in the Warsaw Ghetto.

A Simple Proof that Christians are Immortal is "proof positive" that only Christians are immortal, for a surprising reason. Prepare to be dumb-founded by the wis-dumb of the Divine Plan!

A Simple Proof that the Bible is Not "Infallible" will remove any remaining doubts about the Bible being inerrant.

Walt Whitman is probably America's greatest poet and its greatest prophet.

April 2011: Japan Earthquake/Tsunami Disaster Poetry is a collection of poems dedicated to the people of Japan and surrounding regions who were hit by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and a subsequent tsunami that left devastation in their wake. Our thoughts, prayers and well wishes are with all the survivors and the families and friends of all the victims.

Basho is one of the best Japanese poets, and a master of haiku.

There Is No Hell in the Bible is the result of THT editor Mike Burch's life-long struggle with fun-damning-mentalism.

A Simple Proof that Christians are Immortal, an Easter Homily is "proof positive" that only Christians are immortal, for a surprising reason. Prepare to be dumbfounded by the wis-dumb of the Divine Plan!

Was the Civil War fought over Slavery or States' Rights? The answer is clear and simple, and comes to us in the form of four documents drafted by slave states (Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas) to explain why they chose to leave the Union and risk Civil War with the North.

Michael Ferris was recently awarded two prizes by The Lyric, in contests judged by THT associate editor and Poet in Residuum Tom Merrill.

We also have a new poem by Iqbal Tamimi, our Editor in Exile, with accompanying artwork that you won't want to miss.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight, having recently graced us with five new THT exclusives.

March 2011: Japan Earthquake/Tsunami Disaster Poetry is a collection of poems dedicated to the people of Japan and surrounding regions who were hit by an 8.9-magnitude earthquake and a subsequent tsunami that left devastation in their wake. Our thoughts, prayers and well wishes are with all the survivors and the families and friends of all the victims.

Basho is one of the best Japanese poets, and a master of haiku.

"America’s Poem for Japan" was written by THT editor Michael R. Burch for the victims and survivors of the earthquakes and tsunamis that struck Japan in March 2011, and their families and friends around the globe.

Ber Horvitz is a Holocaust poet who can only be known today by the poems he left us.

Miryam (Miriam) Ulinover (1888-1944) was born in Poland, as Miryam (Mania) Hirshbeyn, in either 1888 or 1890, depending on the source. As a girl she wrote prose in Polish, German and Russian. In 1912 she married Volf Ulinover, a merchant from a Hasidic family. They had two daughters, Dine-Rokhl and Hinde-Makhle. Miryam went on to write poetry in Yiddish and was published in magazines and anthologies. She also published a book of poems, Der bobes oytser (Grandmother’s Treasure, Warsaw 1922). World War II and the Holocaust interrupted her literary career. In August 1944 she and her family were deported to Auschwitz; she perished in the gas chamber a few days later, along with her daughter and granddaughter. None of her later manuscripts were ever found.

Itzhak (Yitzkhak) Viner was a Jewish poet who was imprisoned in the Lodz Ghetto. He wrote poems about the Holocaust in Yiddish. In his poem “My Childhood” he recalls the severe hunger he experienced as a young boy: hunger so severe he and his friends pretended to bake and eat loaves made of mud. Later as a prisoner of the Nazis, he looked back to those days, longing for the freedom to go outside and bake loaves of mud again.

dis-Able-d Muse is a humorous poem written about THT editor Michael R. Burch's recent experiences with literary fascism at a sub-forum of Able Muse/Eratosphere incongruously called "The Deep End." The Deep End lived up to its name, ironically, when the people who run the site went off the deep end after Burch posted a rather mild tongue-in-cheek critique, Erato, Speared (the Poem) which was followed by Erato, Speared (the Essay).

Robert Burns [1759–1796) is also known as Bobbie Burns, Rabbie Burns, Scotland's Favorite Son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland simply as The Bard. Burns is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide.

Rainer Maria Rilke [1875-1926] was a Bohemian-Austrian poet who is considered to be a major poet of the German language.

Jim Dunlap's poetry has been published extensively in print and online in the United States, England, France, India, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and New Zealand. His work has appeared in over 90 publications, including Potpourri, Candelabrum, Mobius and the Paris/Atlantic. He is an associate Editor of Sonnetto Poesia and a resident poet on Poetry Life & Times.

Zainab Elberry is an Egyptian-American peace activist who has lived in Nashville, Tennessee for the last forty years.

Michael Ferris was born in Los Angeles. His first true love was JS Bach; since then he’s had reckless affairs with, among others, Blaise Pascal, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Wislawa Szymborska. He studied nothing of commercial value in college. He works on Wall Street—but Mammon is a clumsy and boorish lover, so he cheats continuously with a Rolodex of poets and novelists and philosophers, some of whom still draw breath. He is most grateful to have fallen on receptive ears recently at 14by14, The Shit Creek Review, Rattle, The Lyric, and Light Quarterly.

Karen Kelsay is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the editor of Victorian Violet Press, an online poetry magazine that encourages formal poetry. Her poems have been featured at The New Formalist, and have recently been accepted for publication in The Raintown Review, The Flea, The Lyric, 14 by 14 and Lucid Rhythms. She lives in Orange County, California.

Primo Levi [1919-1987] was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. The book has been described as one of the best books by one of the most important writers of the twentieth century.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight, having recently graced us with five new THT exclusives.

Wendy Sloan's poems have appeared in Iambs & Trochees, Measure, Blue Unicorn, Umbrella, Mezzo Cammin and The Raintown Review. A translation (of Leopardi) was published in The Chimaera. Sloan was a finalist in the 2006 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award Competition.

Mark Twain: Poetry, Quotes and Epigrams celebrates one of the very best American writers.

Walt Whitman is probably America's greatest poet and its greatest prophet. He almost single-handedly ushered in modernism when he chose to write free verse rather than formal poetry (i.e., metrical verse).

Ronald Wilson Reagan Quotes, Quips, Anecdotes, Eulogies, Epigrams and Poems is a tribute to one of the best writers (and poets) among American Presidents.

The Children of Gaza Speak is an "inside report" on the condition, hopes and aspirations of students at a school in Gaza, and of other young people we are calling "the Child Poets of Gaza."

"Does Jesus Love Me?" is a poem written from the perspective of a Palestinian child suffering at the hands of Christians and Jews who claim all the favor of God for themselves.

"jesus hates me, this i know" is a poem inspired by "Does Jesus Love Me?"

"Deor's Lament" is one better and more intriguing poems of the English language's Anglo Saxon past.

"The Wife's Lament" is a Modern English translation of an ancient Anglo Saxon poem, by THT editor Michael R Burch.

February 2011: The big surprise this month is our new format, which replaces the old serviceable-but-antiquated separate frame index with a new better-integrated collapsible/expandable index.

Erato, Speared (the Essay) questions the rationality of the current bias against abstract words and ideas in poetry.

Erato, Speared (the Poem) is a satirical poem about poets who betray the fairest Muse, Erato, by believing and spreading a false gospel.

Our first Spotlight poet this month is Conrad Aiken. Aiken was one of the sweetest singers among modern poets; his "Bread and Wine" is one of the all-time favorite poems of THT editor Mike Burch.

Russell Bittner is a poet/writer who conducts interviews for the Poet's Corner section of Long Story Short (www.alongstoryshort.net). His poems have been published in The Lyric, Trinacria, The Raintown Review, and elsewhere in print and on the Internet.

Bertolt Brecht [1898-1956] was a German poet, playwright and theater director. He fled Germany in 1933, when Hitler rose to power. A number of Brecht's poems were written from the perspective of a man who sees his country becoming increasingly fascist, xenophobic and militaristic.

Paul Celan is one of the best Holocaust poets. Please be sure to check out THT editor Michael R. Burch's new translation of his most famous poem "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue").

Zainab Elberry is an Egyptian-American peace activist who has lived in Nashville, Tennessee for the last forty years.

Allama Iqbāl was not only a leading poet of his day, but is also considered by many to be the founder of the modern state of Pakistan.

Karen Kelsay is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the editor of Victorian Violet Press, an online poetry magazine that encourages formal poetry. Her poems have been featured at The New Formalist, and have recently been accepted for publication in The Raintown Review, The Flea, The Lyric, 14 by 14 and Lucid Rhythms. She lives in Orange County, California.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight, having graced us with five new THT exclusives last month.

Wendy Sloan's poems have appeared in Iambs & Trochees, Measure, Blue Unicorn, Umbrella, Mezzo Cammin and The Raintown Review. A translation (of Leopardi) was published in The Chimaera. Sloan was a finalist in the 2006 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award Competition.

Child of 9-11, a Poem for Christina-Taylor Green is a poem dedicated to a nine-year-old girl who planned to use politics to improve the world, only to be shot by a man full of rage against the system.

9-11 Poetry is a collection of poems dedicated to the victims and survivors of 9-11 and their families.

The Children of Gaza Speak is an "inside report" on the condition, hopes and aspirations of students at a school in Gaza.

Frail Envelope of Flesh is a poem based on a phrase THT editor Mike Burch read eons ago in a superhero comic book.

January 2011: Our first Spotlight poet this month is Conrad Aiken. Aiken was one of the sweetest singers among modern poets; his "Bread and Wine" is one of the all-time favorite poems of THT editor Mike Burch.

Ernest Dowson is one of the best unknown, under-known and/or underrated poets of all time.

Allama Iqbāl was not only a leading poet of his day, but is also considered by many to be the founder of the modern state of Pakistan.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight, having graced us with five new THT exclusives.

Sappho was one of the earliest and best lyric poets.

Lyric Poetry examines the ascendency of the most popular form of modern poetry.

Richard Moore's Advice to Poets comes by way of an obit published by the Boston Globe that we stumbled upon recently.

The Most Beautiful Poems in the English Language is self-explanatory.

Haiku: the Best of the Masters, with Translations and Contemporary Work is our attempt to illustrate the similarities between the best contemporary lyric poetry and the work of the Oriental and Greek masters.

Bloodshed in the Sahara: The Sins of Colonialism and the Moroccan Massacre of the Sahrawi People is the latest addition to our Genocide Poetry index: the one we really, really wish we didn't have to keep updating.

Sarah Palin's Resignation Speech (Edited for Clarity) investigates the attempt of Vanity Fair's editors to make Sarah Palin make some sort of coherent sense.

Is God a Homophobe? questions the "faith" of Christians who use the Bible to justify bigotry and intolerance. What does the Bible say, really, and why does it say what it says?

Drats, Rejected Again! (the Bias Against Formal Metrical Rhyming Poems) discusses the problem that occurs when editors reject poems they consider "fine, even beautiful" because they consider meter and rhyme to be passé.

The Best Free Verse Poems of All Time is a compilation of the best free verse poems, according to one man's personal taste and opinion.

Child of 9-11, a Poem for Christina-Taylor Green is a poem dedicated to a nine-year-old girl who planned to use politics to improve the world, only to be shot by a man full of rage against the system.

9-11 Poetry is a collection of poems dedicated to the victims and survivors of 9-11 and their families.

We have also added a new poem, "In Answer," to the poetry page of Usha Chandrasekharan.

Songs and Poems that Changed the World is self-explanatory.

The Best Songs Ever: the Greatest Songs of All Time is one poet's guide to the best rock songs of all time, giving strong preference to the songs with the best lyrics. Of course any such list is largely a matter of personal taste and opinion, which can always be taken with a pinch or grain of salt. A related page is The Best Female Singer/Songwriters of All Time.

December 2010: Chaya Feldman, wrote one of the most touching and poignant poems of the Holocaust: "Ninety-Three Daughters of Israel." Let us all vow to say "Never again!" to all such atrocities.

BLAKE is our editor's choice as the most important poet of all time, for a number of reasons.

Terese Coe returns to the Spotlight with her translation of a Borges poem, "Rain."

T. Merrill has graced us with yet another THT exclusive, "Orbiting a Potentially Dead Star."

A. E. Stallings was one of the first poets we published; new she's back in the Spotlight with a number of new poems you won't want to miss, including one we're adding immediately to our "Best of The HyperTexts" page: her marvelous "Ghost Ship."

Going Viral: Viral Poetry discusses a possible "sea change" in poetry ... will it become a tsunami?

The Dumbest Things Ever Said, the Worst Predictions of All Time, and the Best of the Bushisms is a compendium of malaprops and dim-witticisms.

At Death's Door: a Story of Gaza relates what happened when THT editor Mike Burch tried to do a good deed and the killing gates of Gaza intervened ...

Frail Envelope of Flesh is a poem based on a phrase found in a superhero comic book ...

Mother Israel, Father Palestine contains two interesting stories about beyond-the-grave messages received from Golda Meir, the former prime minister of Israel who has been called "Mother Israel." The article also contains fascinating glimpses of Yassar Arafat, who might be called "Father Palestine," at a time when he was trying to avoid being assassinated by the government of Israel and people within his own organization.

Genocide Poetry speaks for itself ...

The Ballad of the Christmas Donkey, and a Message of Hope is the Christmas wish and encouragement of Beth Burch, the wife of THT editor Mike Burch, for everyone who may be struggling with depression, bullying or a feeling of being "different" in a negative way. Beth's message is that being different is good, so "take back the power" from people who say otherwise.

Who the hell was Furkan Dogan, and why should we care? Should we care about an 18-year-old peace activist who was summarily executed by the government of Israel in international waters for the "crime" of being aboard a ship that was trying to deliver humanitarian aid to the suffering people of Gaza?

Why I Left the Religious Right is a humorous look, through poetry, at some of the zanier ideas of Bible-believing conservative Christians.

BENEDICT XVI: LIGHT OF THE WORLD! is a cheeky review of the Pope's latest self-aggrandizing book.

What I learned from Elie Wiesel and other Jewish Holocaust Survivors, about achieving World Peace is the personal account of how THT editor Michael R. Burch learned more from the Jewish Holocaust survivors he worked with, than some of them seemingly wanted him to know.

The Lunatic State and a Voice of Reason explores the thought process of Professor Norman Finkelstein, the son of two Holocaust survivors who grew up to become one of Israel's fiercest critics.

Oscar Wilde Epigrams is a page chock-full of some of the choicest epigrams of all time: those of the Divine Oscar Wilde.

November 2010: Our first new Spotlight poet this month, Chaya Feldman, wrote one of the most touching and poignant poems of the Holocaust: "Ninety-Three Daughters of Israel." Let us all vow to say "Never again!" to all such atrocities.

Our second new Spotlight poet, Jovica Tasevski-Eternijan, is an acclaimed Macedonian poet, essayist and literary critic.

Our second new Spotlight poet, John Beaton, was raised in the Highlands of Scotland and now lives in the town of Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island, Canada. He is a former moderator of an online metrical poetry workshop: The Deep End at Eratosphere. His poetry has been widely published in literary and non-literary newspapers, magazines, and journals, and has won poetry competitions. He is also a regular spoken word performer at Celtic events, Burns Suppers, and literary gatherings.

Terese Coe returns to the Spotlight with a new translation of a Borges poem, "Rain."

"A Page from the Deportation Diary" is a poem written by Wladyslaw Szlengel, a victim of the Holocaust and one of its foremost Poets. This is a new translation by THT editor Mike Burch.

Conrad Aiken is an under-known contemporary poet whose work deserves vastly more attention than it receives today.

T. Merrill has graced us with yet another THT exclusive, "Orbiting a Potentially Dead Star."

We have also added a wonderfully touching new poem, "The Peace of Santa Barbara" to the page of Seamus Cassidy, our favorite retired Irish redhead.

Mother Israel, Father Palestine contains two interesting stories about beyond-the-grave messages received from Golda Meir, the former prime minister of Israel who has been called "Mother Israel." The article also contains fascinating glimpses of Yassar Arafat, who might be called "Father Palestine," at a time when he was trying to avoid being assassinated by the government of Israel and people within his own organization.

"The Whirlwinds of Revolt will continue to Shake the Foundations of our Nation ..." reminds our readers of a prophecy made by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Herzl, Hitler and the Final Solution for the Children of Gaza discusses the fascinating and disturbing similarities between Adolf Hitler, the prophet-evangelist of Nazism, and Theodor Herzl, the prophet-evangelist of Zionism. Will the fate of the children of Gaza be the fate of the children of Auschwitz, if the world fails to act to save them?

Our Halloween Poetry page contains some the best dark, haunting, scary poems of all time.

Our Fall and Winter Poetry page contains some of the all-time best poems about fall, winter, aging, death and loss.

LINCOLN THE UNKNOWN delves into the work of one of America's best writers of poetry and prose: Abraham Lincoln.

Arthurian Poems is a collection of poems based on the ancient Celtic myths that were later "Christianized" into the Arthurian legends.

Famous Insults, Comebacks, Rejoinders and Repartee provides our readers with ammunition to be used against people they despise, or want to put in their proper place.

How to Become a Fascist Nation, in Seven Easy Steps is an ironic comparison of the unfortunate parallels between the United States, Israel and Weimar Germany.

Conspicuous Presumption: the Surprising Wit and Wisdom of Bush Jr., Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al ... is a collection of Bush administration quotes one might prefer to forget, or live to regret.

Avraham Burg: the Prophet-Poet of Judaism tells the tale of a former (interim) President of Israel who has provocative ideas about the future shape of Israel, Judaism and Zionism.

Einstein on Palestine answers such questions as "Why did Albert Einstein turn down the presidency of the state of Israel, and what did the great Jewish intellectual and humanitarian make of Israel, Zionism and the conflict between Jews and Palestinians?"

Israeli Apartheid is the result of a comprehensive fifteen-month legal study of the policies and actions of the government of Israel, by people who know an awful lot about apartheid: South Africans.

How the Hell Did I, of All People, End Up Translating Other People's Poetry? is Mike Burch's confession that he only started translating other people's poetry because he couldn't fall in love with existing translations of poems like "Wulf and Eadwacer" and "Caedmon's Hymn."

American Homophobia suggests that conservative Christians are homophobic because they fear and distrust the God they profess love and trust implicitly.

October 2010: Dr. John Z. Guzlowski is Professor Emeritus at Eastern Illinois University. He says, "Most of my poems are about my Polish-Catholic parents' experiences in the slave labor camps in Germany." Garrison Keillor used one of his poems poem for the show Writers Almanac, and Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz—in a review published in Poland—said that Guzlowski's poems about the war "astonished" him.

Christina Pacosz returns to the Spotlight with three new poems.

Sally Cook returns to the Spotlight with a number of new poems.

T. Merrill has graced us with yet another THT exclusive, "Orbiting a Potentially Dead Star."

We have also added two new poems to the page of Seamus Cassidy, our favorite retired Irish redhead.

The Children of Gaza Speak is an "inside report" on the condition, hopes and aspirations of students at a school in Gaza.

Poems for Gaza is yet another attempt to save the children of Gaza by forcing the to world ask, "How can innocent children be punished collectively for the 'crime' of having been born 'wrong' ... are we that blind, that stupid, that indifferent to human suffering? If not, why not act today?"

Our Halloween Poetry page contains some the best dark, haunting, scary poems of all time.

Our Fall and Winter Poetry page contains some of the all-time best poems about fall, winter, aging, death and loss.

Reuven Moskovitz is a Jewish Holocaust survivor and the recipient of the 2001 Mount Zion Award and the 2003 Aachen Peace Prize.

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) was the pen name the Chilean poet Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 and was called "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language" by Gabriel García Márquez. Neruda always wrote in green ink, the color of esperanza (hope).

Fardin Mohammadi explains what it's like to be a young Muslim in the United States on the anniversary of 9-11.

Michael R. Burch, in Arabic? Yes, thanks to the skills of translator Iqbal Tamimi, THT's Editor in Exile.

The Palestinian Oud musicians Le Trio Joubran resurrected Nazareth at St. George’s Concert Hall. Please read the riveting report from Bristol, provided by Iqbal Tamimi. Why is this the only group of Palestinian musicians who are allowed to perform internationally?

Gideon Levy has been called the "most hated man in Israel." Could it be because he has the temerity to speak the truth?

The Curious Blindness of Abba Eban is a meandering essay about the dangers of nationalism and religious zealotry in the modern world.

Vanessa Redgrave: A Passion for Justice is a testimonial to a courageous actress who sold two houses in order to raise the funds to film a documentary about the Nakba ("Catastrophe") of the Palestinians.

We have added a page of Elie Wiesel's quotations, poems and epigrams.

What I learned from Elie Wiesel and other Jewish Holocaust Survivors, about achieving World Peace is the personal account of how THT editor Michael R. Burch learned more from some of the Jewish Holocaust survivors he worked with, than they seemingly wanted him to know.

The Palestinian Perspective on Peace is an informative question-and-answer session which considers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Palestinian perspective.

The Popemobile and Other Equivocations is yet another expose of the follies of organized religion, by THT editor Michael R. Burch.

Einstein on Palestine answers such questions as "Why did Albert Einstein turn down the presidency of the state of Israel, and what did the great Jewish intellectual and humanitarian make of Israel, Zionism and the conflict between Jews and Palestinians?"

The Night the Stars Aligned: Nashville Welcomes His Excellency, Aziz Mekouar, Ambassador of Morocco to the United States is the story of the remarkable relationship between the fledgling United States of America and the Muslim nation, Morocco, that first recognized and befriended it, in 1777.

How the Hell Did I, of All People, End Up Translating Other People's Poetry? is Mike Burch's confession that he only started translating other people's poetry because he couldn't fall in love with existing translations of poems like "Wulf and Eadwacer" and "Caedmon's Hymn."

September 2010: This month our first Spotlight poet, Leo Yankevich, speaks to us all the way from Gliwice, Poland.

Dr. Joseph S. Salemi returns to the Spotlight, with new riffs on televangelists and other objects of his considerable ire.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, remains in the Spotlight with yet another THT exclusive, "Praise the Lord!"

Peter Austin returns to the Spotlight with a number of new poems related to the Holocaust.

We have also published Russell Bittner's book review of Peter Austin’s A Many-Splendored Thing.

In the Shadow of Rachel's Tomb is the story of a family's struggle for survival in the shadow of Bethlehem's "security wall."

Tawfik Zayyad is one of the leading poets of the Palestinian resistance movement.

The Popemobile and Other Equivocations is yet another expose of the follies of organized religion, by THT editor Michael R. Burch.

The Archpoet "Confesses"! now contains a stanza-by-stanza analysis of "His Confession" by THT editor Mike Burch. What did the Archpoet "confess," really? If anyone had listened to him, could the Inquisition have been averted?

August 2010: This month we're spotlighting the account of a near death experience, The Night the Veil Thinned, written by Beth Harris Burch, the wife of THT editor Mike Burch. This is Beth's first contribution to THT in the form of her own words, but she has certainly inspired many of his, as attested by the collection of poems he wrote in her honor over the last twenty years: O, Terrible Angel.

Sarah Plain, "refudiate" this! is our poetic salute to the greatest American poet since George W. Bush. The influence of Yoda on the work of both poets is clearly evident, but we believe Palin may have exceeded Bush by also channeling otherworldly gurus like Yogi Bear and Yogi Berra. She is capable of greater cognitive difficulty than T. S. Eliot and Hart Crane, and also of more flirtatious winking than Mae West.

Donald Rumsfeld is an accomplished man. His main claim to fame is being the world's pre-eminent warmonger. But Rumsfeld is also a poet. No, make that a Poet with a capital "P." Until now, Rumsfeld's poetry has been properly appreciated only by other warmongers and fervid fundamentalists. But now we are pleased to introduce laymen to what Hart Seely calls Rumsfeld's "jazzy, impromptu riffs."

Addicted to Bush by is a humorous piece that asks the pertinent question: "Why do Americans love things that endanger our lives: sex, drugs, french fries and machismo-dripping warmongers?"

Dreaming of Obama is one of the more hopeful pieces we've published in recent memory.

Fadwa Tuqan has been called the Grand Dame of Palestinian poets. She is widely considered a symbol of the Palestinian cause and "one of the most distinguished figures of modern Arabic literature. Tuqan died on December 12, 2003 during the height of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, while her hometown of Nablus was under siege. In his obituary for The Guardian, Lawrence Joffe wrote, "The Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan, who has died aged 86, forcefully expressed a nation's sense of loss and defiance. Moshe Dayan, the Israeli general, likened reading one of Tuqan's poems to facing 20 enemy commandos."

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi has been a central player in the struggle for a Palestinian homeland. A tireless campaigner for human rights, she has distinguished herself in both the academic and political arenas. Her academic expertise has played a vital role in the development and recognition of Palestinian culture, while her longstanding political activism on behalf of the Palestinian people has contributed greatly to the establishment of an independent and self-governing Palestine.

Julie Kane has been one of our most popular poets in terms of page views recently, so it seemed only fitting to re-spotlight her poems.

Our first new Spotlight poet, David Burnham, went to the same high school as Richard Moore, another poet published by The HyperTexts, which only goes to show what a small, interconnected globe this Earth is becoming.

Since David Burnham and Richard Moore were schoolmates, this seems like a good time to re-Spotlight the work of one of our very best contemporary American poets.

Sieglinde Wood, our second new Spotlight poet, was born in The Bronx in 1960, now lives and writes in Newbury, Vermont.

Michel de Montaigne is one of the all-time great writers, even in translation.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, also remains in the Spotlight with yet another THT exclusive, "God's Universe."

The Embarrassing Intolerance of God begs the question: why are Christians more tolerant than the Father, Son and Holy Ghost?

The Path to Peace in the Middle East suggests that there is a better path to peace than war: in a word, Justice.

Wrestling Angels and Chimeras challenges the "Domino Theory": has the government of the United States been fighting war after war on false pretenses?

Roll Call of Shame begs the question: why has the United State unilaterally vetoed 42 United Nations resolutions that might have brought relief to multitudes of completely innocent Palestinian women and children?

July 2010: This month in the spirit of July 4th, we have re-published a page (not very originally) called Let Freedom Sing! Poetic songs of freedom are often wild and dark, as our readers will see ...

Ann Drysdale returns to the Spotlight with four new poems.

George Held also returns to the Spotlight with a number of new poems.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, also remains in the Spotlight.

Ayla Mahler is a Spanish poet and artist who has been voted the top artist out of more than 1780 artists at Agregarte.

The Aftermath of the Flotilla is a compelling account of what Anna Baltzer, a Jewish-American peace activist, saw and heard in Palestine after Israel attacked the Gaza Flotilla in international waters, killing nine Turkish peace activists.

We have a new page on the poetry of Robert Frost, featuring a number of lesser-known poems of his suggested to us by Tom Merrill.

CONVICTION asks if Christians who believe in "hell" have the courage of their convictions. How can they bring children into the world, if they believe in an "eternal hell"? Are they monsters?

Just in time for doomsday we have an informative if somewhat speculative new article, John of Patmos: 2012 or Bust?

We also have a new essay, "The Spiritual Sasquatch" by THT editor Michael R. Burch, along with a reprint from last year, Independence Day Madness.

June 2010: This month we are pleased and honored to spotlight four poems (three of them new to THT) by Anita Dorn. Anita Dorn was a survivor of World War II refugee camps, and the beloved wife of the American poet Alfred Dorn, who shares the THT spotlight with her. Anita Dorn died in 2005 and will be sorely missed.

We are also pleased to spotlight several translations by Helen Palma, who holds advanced degrees in the Classics and in Comparative Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Over twenty-five of her translations from the poetry of Baudelaire have been published in various journals. She lives in New York City.

We have also published several translations and original poems by Marion Shore, whose published translations include works of Dante, Villon, Ronsard, Baudelaire, Rilke and many others. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and two sons.

We are tickled pink and pleased as punch to be able to re-spotlight the poetry of Jan Schreiber, and we've added four new poems to his page to commemorate the event. We have also published four of his reviews of the work of Richard Moore, for good measure.

We have also added a new poem, "Slow Down, Sunset" to the page of Seamus Cassidy, a retired Irish redhead.

And we have added three new poems to the page of Maryann Corbett.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, remains in the Spotlight with three new THT exclusives.

We have added several poems to the page of Zyskandar Jaimot, who passed away recently, but whose words continue to resonate with us.

Leland Jamieson returns to our Spotlight with three new poems.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is an important letter by Bleu Copas, a former Army Sergeant and Arabic linguist.

Dorothy Parker is best known for her epigrams and spoonerisms, but thanks to Tom Merrill we have been able to update her page with several "more serious" poems we think our readers will appreciate.

We also continue to feature a short, humorous poem by our Editor in Arrears, "gimME that ol’ time religion."

Pus we have a new poem on the same subject, "The Trinity (an Update)."

In keeping with the current trend, we have a new page on religion called Infalli-BULL.

May 2010: This month we are pleased and honored to be able to spotlight "Bitter Snow" by Anita Dorn. Her poems were published in Pivot, Poetry Digest and other literary journals. She also wrote a novel based on circus life and a number of short stories, some of which were published in Nassau Review. She was the beloved wife of the American poet Alfred Dorn, and quite a fancier of cats. She died in 2005 and will be sorely missed.

We also have a new short, humorous poem by our Editor in Arrears, "gimME that ol’ time religion."

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, remains in the Spotlight with three new THT exclusives you won't want to miss. Tom is consistently one of our most-read poets, and for good reasons, so if you haven't read his work, please give it a gander.

Our second new Spotlight poet this month is Alan Wickes, an English poet. In recent years, Alan has spent as much time as possible travelling with his family around the Mediterranean. These journeys have often provided the backdrop to his writing. Over the past ten years he has become increasingly interested in writing metrical verse, adopting a modern idiom within formal verse settings.

Our third new Spotlight poet is Mike Alexander. Alexander has been published most recently in River Styx, Bateau, the 2010 Texas Poetry Calendar, and in Modern Metric’s chapbook, We Internet in Different Voices.

We also have three new poems by Iqbal Tamimi, our Editor in Exile, with accompany photos and art you won't want to miss.

We also have a new article in our Nakba series: How Palestine Became Divided.

And we have added a new page of Christian Poetry.

And for good measure we have a new feature: English Poetic Roots: A Brief History of Rhyme.

April 2010: This month we have a special "April Fools" page.

Also, in the spirit of April Fools Day fun, we have an odd bit of humor, Weaponizing Chili, by Mike Burch.

On a more serious note, we are honored to re-spotlight the poetry of Sandy VanDoren, who passed away recently. Sandy had been published in journals such as Measure, Iambs and Trochees, Pivot, Edge City Review, The Lyric, The Mid-American Poetry Review and Medicinal Purposes, and was the winner of The Lyric's Fluvanna Prize in 2007 and its Leslie Mellichamp Prize in 2008.

Another poet we published on several occasions, Zyskandar Jaimot, also passed away recently, and we're honored to spotlight his work yet again. We've also added two new poems to his page. One of them, the last poem he submitted to us and one that he seemed to have been working on up to the end of his life, is about a vision he had of nuclear weapons in what might be called a "hatchery" or "nursery." The title he chose for the poem relates his vision to the current impasse between Iran and Israel.

Dahlia Ravikovitch, who died in 2005 at the age of 69, was one of Israel’s most beloved writers. She was also acclaimed for her courage as a peace activist who was "deeply involved in the cause of Palestinian human rights." Her death was front-page news in Israel and was met with an "outpouring of grief from every corner of society."

As THT editor Mike Burch worked on the poetry page of Dahlia Ravikovitch, he experienced what he calls An Especially Eerie Convergence.

Rat Zingers Children probes the question "What did Ratzinger/Benedict know and do about pedophilia in the Catholic Church?"

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, remains in the Spotlight with two new THT exclusives.

March 2010: This month our first new Spotlight poet is Timothy Murphy, who hunts in the Dakotas when he's not writing about hunting.

Night Labor, a Poem for Rachel Corrie is a short poem dedicated to a young peace activist who died trying to protect a home about to be demolished by the IDF.

Don Thackrey spent his formative years on farms and ranches of the Nebraska Sandhills before modern conveniences, and much of his verse reflects that experience. He now lives in Dexter, Michigan, where he is retired from the University of Michigan. His verse has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies.

Peter Austin lives with his wife and three daughters in Toronto, Canada, where he teaches English at Seneca College. Over a hundred and fifty of his poems have been published, in magazines and anthologies in the USA (including The New Formalist, Contemporary Sonnet, The Lyric, Iambs & Trochees, The Pennsylvania Review, The Raintown Review, and Trinacria), Canada and elsewhere.

Lakshmi Seethapathi Iyer lives in Mumbai with her husband and teenage daughter. She started writing in her late thirties, a few months after her mother passed away. This is her first poetry publication, but not (we predict) her last.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, remains in the Spotlight with a new THT exclusive.

We have published a new essay by Mike Burch, Christian Mothers and the Cult of Hell: What the Hell Are They Doing to Their Own Children?

The Puritan National Conscience by Joe Salemi was written in response to Burch's essay.

Joe Salemi, Mike's Salami and the Christian Mother-Monster by Mike Burch was written in response to Salemi's essay.

Logic 101 is an essay by Mike Burch which suggests simple, logical ways Israel and the United States can avoid destroying the world in the process of making it "safe" for "democracy."

February 2010: This month we're pleased to have a new addition to our Formal Poetry page, which we're also publishing as an essay in its own right: Regarding the Great Poetic Divide, by T. Merrill. We also have two related essays: This Is Not a Manifesto by Quincy R. Lehr and Aints, Saints and Formalist Plaints by Michael R. Burch. If you're interested in formal poetry and the "state of the art" of contemporary poetry, we think you'll find food for thought on these pages. And we've just added a fourth related essay, The Effete Fascist, also by Michael R. Burch.

Sarah Palin, Poet! is an important page about our latest, greatest American poet, who is reinvigorating the English language at tea parties across the nation. She is a Major Poet following in the footsteps of Yoda, Yogi Bear, Yogi Berra and George W. Bush. And don't you dare miss the epic clash of limericks between her dastardly archenemy, Mike Burch, and her knight-in-shining-armor, the eminent Dr. Joseph S. Salemi!

Dan Almagor has been described as a "giant of Israeli popular culture." He was commissioned by the Israeli government to write military songs, and his early work often celebrated "Israeli macho culture and military heroism." But he has become a stern critic of the deeply rooted racism he sees in Israeli society, not only against Palestinians, but against Yemenite and Ethiopian Jews.

Yakov Azriel was born in New York in 1950, and has lived in Israel since 1971. He has published three full-length books of poetry in the USA: Threads From A Coat Of Many Colors: Poems On Genesis (2005), In The Shadow Of A Burning Bush: Poems On Exodus (2008) and Beads for the Messiah's Bride: Poems on Leviticus (2009), all published by Time Being Books.

Liz Barger's Letter from Gaza (Almost) is the account of what happened when an American peace activist (who happens to be a personal friend of ours) tried to enter Gaza bearing Christmas gifts for the suffering children of Gaza. Unfortunately, the governments of Israel, Egypt and the United States played Scrooge.

Louise Bogan has long been one of my favorite poets. I just added "After the Persian" to her page, and it's a poem you really should read, if you haven't before. If you have, it's well worth revisiting.—MRB

Jim Hayes was a featured poet in Light Quarterly in 2005 and won the Espy Prize for Light Verse in 2004. His work has appeared in First Things, Iambs & Trochees, Able Muse, Per Contra, The Chimera, The Susquehanna Quarterly, and many other print and online journals.

Iqbal Tamimi, THT's Editor in Exile, has contributed a new poem, "The striver's departure."

The work of James Wilk, a Denver physician, has appeared in Measure, Pearl, The Barefoot Muse, The Raintown Review and elsewhere.

I had a hard time finding credible lists of the all-time best poems online, so I decided to create my own: The Best Poems Ever.—MRB

We have three interesting features by and about a writer, Immanuel A. Michael, who claims to be the human incarnation of Michael the Archangel. He has made a number of predictions of things to come (death and destruction not among them), which readers may find of interest (or at least want to bookmark, just in case). He claims to be the bearer of the true gospel, in three simple verses, and he says it is the purpose of Michael, Wonderful and Glorious to declare The Gospel of Michael and to defeat the Devil by putting an end to what he calls the "Cult of Hell" with a small tract of his entitled The Poisonous Tomato.

In our continuing effort not to be just another run-of-the-mill literary journal, we have decided to amuse you at our own expense by publishing the early poems (okay, juvenilia) of THT editor Mike Burch. Click here, if you dare, to read his Early Poem Project, which contains poems from his first high school poetry project notebook.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, remains in the Spotlight with three new poems.

We have added a second poem by Leslie Mellichamp, "Towers," to our Poems for Haiti page.

The Heretical Poets is a rundown of the great heretics and the great apologists of Christian orthodoxy. Is it possible that atheists like Housman and Shelley were in agreement with Dante and Milton, after all?

January 2010: This month we have added a new page of Hiroshima Poetry, Prose and Art.

Haiti Poetry contains poems and prayers for our brothers and sisters in Haiti.

We also have a late-breaking new report: Shocking News: Hatred of God in Haiti! We are appalled to hear that the honor of God has been questioned: what can people possibly be thinking?

The Gods: an Update is our sincere attempt to help our readers pick the best possible gods to fawn over, bow down to, and worship.

We have a new page of poetry, prose and art about The Trail of Tears and a related feature, Osama bin Laden and the Twin Terrors, which discusses the similarities between the situation of Sitting Bull and the Sioux, and that of the Palestinians today.

Our first Spotlight poet this month is Alfred Dorn. Dr. Dorn has been absolutely essential to the preservation of an endangered species: English poetry in its more traditional forms. A former vice president of the Poetry Society of America, he is the Director of the World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets, which has sponsored international contests since 1980. His efforts on behalf of narrative and formal (metrical) poetry are well known and greatly appreciated among his peers.

O, Terrible Angel is a series of poems written over a period of nearly twenty years by Mike Burch for his wife Beth.

We continue to update our new page on Palestinian Poetry, Art and Photography. We will be updating this page on a regular basis, so please bookmark it and visit it often.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, remains in the Spotlight.

We finished the year on a real bang, logging the 202,000th hit on our main page since we began tracking main page hits a few years back. But according to Google Dynamics, this is only the tip of the iceberg, as the pages we've managed to index so far (by no means all of them) are getting from 28,000 to 33,000 hits per month (and those figures seem to be rapidly climbing). Many of our pages rank number one with Google, or close to the top, including our pages for such popular search terms as "Holocaust poetry," "formal poetry," "epigrams," and most of our poets' names. The bottom line? If you're a poet and you want your best poems to be read by large numbers of readers, THT is a good place to showcase them. And if you have a few spare minutes to spend reading poetry and "things literary," Google seems to find THT highly relevant, and readers seem to agree. So we believe the prognosis for the future is good, and getting better all the time.

December 2009: A. E. Stallings was one of the first "name" poets we published, and Google Dynamics has just confirmed that she remains one of our most popular poets, so we are pleased to re-spotlight her fine poetry.

X. J. (Joe) Kennedy is another highly popular THT, as revealed by Google Dynamics, so we're pleased as punch and tickled pink to spotlight his poetry for the second time.

Iqbal Tamimi is joining THT as our Editor in Exile. She will be helping us acquire the rights to publish poetry by Palestinian poets and other poets who work in Arabic.

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was perhaps the preeminent Arab poet of his day.

We are also pleased to feature, side-by-side, the work of brothers Anthony Hecht and Roger Hecht. Anthony Hecht won numerous awards for his writing, including the Prix de Rome, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (for The Hard Hours), the Bollingen Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Frost Medal and the Tanning Prize. Roger Hecht was a leading light in the Expansive Poetry movement, and his work was published in leading journals such as Poetry, The Paris Review and The Kenyon Review.

Nahida Izzat is a Jerusalem-born Palestinian refugee who has lived in exile for over forty years, after being forced to leave her homeland at the age of seven during the six-day war. She is a mathematician by profession but art is one of her favorite pastimes. She loves hand-made things and so makes dolls, cards, and most of her own clothes. She started writing around three years ago when her friends insisted she should write about her memories, experiences and feelings as a Palestinian.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, remains in the Spotlight with three new THT exclusives.

Ann Drysdale also remains in our Spotlight, with two new poems with a Christmas bent.

Nakba is the pseudonym of a Palestinian American poet who speaks very bluntly, and often vehemently, about the plight of his people, and what he considers the complicity of Jews and Americans in their increasing destitution.

We also have a new page of Heretical Christmas Poems, with contributions by Drysdale, Merrill and other poets.

We have also added e. e. cummings to our list of Featured Poets.

November 2009: Mark Allinson completed a PhD in 1989 in English literature, then taught for six years at Monash university in Melbourne, Australia. He also taught adult-education courses in literature, philosophy and religion. Since retiring from teaching Mark has been writing and publishing poetry and essays in magazines and journals both in print and on-line. Mark has recently published a chapbook of poems and recently has had six poems in three poetry anthologies published by William Roetzheim.

Frank Osen’s work has appeared in publications like The Dark Horse, Pivot, Blue Unicorn, The Spectator and The Wallace Stevens Journal. He was a runner-up for the 2008 Morton Marr Poetry award, won the 2008 Best American Poetry Series poem challenge, received the Lord Byron Award from The World Order Of Narrative & Formalist Poets, and was a finalist in the 2006 Nemerov sonnet competition.

David Rosenthal is our third new Spotlight poet this month. His poems have appeared in journals like Measure, The Formalist, Blue Unicorn, The Lyric, and Pivot. He has also published haiku and senryu in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Lilliput Review, Wisteria, and other journals. He has been a finalist for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award and a Pushcart Prize Nominee.

We've made a number of updates to the page of Greg Alan Brownderville, so he's back in the Spotlight for the month of November.

We have also updated Rose Kelleher's page, so she remains in the Spotlight.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, remains in the Spotlight with a new THT exclusive.

Ann Drysdale also remains in the Spotlight with three new poems.

October 2009: This month we've updated the poetry page of Zyskandar Jaimot with a new poem about the perplexities of submitting sex-saturated poems to The New Yorker. We have also published the poem, "Must Have SASE," in our Spotlight, where it now appears next to the essay "How I Blew It At The New Yorker" by Richard Moore. If you want to know how to be rejected or blacklisted by The New Yorker, why not take advice from the experts? Or, if you prefer to avoid the rat race, you can sit back, relax, and enjoy "More Distant Recollections of the NYer," a poem by T. Merrill about sitting back, relaxing, and reading the NYer.

Rose Kelleher is one helluva poet,
and we want you to know it.
(Don't you dare miss her charming villanelle
on the perilous charms of the Devil!)

Ann Drysdale remains in the Spotlight with two new poems.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, also remains in the Spotlight with four new THT exclusives.

We have also published the sixth installment of AFTER by Sharron Rose.

September 2009: Adrie Kusserow is a cultural anthropologist who works with Sudanese refugees in war-torn South Sudan. At St. Michael's College in Vermont she teaches courses on modern-day slavery, refugees and internally displaced people. She and her husband Robert Lair started the New Sudan Education Initiative. Their first girls' health sciences school will be built in Yei, South Sudan. The poems published by The HyperTexts are based on her visit to a Sudanese refugee camp in Uganda.

Greg Alan Brownderville tells us: "I was born and reared in a musical family of Pumpkin Bend, Arkansas, where I absorbed the blues, Southern gospel, country preaching saturated with the King James Bible, and the rural rhythms of life in the Mississippi River Delta. Rhythm ruled."

C. S. Fox earned her B. A. in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts and went on to obtain her M. S. in Education from Simmons College. She is a teacher and single mother to two young children, and maintains her sanity by reading and writing poetry, swimming and hiking.

Dr. Joseph S. Salemi returns to the Spotlight, with a new poem, "Genesis."

We are pleased to be able to publish a new essay, How I Blew It At The New Yorker, by Richard Moore. If you want to know how to be blacklisted by The New Yorker for thirty years, be sure to take notes.

We have also published the fifth installment of AFTER by Sharron Rose.

Ann Drysdale also remains in the Spotlight with two new poems.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, also remains in the Spotlight with yet another THT exclusive.

August 2009: This month we're pleased to shine the Spotlight on Wendy Videlock, with two new poems and an updated photo.

Catherine Chandler is also in the Spotlight, with a number of new poems and an updated bio.

We've also completely revamped the page of Quincy R. Lehr.

We have a new Holocaust poem by an American poet, Edward Nudelman, whose grandmother was a Holocaust survivor.

The Glob Blog is a blog intended to keep you up to date with the latest escapades of the poets and editors of The HyperTexts, via letters, essays, rants, etc., on topics like the right of adults to euthanasia, the right of non-heterosexuals to copulate and marry as they please, and the right of Palestinian kindergartners not to be spat on and cursed by Israeli soldiers with raised machine guns.

Ann Drysdale remains in the Spotlight, with several new poems, including a fine translation of a French poem by Théophile Gautier.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, remains in the Spotlight with two new THT exclusives.

We have published our second installment on the subject of the Nakba ("Catastrophe") of the Palestinians: Parables of Zion.

We have also published the fourth installment of AFTER by Sharron Rose.

July 2009: This month, I'm breaking a long-established rule of my own making, by spotlighting my own poetry. I have a program I use to keep track of the pieces I've had published, and just before I began working on this issue, the program popped up 777, as if I'd hit the jackpot. With 777 publications under my belt, it seems safe to assume that someone somewhere might like my work, so for the very first time my poetry appears in the Spotlight, after which I will once again be relegated to my normal position in the ranks as THT's "Editor in Arrears." You can read my poetry page by clicking here: Michael R. Burch.

I have also written a hopefully provocative piece of prose called Independence Day Madness. Even if you hate my poetry and doubt the sanity of the editors who published me 777 times, this essay may cause your absurdity radar to start pinging, as you ponder whether Americans really believe in the American Creed of equal rights for all human beings outside our shores.

Maryann Corbett is the author of two chapbooks, Dissonance and Gardening in a Time of War. She is a co-winner of the 2009 Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, and her poems, essays, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in River Styx, Atlanta Review, The Evansville Review, Measure, The Lyric, Candelabrum, First Things, Blue Unicorn, The Raintown Review, The Barefoot Muse, and other print and online journals. She has also served as the administrator of Eratosphere, a popular online forum for poets, especially those specializing in metrical verse.

Ann Drysdale remains in the Spotlight, with a new poem in her inimitable (and pleasingly naughty) style.

R. Nemo Hill asked us to keelhaul all his poems and, after they'd been deep-sixed, haul up new ones. You can view the results by clicking on his name.

Erin Hopson has never been published (until now) and has taken only a couple of poetry classes on her way to earning her Masters in Social Work. She currently works as an HIV case manager while living with her girlfriend, three cats, and two dogs.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, remains in the Spotlight with yet another THT exclusive: the most entertaining, enlightening poem I've ever read about "taking out the trash," which in this case is a double entendre.

We also continue to spotlight Richard Moore's latest and perhaps greatest essay, A Life.

We have also published the third installment of AFTER by Sharron Rose.

Colin Ward was born in 1954 in Brampton, Ontario and, after much wandering, has resided in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada for the last thirty years. His work has appeared online in venues ranging from Beside the White Chickens to Autumn Sky Poetry and has been anthologized in David W. Mitchell's Talus and Scree. Colin says, "If you've heard of me you're reading too much poetry." We caution, "No comments from the Peanut Gallery!"

June 2009: This month we are pleased and honored to spotlight the poetry of Sandy VanDoren, a retired professional archivist who has been published in Measure, Iambs and Trochees, Pivot, Edge City Review, The Lyric, The Mid-American Poetry Review, Medicinal Purposes, and several other journals. She was the winner of The Lyric's Fluvanna Prize in 2007 and its Leslie Mellichamp Prize in 2008, was published in a book of poetry, Dialogues, in 2003, and has been the chairman of the trustees of the Pennsylvania Poetry Society. She is presently on the board of the West Chester University Poetry Center in Pennsylvania.

Mary E. Moore, our second Spotlight poet, earned a Ph.D. in Psychology at Rutgers University, then an M.D. at Temple University’s School of Medicine. She went on to teach at Temple and the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, where she headed the Division of Rheumatology. Dr. Moore only started to write poetry seriously after her retirement. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Light Quarterly, Möbius, The Raintown Review, Verbatim, The Eclectic Muse, The Mid-America Poetry Review, and in several other journals and anthologies.

We have published the second installment of AFTER by Sharron Rose.

Ann Drysdale remains in the Spotlight, with two intriguing poems about her experiences with Robert Graves: one in real life as a flirtatious schoolgirl, the other in a dream from which she was "awakened to reality" in an unexpected way.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, remains in the Spotlight with yet another THT exclusive.

We have added "Cargoes" by John Masefield to our Masters page.

May 2009: We continue to spotlight the poetry of Richard Moore. We have also added a footnote (one might call it a grace note) to Richard's latest essay, A Life.

We have added two poems about dreams by Langston Hughes and a visionary one by William Blake to our Masters page.

Michael Stowers remains in the spotlight, with a new poem.

We also continue to spotlight the poetry of Ann Drysdale, with two new poems of hers.

AFTER by Sharron Rose is a highly unusual book we'll be publishing in installments, so please be sure to check it out each month if you find it of interest.

We have also added a new poem to the poetry page of Usha Chandrasekharan.

T. Merrill also remains in the Spotlight with yet another THT exclusive.

And last but certainly not least, we have added a number of poems to the page of Seamus Cassidy, a retired Irish redhead.

April 2009: To celebrate April Fool's Day, we are spotlighting The Archpoet. Not much is known about him, except that he has the coolest name ever, wrote in medieval Latin circa 1165, and seems to have given the modern world one of its first glimpses of the "learned fool," the vagabond poet/rogue scholar.

Also, we've added three new poems to the poetry page of Richard Moore. Richard is a helluva poet: a poet who will be known to future generations if we have anything to say in the matter. Or even if we don't and good taste in poetry has anything to do with who gets read. A poem of Moore's that I particularly like is "In the Dark Season." The three lines below are an almost perfect description of the mysterious art of writing poetry:

One studied a new language in the darkness,
looked far down into the well,
into the hints of sunlight in its depths.

I'd encourage our readers to do what I have done myself: buy all of Richard's books, read his poems, study his essays. Get him to sign the books you buy, because according to Richard he's pissed off his share of publishers, which means his signature may be a rare and valuable commodity in the future.—MRB

We are pleased to be able to publish Richard's latest essay, A Life.

It has also been our distinct honor and privilege to publish Richard Moore's book-length poem The Mouse Whole in whole, not in part:

Here is where you enter, if you dare,
Richard Moore's MOUSE EPIC.
Beware
its 6,000 hilarious rhyming lines
about a mouse's struggle to escape
the sewer into which he was born,
forlorn,
and yet able to make
your jaw drop, agape:
The Mouse Whole
an epic poem
by Richard Moore

Michael Stowers remains in the spotlight, with two new poems.

We also continue to spotlight the poetry of Ann Drysdale, with two new poems.

T. Merrill also remains in the Spotlight with yet two more THT exclusives.

We have added the letter-poems of Emily Dickinson to our "Blasts from the Past" series.

March 2009: This month we are pleased to spotlight the work of Michael Stowers for the first time, but hopefully not the last. As T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, says in his introduction, "Except for an early play, which was performed at the University of London (St. Mary's campus) and a few poems published by Jocundity, a paper vehicle based in NY, Michael has kept his literary inventory strictly under wraps." And so our readers may be among a select few to have read his work. We hope to not only publish more of his poems, but also some of his paintings, if he will allow us to do so, in the near future.

Usha Chandrasekharan graduated with a degree in Economics, having also taken a short-term course in Journalism and another shorter one in concept selling. She worked with a Kolkata, India information marketing company and later joined Scholastic India as an educational coordinator. Her education for the greater part has been consolidated "on the street." Communicating at all levels is her forte. Poetry and short stories are her pastime, although she says, "I am not prolific like most writers."

Amitabh Mitra is a medical doctor in a busy hospital in East London, South Africa. A widely published poet, artist and photographer both on the web and in print, he has been hailed as one of the most popular South African poets writing in English today. As one reviewer aptly put it, "his love poems with a backdrop of feudal Gwalior and Delhi take you on a sentimental journey to the old family homes, forts, palaces and places where he grew up." Come with us, as we ride a slow train to Gwalior with the good doctor.

Archana Rajagopalan is also new to our pages this month. Archana was born and resides in Chennai, India, where she works as a consultant.

Fred Hose lives in Pretoria, South Africa, where he is self-employed and does contract engineering work. He loves impressionistic paintings and writes novels, short stories, essays and poems. The story of how he came to be a writer is a remarkable one, so please visit his page, where we've allowed him to tell his story in his own words.

Max Babi was born in Cambay, or Khambhat, a city in central Gujarat, into an ex-royal family of Junagarh and Radhanpur. His mother tongue is Urdu, but by age twelve he had mastered English, being completely self-taught. His particular writing focus is on the transcreation of Urdu and Gujarati poems. A book is half ready, and several of his stories have been accepted by the Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul series. He also writes regularly for Pune Mirror, a part of the Times of India.

We have added new poems and artwork, courtesy of Mary Rae, to the tribute page of Kevin N. Roberts, the founder and first editor of Romantics Quarterly, who passed away recently.

T. Merrill also remains in the Spotlight with two more THT exclusives.

February 2009: This month we continue to spotlight the poetry of Ann Drysdale, with three new poems you would be amiss to miss.

T. Merrill, our Poet in Residuum, also remains in the Spotlight with yet another THT exclusive.

Was Hart Crane the last major poet? Click on his name to hear what Tennessee Williams, Robert Lowell and Harold Bloom have to say. Since Crane was born on the cusp of the 20th century, in 1899, we'll hedge our bets by making him a "Blast from the Past" and a featured contemporary poet.

January 2009: This month we're publishing a tribute page for THT poet Kevin N. Roberts, the founder and first editor of Romantics Quarterly. Kevin died recently after struggling with a variety of physical maladies which either began or intensified when he swam to the aid of others through the contaminated waters of Hurricane Katrina. Kevin was a compassionate and courageous young man who accomplished much in his brief life, and we will do our best to publish more of his work as it becomes available to us. In addition to being a writer and artist, Kevin was a professor of English Literature. He spent three years in the English countryside of Suffolk, writing Romantic poetry and studying the Romantic Masters beside the North Sea. His work appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, including Dreams of Decadence, Penny Dreadful, Songs of Innocence, The Oracle, The Storyteller, Tucumcari Literary Review, The Sentimentalist, Poet's Fantasy, and several others. He had two books published in the United Kingdom: Fatal Women, a collection of poetry and Quest for the Beloved, a book of literary criticism and philosophy. One of our favorite poems of his seems to presage the brevity of his life and his struggles with the "surf and sea foam on a foaming sea" . . .

Our time has passed on swift and careless feet,
With sighs and smiles and songs both sad and sweet.
Our perfect hours have grown and gone so fast,
And these are things we never can repeat.
Though we might plead and pray that it would last,
Our time has passed.

Like shreds of mist entangled in a tree,
Like surf and sea foam on a foaming sea,
Like all good things we know can never last,
Too soon we'll see the end of you and me.
Despite the days and realms that we amassed,
Our time has passed.

(No sooner had I finished this article and popped into Outlook to check my e-mail, than the message "Thanks Mate!" flashed up on my monitor. But when I tried to discover who had sent the e-mail, there was no email with those words. Very strange, in a nice, comforting way.—MRB)

We're pleased and proud to shine the Spotlight on Anna Evans. Anna is the new Editor-in-Chief of one of our favorite formal journals, The Raintown Review, so we asked her to give our readers a "vision statement" for the journal under her editorship. She agreed and you can read her vision statement on her poetry page, beneath her poems, or at the top of our Links page.

Sophie Hannah Jones is a bestselling crime fiction writer and poet. Her psychological thrillers have sold 200,000 copies in the UK, and are also being published or slated to be published in fourteen other countries, with several more foreign rights deals under negotiation. Sophie’s fifth collection of poetry, Pessimism for Beginners, was shortlisted for the 2007 T.S. Eliot Award, and in 2004 she won first prize in the Daphne Du Maurier Festival Short Story Competition for her suspense story The Octopus Nest. Her poetry is studied at GCSE, A-level and degree level across the UK.

We continue to spotlight the poetry of Ann Drysdale and we have added a new poem to the top of her page.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight. Tom is our Poet in Residuum, a mysterious office for which he has created his own job title and duties. But since we admire his poetry, greatly appreciate (and need) his eagle eye, and don't pay him, we're more than happy to give him free rein. Much of what our readers enjoy freely here is the result of Tom's inspiration, talent, craftsmanship and his dedication to the fairest Muse.

December 2008: This month our first new Spotlight poet is Paul Stevens, the founder and editor of two literary journals: the Shit Creek Review and The Chimaera. A transplanted Englishman, he now lives on the New South Wales coast with his wife and numerous children, dogs, trees and raucous birds.

We're also pleased to re-shine the THT Spotlight on the work of Joe M. Ruggier, a Maltese poet now living in Canada who has sold more than 20,000 books . . . most of them poetry books he sold door-to-door!

We continue to spotlight the poetry of Ann Drysdale and have added nearly a dozen new poems (er, poems new to us) to her page.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight, with four new THT exclusives. And it's now official: Tom is our Poet in Residuum!

We have added a page of poems by, about and admired by Abraham Lincoln.

Last but certainly not least, we have a very interesting article, "A Direct Experience with Universal Love" by Sharron Rose, a poet/artist who had a mystical experience in Sitges, Spain on Christmas Eve 1984, and now lives in California with a cat who insists on sitting in her lap while she types on her computer.

November 2008: This month's first new Spotlight poet is Scott Standridge. Scott is yet another fine poet who hails from Arkansas. Jim Barnes, Greg Brownderville, Jack Butler and Sam Gwynn (who continues to be spotlighted this month) are other THT poets with Arkansas roots. Must be something in the water there, or perhaps it's the mayhaw jelly that gets the poetic juices flowing . . .

Our second new Spotlight poet is Ann Drysdale, who "was born near Manchester, raised in London, married in Birmingham, ran a smallholding and brought up three children on the North York Moors and now lives in South Wales." Among her literary accomplishments, she had the longest-running by-line column in the Yorkshire Evening Post. Her fifth collection, Quaintness and Other Offenses, is scheduled for Spring 2009.

The THT Spotlight continues to shine on John Whitworth, who is, as his name implies, a worthy wit, and a wit well worth reading.

Whitworth and R. S. (Sam) Gwynn are good friends and admirers of each other's poetry, and so we're pleased as punch to be able to re-re-spotlight Sam's work alongside John's. We have added twenty-two new poems to Sam's page, so please be sure to check it out.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight, with yet more THT exclusives.

Mary Rae is once again in the Spotlight, as her book St. John of the Cross: Selected Poems, originally published in 1991, has recently been released in a long-awaited revised edition, which you can peruse and order by clicking here. Saint John of the Cross famously went through a "dark night of the soul" to emerge as one of the shining lights of mystical poetry.

October 2008: This month the THT Spotlight shines on John Whitworth, whose name seems prophetic because he is, indeed, a wit worth reading. Whitworth is one of those creatures rarer than unicorns: a contemporary poet who has actually made money from his compositions, although he is eager to make more, so please be sure to buy his books!

Whitworth and R. S. (Sam) Gwynn are good friends and admirers of each other's poetry, and so we're pleased as punch to be able to re-spotlight Sam's work alongside John's.

T. Merrill remains in the Spotlight, with yet more THT exclusives.

September 2008: This month we're pleased to be able to shine the THT Spotlight on Arthur Mortensen, a much-published poet, and the webmaster of Expansive Poetry & Music Online.

The Archpoet is the latest poet in our Blasts from the Past series. Not much is known about him, except that he has the coolest name ever, wrote in medieval Latin circa 1165, and seems to have given the modern world one of its first glimpses of the vagabond poet/rogue scholar. He was also quite a heretic, which appeals to us immensely.

Last month we published the short story "Missionaries" by Sally Cook. This month we're back with poetry by Sally Cook, including her take on Newton, Adam, Eve and man's sinful, nay gluttonous!, lust for apples and knowledge. We just wonder which sort of apples, and whose, Adam was really after . . .

T. Merrill continues to remain in the Spotlight, with more THT exclusives.

We recently had over 10,000 hits on our main page for a single month, which is a new record for THT. It seems someone out there likes us, and we sincerely hope it's you.

August 2008: Joseph Salemi is back, with a second installment of A Gallery of Ethopaths, accompanied by more fine illustrations by Bob Fisk. Once again Salemi plays pugnacious Churchill to every other poet's Neville Chamberlain! Watch the Pit Bull of Poetry take on the Pompadoured Poodles of Poesy! BIFF! BAM! POW! There's more than one Dark Knight intent on saving the world from nefarious Jokers!

Speaking of Bob Fisk, we're pleased to be able to publish "Missionaries" by his wife, Sally Cook. Is "Missionaries" a work of fiction, non-fiction, or something in between? We'll never tell, so you'll have to draw your own conclusions. You can also find "Missionaries" features atop our Mysterious Ways page.

The Archpoet is the latest poet in our Blasts from the Past series. Not much is known about him, except that he has the coolest name ever, wrote in medieval Latin circa 1165, and seems to have given the modern world one of our first glimpses of the vagabond poet/rogue scholar.

And it's our distinct honor and privilege to publish Richard Moore's epic poem "The Mouse Whole" in whole, not in part. Along with the Mouse we invoke the Muses:

Fly in from your Ocean Isles
out in clear ethereal blue;
revive me with giggles and smiles,
and help me with rhyming too;
protect me from errors
and blunders
as I sail through these terrors
and wonders,
and preserve my powers undiminished
until this moustrosity's finished.

May 2008: This month we are pleased as tickled pink punch to be able to publish THT's Second Interview with Richard Moore.

New to the Spotlight this month is Ian Thornley's long poetic work, "Song of a Son of Light."

We are also delighted to be able to feature a second long poetic work, "Blue Beard," by V. Ulea.

T. Merrill continues to remain in the Spotlight, with two more THT exclusives.

April 2008: New to the Spotlight this month is Charles Martin, one of our foremost translators of Latin poetry and a fine poet in his own right. Martin has received the coveted Award for Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from The Academy of American Poets. He has also been awarded the Bess Hokin Award by Poetry and a Pushcart Prize, not to mention having been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times.

Our second new Spotlight poet is Seamus Cassidy, a poet who comes from a heritage of Irish storytellers.

This month we welcome Charles Adés Fishman back to the Spotlight, with two poems about his father that nicely complement his poems about his sister and grandson.

T. Merrill continues to provide us with THT exclusives, and so he remains in the Spotlight.

We have added a new article "Two Tales of the Night Sky" to our Mysterious Ways page. The article contains a short prose piece by Glory Sasikala Franklin and a poem by Harold McCurdy. Mysterious stuff indeed!

Our congratulations to THT poet Rhina Espaillat, who will be the first writer to receive the Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award from Salem State College. Bravo, Rhina!

We have created a new page, Heresy Hearsay, which will be a forum where poets can freely speak their minds, using salty language or vulgarities if they so choose, on any topic, including things "heretical." We will take as the main planks of our platform two choice sayings:

I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.—Walt Whitman

If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations, the same hopes and fears, to which the Bible addresses itself, it might rival it in distribution.—Wallace Stevens

March 2008: It is our honor and pleasure to once again shine the THT Spotlight on the work of Dr. Joseph S. Salemi. We have just published two new sections from his A Gallery of Ethopaths, with accompanying illustrations by Bob Fisk.

We've added two new poems by Jack Butler and so he returns to the THT Spotlight.

T. Merrill has provided us with more THT exclusives, and so he remains in the THT Spotlight.

In conjunction with THT poet/artist/photographer Judy "Joy" Jones we are publishing a new page called The Holocaust of the Homeless.

Judy Jones recently had the opportunity to write poems and read them for The Gap, the mega-billion-dollar manufacturer, distributer and retailer of apparel. What happens when a saint encounters a conglomeration? We have four poems of hers to share that we believe you'll find illuminating. Be sure to read "recognition," the last poem in the series.

We are pleased to announce a tribute page for Brian Coleman, a young man who befriended a number of Holocaust survivors, including THT poet Yala Korwin, before suffering an untimely death at the age of nineteen. But Brian's thoughtfulness and kindness will not be forgotten, and THT is pleased to be able to help keep his memory alive.

We are delighted to be able to publish "I remember ..." an essay by Urmila Subbarao on the dangers and joys of intolerance and tolerance, respectively.

P. Bloodsworth was born in Columbus, Ohio in November of 1974, upon which she was immediately adopted and taken to be raised on the outskirts of Dayton, Ohio, whereafter, other than a rumored kinship to an Apache shaman known as Goyathlay, information on her background remains as elusive as her somewhat scattered writings, some of which you can read here by clicking her name.

Wallace Stevens is the latest poet in our "Blasts from the Past" series, but by no means the leastest!

February 2008: Judith Werner, our first Spotlight poet this month, lives in Brooklyn Heights and works as a grant writer for Habitat for Humanity. Previously Senior Editor for Rattapallax, she teaches a poetry workshop at Caring Community and has had poems published in many literary magazines and several anthologies. She has won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, The Academy of American Poets Prize, a Breadloaf Writer’s Conference Fellowship, The Lyric’s Best of Issue Prize and Honorable Mentions, the Ronald J. Kemski Prize, and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

T. Merrill has provided us with yet a few more THT exclusives, "hot off the pen," and he remains in the THT Spotlight.

Because Werner and Merrill are both fans of A. E. Housman, we have elected to spotlight Housman's work again this month in our "Blasts from the Past" series. Please be sure to check out Werner's "Post-Modern Glosa," a poem which incorporates lines by Housman.

By the way, it was Merrill who first recommended Werner's work to THT, and then put us in touch with her, so this issue of THT very much bears his stamp, and our approval.

January 2008: Our first Spotlight poet this month is Mary Rae, a widely published poet who was formerly editor of Romantics Quarterly, a literary journal founded by poet Kevin N. Roberts. A graduate of Boston University with a degree in Spanish Language and Literature, Mary Rae is also a composer, artist and translator. Her book, St. John of the Cross: Selected Poems, was published in 1991, and she is currently at work on a revised edition. Samples of her music, poetry, and art can be found at www.maryraemusic.com.

Returning to the Spotlight is T. Merrill, one of THT's most gifted poets. These poems are THT exclusives, so please be sure to check them out.

The latest edition to our Blasts from the Past series is Thomas Wyatt, with an introduction by Jeffery Woodward.

We've also added a page of the Selected Poems of A. E. Housman to our "Blasts from the Past" series.

We have added Laurel Johnson's book review of Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust to THT's Essays & Assays page.

December 2007: This month our first Spotlight Poet is Bill Coyle, whose poems have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including the Hudson Review, The New Criterion, the New Republic, and Poetry. He is a translator from the Swedish, and his versions of the poet Håkan Sandell have appeared in PN Review and Ars Interpres and are forthcoming in the anthology The Other Side of Landscape.

Our second Spotlight Poet this month is Tom Riley. Riley was born in 1958 and grew up in Western New York. He was educated at Hartwick College and at the University of Notre Dame. He teaches English literature and Classical languages in Napa, California, where he lives with his wife, Mary, a stepdaughter, three small children, his in-laws, and a timid Belgian shepherd. He exercises way too much for a man his age and enjoys the potation of whiskey, cursing his enemies, and shooting the bow. He is not well practiced in the art of smiling. He is, however, well practiced in the art of poetry.

Our third Spotlight Poet is Bruce Weigl. Weigl enlisted in the Army shortly after his 18th birthday and spent four years in the service, serving in Vietnam from December 1967 to December 1968, where he received the Bronze Star. He has contributed various well-renowned poems for over 25 years. Many of his poems are inspired by the time he spent in the U.S. Army and Vietnam.

We're pleased as punch to be able to publish a new poem, "A Slice of Life" by T. Merrill, which is based on an incident that occurred recently in Bucharest. Merrill's poem will undoubtedly make our male readers wince, in between grins and guffaws.

George Eliot is our newest "Blast from the Past." Like so many great poets and writers, she seems to have been light years ahead of her time. Esther Cameron, editor of The Deronda Review, a journal which takes its name from a novel Eliot novel, explains why ...

Robert Bridges (1844-1930) was the Poet Laureate of England, yet "his writing suffered the singular and ironic misfortune of winning broad public favor at the expense of understanding."

I have started a new, somewhat mystical page entitled Sandra Jane Burch: A Voice Beyond. Sandra Jane Burch is the name of the elder of my two sisters (I'm the oldest of three siblings); she inherited it from our aunt of the same name, who died in 1955, three years before I was born. Since my sister goes by Sandra, I will call our aunt of the same name Jane, in order to avoid confusion. Until very recently, all I knew about Jane was that she had died in a flood as a young girl. But recently I came across a folder containing her schoolwork and certain other of her personal effects, and to my surprise and delight I discovered that she was a poet, as I and my sisters are. In her folder I found two poems, which I will share before delving further into her story. I believe the first of the two poems is her original work. Jane died while in the fourth grade, and I think her poem is a very nice one for the age at which she wrote it, or for any age:

Cherrys are red;
Christmas is white,
Stars are yellow,
Snow is white.

To read the full story, a continuing work in process, please click here.

November 2007: This month we're pleased to shine the THT Spotlight on the poetry of George Held. Many of our readers will recognize his work from The Neovictorian/Cochlea, The New Formalist, Commonweal, and other journals of note. George has a wonderful personal touch on poetic portraits like "Elise" and "Honey," and one cannot help but be impressed with his ability to work Joe DiMaggio, Bill Gates, W. B. Yeats and Euterpe into a single poem ("Finding My Way").

Jeff Holt is a therapist in Denton, Texas whose poems have been published in William Baer’s Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets, The Formalist, Measure, The Evansville Review, Pivot, Iambs & Trochees, The Texas Review, Rattappallax, Cumberland Poetry Review, Sparrow, and elsewhere.

W. Riley Munday—Riley Munday to family and friends—was a native Mississippian and a graduate of Mississippi College and the New Orleans Baptist Seminary. He was a Baptist minister, humorist, after-dinner speaker, husband, father, grandfather, and published poet. His two long-play humor records, "Smile, Southern Style" and "Seventh Sense" both went into at least four pressings. His poetry chapbook The Beginning Tree was published in 1971.

Robert Bridges (1844-1930), the latest poet in our "Blasts from the Past" series, was the Poet Laureate of England, yet "his writing suffered the singular and ironic misfortune of winning broad public favor at the expense of understanding."

Our Holocaust Poetry pages now rank in the top ten with Google. If you haven't read the work of Miklós Radnóti, Wladyslaw Szlengel and the other Holocaust poets we've published, there's no time like today. Once again, we'd like to express our appreciation to Yala Korwin, Esther Cameron, Charles Adés Fishman, and the other fine poets who have helped us assemble one of the finest collections of Holocaust Poetry, Art and Essays on the Internet.

Please click here for a book review of Richard Moore's Buttoned Into History, reviewed by Eleanor Goodman.

September 2007: This month we have a special article, "Flying the Flag on 9-11" that was written by THT editor Mike Burch in response to an email invitation to fly the American on September 11th in order to remember and honor our fallen dead.

We have added a number of new poems to the page of T. Merrill, one of THT's ablest poets and greatest benefactors. These poems are THT "exclusives," for which we are grateful.

For the first time in some time, we've added new lyrics (these by Leonard Cohen) to our Rock Jukebox page.

A'isha Esha Rafeeq-Swan has worked extensively with HIV, substance abuse, homelessness and advocacy groups. Her causes also include the end to violence and racism, and the promotion of peace, love, well-being and unity for all. She has been published by Street Spirit and is the co-producer of The Bones of the Homeless Will Rise. We're pleased to be able to publish her tribute poem "Ode to Judy Jones." Judy (Joy) Jones is an artist, photographer, poet, and storyteller with fascinating and sometimes out-and-out miraculous tales to tell of her work among the dying, the homeless, and the "poorest of the poor."

August 2007: T. Merrill is a gifted poet, painter and photographer who is a THT Spotlight Poet for the second time. He's been a frequent contributor to our "Blasts from the Past" series and has aided and abetted THT in more ways than we can possibly remember or hope to repay.

Dr. Joseph S. Salemi remains a Spotlight poet, and we've added three fine poems to his poetry page which were not there last month. He considers these poems among his best, and we agree. He also has the latest addition to our Essays & Assays page.

And we're pleased to once again Spotlight the lovely, alluring work of homeless advocate Judy (Joy) Jones. Judy Jones is an artist, photographer, poet, and storyteller with fascinating and sometimes out-and-out miraculous tales to tell of her work among the dying, the homeless, and the "poorest of the poor." In her own words, "Each of my paintings has a story. Since I haven't an immediate family, the whole world has become my home and every person I paint becomes my 'brother, father, sister, mother'. I become intimately involved with the person before me. I started painting for the first time at the age of 33 from the confines of a hospital bed after a near death experience. The moment my paintbrushes touched the paper I knew my only purpose on the earth was to paint. Painting is my way to say I love you."

July 2007: "The Totems of Poetry" by Dr. Joseph S. Salemi is the latest addition to our Essays & Assays page. Dr Salemi is also our Spotlight poet for the month of July.

The latest poet in our "Blast from the Past" series is Thomas Campion (1567-1620). His page features an introduction by Jeffrey Woodward.

Johnmichael Simon started writing poetry seriously as retirement age arrived, after meeting his life partner, Helen Bar-Lev, an artist who is also a THT poet. Together they have collaborated on three published books, and Johnmichael has won or placed highly in a number of poetry contests, including a first and a third prize in an international competition, the Reuben Rose. He has also been published widely in anthologies and internet publications.

June 2007: Christina Pacosz, our latest Spotlight Poet, has been writing and publishing prose and poetry for nearly half a century and has several books of poetry, the most recent, Greatest Hits, 1975-2001 (Pudding House, 2002). Her work has appeared recently in I-70 Review, Jane’s Stories III, Women Writing Across Boundaries and a poem has been accepted for publication on-line by Pemmican.

Louise Bogan is the latest poet in our "Blasts from the Past" series. Bogan has long been one of my favorite poets, and it's a shame and travesty that she isn't better known than she is today. On the brighter side, we hope to soon have an excellent essay by Jeffrey Woodward on Bogan's poem "The Mark," so please re-visit her page when time allow.—MRB

Speaking of Jeffrey Woodward, we're pleased to be able to hyperlink to his essay on Amy Clampitt published by Umbrella. This essay also appears on THT's Essays & Assays page.

Woodward has also created a valuable resource for poets entitled "An Annotated Checklist of English Versification," which appears on The Barefoot Muse.

Gordon Ramel is a scientist who has "come to poetry as a scientist." His university degrees are in ecology. He won a first poetry prize at the age of 14, but didn't really find "time to water the seeds of creativity" until he was 43. His poem "Darkness" is based on what might be called a "waking vision," and it seems prophetic both in its origin and in its message.

May 2007: Ezra Pound is the subject of the latest installment of our "Blasts from the Past" series, and his page kicks off with an introduction by T. Merrill, a frequent THT contributor.

Our first Spotlight poet this month, Janet Kenny, left a good life as a painter and singer in New Zealand to sing professionally in England then escaped to Sydney, Australia. There she was active in the anti-nuclear-weapons movement and jointly wrote and edited a book about the nuclear industry. She now lives by the sea in Queensland. She has published essays and poems in print and many online journals including Mi Poesias, The New Formalist, Avatar, The Susquehanna Quarterly, The Raintown Review, and Iambs & Trochees.

Debbie Amirault Camelin, our second Spotlight poet, lives in Ottawa, Ontario, with her husband and three children. She is an eight generation Acadian with roots in Nova Scotia, Canada. Her poem "Intimidation," the winning poem in the 2006 Tom Howard Poetry Contest, was inspired by a real-life event on a journey through South Africa in 2001.

Leland Jamieson, our third Spotlight poet for May, lives and writes in East Hampton, Connecticut. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UNC at Chapel Hill. Although he has been a scribbler of verse since he was a teen, starting in 2002 he began to devote himself to formal poetry. His goal is to tell stories and present vignettes relevant to today’s readers. "Teaching myself to write in rhyme and meter, and committing myself to that endeavor," he says, "has been the most liberating experience I have ever enjoyed in my writing life. What rhyme and meter most liberated for me was feeling, and with it fresh insight into people (including myself), and into the nature of the world we call home."

April 2007: Maureen Cannon died at her home in Wyckoff, N.J. in January 2007. She had published over one thousand poems, most of which were written "in under a minute." We are pleased to be able to publish a number of poems by Maureen Cannon, provided to us by Light Quarterly editor John Mella.

Sheema Kalbasi is an award-winning Iranian-born poet, a human rights activist, a literary translator, the Director of Dialogue of Nations through Poetry in Translation, the Director of Poetry of the Iranian Women Project, and a passionate and outspoken defender of ethnic and religious minority rights. She writes of love, loss, exile, and brave women who protect their children and defuse hate through their very existence. Kalbasi lives in the U.S. now, but honors her Iranian heritage.

March 2007: This month we're pleased to feature C. L. (Cynthia) Toups as a new Spotlight Poet. Toups is a self-employed editor and technical writer with a B.A. in History from Loyola University New Orleans. Her love of history and music fuels her poetic themes along with her south Louisiana roots.

Our second new Spotlight Poet is David Leightty, whose second chapbook, Civility at the Flood Wall was published in 2002; his first, Cumbered Shapes, was published in 1998. His poems have appeared in various journals, including Blue Unicorn, The Cumberland Poetry Review; The Epigrammatist, Light, The Lyric, Phase and Cycle, Riverrun, Slant, Sparrow, Spoon River Anthology, SPSM&H, and The New Compass. In 2003 Leightty founded Scienter Press (www.scienterpress.org), a small poetry press.

Our third new Spotlight Poet is Helen Bar-Lev. Since 1976 Helen has devoted herself to art: painting, teaching and writing poetry. From 1989 until 2001 she was a member of the Safad Artists’ Colony in the Upper Galilee where she had her own gallery. Today she paints and teaches in Jerusalem. To date Bar-Lev has participated in 80 exhibitions, including 30 one-person shows. Her poems and paintings have appeared in many online journals such as The Other Voices International Project, The Coffee Press Journal, Boheme Magazine, The Poetry Bridge, River Bones Press and also in print anthologies such as Meeting of the Minds Journal, Voices Israel Anthologies, Manifold Magazine of New Poetry, Lucidity Poetry Journal and others. She is the global correspondent in Israel for the Poetry Bridge and Editor-in-Chief of the Voices Israel annual Anthology.

Our fourth new Spotlight Poet is Yelena Dubrovina, who was born in St. Petersburg, Russia where she received her Master Degree in Library Science. She left Russia in 1978, and since 1979 she has resided in Philadelphia. Yelena is the author of two books of poetry, “Preludes to the Rain” and “Beyond the Line of No Return,” and of many literary essays. In addition, she co-authored a novel “In Search of Van Dyck” with Dr. Hilary Koprowski. From 1983 to 1991, she was on the editorial board of the poetry and art almanac Vstrechi/Encounters.

Our fifth new Spotlight Poet is Jeffrey Woodward, whose poems and articles have been published widely in North America, Europe and Asia in various periodicals, including Acumen (England), Blue Unicorn, Candelabrum (England), The Christian Century, Connecticut River Review, Envoi (Wales), Gryphon, Haiku Scotland, Hrafnhoh (Wales), International Poetry Review, Invisible City, Lines Review (Scotland), The Lyric, Nebo, Piedmont Literary Review, Plains Poetry Journal, Poem, Re: Arts & Letters, Second Coming, South Coast Poetry Journal, Staple (England), Studio (Australia), and many others.

We've added a new poem, "A Child of the Millennium," by Charles Adés Fishman that we like so much we've added it to three pages: Fishman's poetry page, which you can reach by clicking here, and our For Darfur and In Peace's Arms (Not War's) pages, which we are continually updating (and which we hope you'll visit often).

We have also added "Who knows one?" by Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, "Displaced Persons Camp in Darfur" by Yala Korwin, and "What for Darfur?" by Ed Miller to the For Darfur page.

And we've added a fine new poem, "Unwithered," to the poetry page of T. Merrill.

We are pleased to announce that the complete work of Nadia Anjuman (Nadja Anjoman) is now available in Farsi at: www.entesharate-iran.com.

February 2007: W. H. (William Henry) Davies is the fourth installment in our "Blasts from the Past" series, and his page kicks off with an introduction by Davies admirer T. Merrill, a frequent THT contributor. Davies came from a poor family, didn’t go to college, was "tossed out of school at an early age for having organized a little gang of school acquaintances for the purpose of robbing local businesses," and ended up becoming a hobo, a career that ended when he attempted to jump a train, fell, and lost a foot under the train’s wheels. This unfortunate accident (for Davies) became a fortuitous incident (for the world), as Davies went on to become a writer of considerable distinction, publishing more than twenty volumes of poetry and several prose works, most notably The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908).

Our fifth installment of "Blasts from the Past," once again with an introduction by T. Merrill, is Conrad Aiken, one of the sweetest singers among American poets.

Mary E. Moore, our third Spotlight poet this month, earned a Ph.D. in Psychology at Rutgers University, then an M.D. at Temple University’s School of Medicine. She went on to teach at Temple and the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, where she headed the Division of Rheumatology. Dr. Moore only started to write poetry seriously after her retirement. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Möbius, Raintown Review, The Eclectic Muse, The Mid-America Poetry Review, and in several other journals and anthologies.

We're pleased as tickled pink punch to announce that T. S. Kerrigan now appears on Wikipedia. A well-deserved honor for a fine gentleman and one of THT's favorite contemporary poets.

We have added new poems to our For Darfur page, including one by THT poet Zyskandar Jaimot, and we continue to welcome submissions.

January 2007: Thanks to T. Merrill, we're bringing in the New Year with a bang with the poetry of Harold Monro, in our third installment of "Blasts from the Past." As Merrill tells us in his introduction, "T. S. Eliot singled out Monro as one of the two poets 'of a somewhat older generation than mine' whose poetry was closer to being 'the real right thing.' (The other was Yeats.) In summing up his high opinion of Monro, Eliot predicted that his poetry would '... remain because, like every other good poet, he has not simply done something better than anyone else, but done something that no one else has done at all.' Which brings to mind a question: who today has heard of Harold Monro?" Well, at least you have now, if not before!

We're please to shine the THT spotlight on a number of new poems we've just added to the poetry page of Michael Cantor.

Melanie Houle was the first featured poet in The Raintown Review, and now she's a THT spotlight poet. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Lyric, Texas Poetry Journal, California Quarterly, Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Iconoclast, Timber Creek Review, The Rockford Review, The Aurorean, Mobius, and Pearl.

Nelson Mandela is an eloquent spokesman for Africa and for all humanity, and he is someone who not only "talks the talk" but definitively "walks the walk." Mandela's page close with a tribute in which Mohammed Ali explains why Mandela is his personal hero.

Joseph McDonough, the latest addition to our Holocaust index, is a stockbroker who lives in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Having worked in the World Trade Center prior to 9-11, he began writing as a way to disconnect from this monumental tragedy. He soon began writing poetry of "witness," as a way to memorialize victims of terrorism and holocausts. He has been published in several literary journals, most recently The Penwood Review, and he will be a featured poet in the January 2007 issues of Poetry Life and Times (England) and Stylus Poetry Journal (Australia).

December 2006: This month, just in time to usher in the holiday season, we're pleased to be able to spotlight the work of Mary Malone, thanks to the efforts of her good friend and advocate, T. Merrill, who has written a touching and amusing introduction for her THT poetry page.

And we're pleased to be able to shine the THT spotlight for a second time on Annie Finch, who is well known, and rightly so, in formal circles. In addition to adding some new "Annie Finch originals," we have also added three of her translations: two of the French Renaissance poet Louise Labé, and one of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, which she co-translated with George Kline.

T. Merrill has also helped us kick off our new "Blasts from the Past" section by compiling some of the best lesser-known poems of one of the great ascended masters of poetry: A. E. Housman.

We have added a new poem of Thanksgiving to the poetry page of Takashi “Thomas” Tanemori, and we have also added this poem, appropriately enough, to our Thanksgiving page.

If you're a writer of poetry or prose, please note THT's calls for submissions for our For Darfur and In Peace's Arms (Not War's) pages, in the second paragraph at the top of this page.

November 2006: This month we re-welcome T. S. Kerrigan back to the THT Spotlight. He was recently nominated for a Pushcart by one of our favorite journals, The Raintown Review, for his poem "The Dust of Stars." With the sheer audacity of a true poet, Kerrigan, after agreeing to allow us to publish "The Dust of Stars," submitted a version of the poem that bore only a faint resemblance to the Pushcart-nominated poem! We tip our hats to him, and to the poem.

Marly Youmans is the second returning poet in the Spotlight this month, and we've added three new poems to her page that you won't want to miss. Her poems sometimes sparkle as though touched with a magic wand, bringing us close to the Otherworld, so prepare to be enchanted!

This month's first new Spotlight poet is Eve Anthony Hanninen. Eve’s work has appeared or will appear in Mannequin Envy, Southern Hum, Nisqually Delta Review, ForPoetry, The Reality Box, Red Letter Press, and elsewhere. She edits The Centrifugal Eye, an online poetry journal.

Our second Spotlight poet is Martin Itzkowitz, who teaches in the Department of Writing Arts at Rowan University. He has served as non-fiction editor and executive editor of Asphodel, a literary journal associated with the department's graduate program. Having begun writing poetry shortly after the Flood, Martin has published in various venues, most recently in The Lyric and Moment.

Robin Ouzman Hislop, our third Spotlight poet, was born in the United Kingdom and has also lived in Scotland, Scandinavia, The East and Spain. He now lives in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK. His work has appeared in Dawn Millennium Anthology and Crystal Dawn Anthology published by Kedco Studios. His anthology After the Cave the Comet appeared in 2004. He started as a resident poet with Poetry Life & Times in January 2005 and took over its editorship together with Spanish poetess Amparo Arrospide from Sara Russell in May 2006.

We have also added two new poems—the first dedicated to Primo Levy, the second a plea for Israel to be "merciful, but strong"—to Yala Korwin's poetry page.

As many THT readers are aware, THT has been actively "taking sides" in the confrontations between the United States and Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. We're taking the side of brotherhood and peace, as our In Peace's Arms page attests. Recently, Dr. Mahnaz Badihian was kind enough to translate THT editor Michael R. Burch's poem "Brother Iran" into Farsi. If you'd like to see what a formal English poem looks like in Farsi, just click the hyperlinked title of the poem.

October 2006: This month's Spotlight poet, Alfred Nicol, is the latest (but probably not the last and certainly not the least) of the Powow River Poets to be published by THT. Nichol edited the Powow River Anthology, published by Ocean Publishers in 2006, and was the recipient of the 2004 Richard Wilbur Award for his first book of poems, Winter Light, published by The University of Evansville Press. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Formalist, Measure, Commonweal, The New England Review, and other journals. Several of his poems have been anthologized in Contemporary Poetry of New England and in Kiss and Part. The fourth of nine installments of his long poem, “Persnickety Ichabod’s Rhyming Diary” appeared in Light Quarterly.

September 2006: This month's Spotlight Poet is Jack Foley. His poetry books include Letters/Lights—Words for Adelle, Gershwin, Exiles, Adrift (nominated for a BABRA Award), and Greatest Hits 1974-2003 (published by Pudding House Press, a by-invitation-only series). His critical books include the companion volumes, O Powerful Western Star (winner of the Artists Embassy Literary/Cultural Award 1998-2000) and Foley’s Books: California Rebels, Beats, and Radicals. His radio show, Cover to Cover, is heard every Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. on Berkeley, California station KPFA and is available at the KPFA web site. His column, “Foley’s Books,” appears in the online magazine The Alsop Review.

While our focus has almost always been on contemporary poets, other than on our Masters page and other topical pages, we are always ready to make an exception whenever an exception is merited. This month we are making such an exception by publishing the lyrics of John Dowland, famed throughout Europe as "the English Orpheus" for his artistry and skill as the greatest lutenist of his day (1563-1626).

Mary Cresswell lives in New Zealand, where she is a self-employed technical writer and editor. She has been published in Light Quarterly, Tucumcari Literary Review, Landfall, Glottis, Tamba, and elsewhere.

We are also pleased to be able to add three new poems to the poetry page of Terese Coe.

August 2006: David Alpaugh’s poetry, fiction, drama and criticism have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Exquisite Corpse, The Formalist, Modern Drama, Poetry, Twentieth Century Literature, The Literature of Work, and California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present. His collection Counterpoint won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from Story Line Press and his chapbooks have been published by Coracle Books and Pudding House Publications. Alpaugh operates Small Poetry Press, a chapbook design and printing service, and edits its Select Poets Series. He is well known in poetry circles for his controversial thesis of The Professionalization of Poetry, which he defended at the AWP 2004 Convention in Chicago.

James Bobrick is also featured this month, and we'll let him describe his early poethood in his own illuminative words: "Though from the Northeast I was sent to a boarding school in Southern California. I was an indifferent student but was determined to pass the sophomore English final, which would consist entirely of quotes from Palgrave's The Golden Treasury. So on a flawless spring night I stayed up till dawn, increasingly enraptured, reading poem after poem. During that night my life changed. I knew—whatever else I did—that I had to write poems and have persisted ever since." His work has appeared in many magazines here and abroad, including Candelabrum, The Cumberland Poetry Review, The Laurel Review, Slant, and The Worcester Review.

Ralph O. Cunningham has published three books: Lovesongs and Others by Fiddlehead Poetry Books, and No Continuing City and Mirrors of Memory by Multicultural Books.

July 2006: It's always a pleasure when we have new, never-before-seen-in-English translations by Yala Korwin, but these translations are indeed special—the only two remaining poems of her father, Salomon N. Meisels, who died at the hands of Hitler's thugs, and yet through these two utterly lovely poems lives eternally and shines all the more brightly. These, in my opinion, are poems worth of Rumi and Hafiz, i.e., immortal works.—MRB

Bronislawa Wajs, also known as Papusza, the Romani word for "doll", was an unusual child, even for a Gypsy child. She learned how to read and write by stealing chickens from Polish villages! To learn how she pullet-ed this off, and why she had to, just clicking her hyperlinked name (or nickname).

Daniel Waters was born in New Jersey, grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, earned his B.A. from Wesleyan
University, and has been a jack-of-many-trades ever since. His poetry has been a long-running staple of the Vineyard Gazette, has appeared monthly in Yankee magazine for the last decade, and can be heard daily on WCAI, the Cape and Islands' NPR station. His collection "Needing Winter" was the 2005 winner of the Westmeadow Press Chapbook Contest, and his sonnet "Jellyfish" won first prize in the 2006 Newburyport Art Association Poetry Contest.

Andrey Kneller was born in Moscow, Russia. At the age of ten, his family moved to start a new life in America, where Kneller was quickly able to learn English. Kneller first began to write poetry when he was thirteen years old, and has since written hundreds of poems. He has also translated poetry by Aleksander Pushkin, Boris Pasternak, Vladimir Vysotsky, and other Russian poets.

Federico Garcia Lorca’s Views on Poetry and War consists of two illuminating excerpts from the book Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life by Ian Gibson.

"Are Women Underrepresented in the Small Press?" a dueling essay by Charles P. Ries and Ellaraine Lockie is an interesting back-and-forth question-and-answer debate about the problem, if it exists, of women being less published than men by the small presses.

June 2006: Jerzy Ficowski, the friend of Jews and Gypsies, died at the age of 82 on May 9, 2006 in Warsaw, Poland. According to an obituary, his only novel, Waiting for the Dog to Sleep, recently found its way into the English language. The copies arrived at Ficowski's house just two weeks before his death. Having witnessed the genocide of the Gypsies during WWII, Ficowski became one of their few translators. And if not for Ficowski, the work of Bruno Schulz, the great Polish Jewish writer, would have been lost. In honor of an extraordinary gentleman, we are pleased to be able to publish English translations of five of his poems, including a never-before-seen poem, "A Prayer to the Holy Louse."

Miklós Radnóti is considered one of the foremost 20th-century Hungarian poets.

May 2006: We are pleased to kick off a new artistic endeavor this month: In Peace's Arms. The purpose of this page is to encourage the world to seek peace's arms, not war's. The way we will encourage the world to do this is, of course, through poetry, literature and art. Your contributions to, and suggestions for, this page will be greatly appreciated. Please email them to Mike Burch. And please visit this page often, as we will be updating it on a regular basis. We are particularly interested in translations of Iranian poetry, and will be working with a small team of Iranian translators to find and publish the best Iranian work available to us.—MRB

This month's featured poet, Eunice de Chazeau, may be one of the wonders of the literary world that you haven't heard of, unless you're a longtime subscriber to The Lyric or similar journals. Thanks to the efforts of T. Merrill, we're pleased to be able to introduce, or re-introduce, our readers to a contemporary poet of considerable merit.

Richard Vallance is a poet, translator, editor and publisher who is well know in formal and haiku circles for his passion, exuberance, energy and outright damn hard work on behalf of poetry. Like Esther Cameron and Joe Ruggier (and THT's editor when he's not slacking off or catnapping), Richard Vallance is a poet who wears many hats and makes things happen. It's a pleasure and an honor to welcome him and his poetry to THT's pages.

Another poet's pseudonym, Noam D. Plum has himself placed work in several publications, most frequently Light Quarterly. He recently won $500 from The Country Mouse, making him a much more successful breadwinner than the poet for whom he fronts! (Which makes us wonder who his wife would pick, if push came to shove.)

Harold Grier McCurdy, was the Kenan Professor Emeritus of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. McCurdy was an inspiring teacher and a published poet.

Mahnaz Badihian is an Iranian poet and translator with a passion and talent for English poetry.

We're pleased to announce that T. S. Kerrigan's new book The Shadow Sonnets and other poems is available from Scienter Press and can be ordered at www.scienterpress.org.

April 2006: Jack Butler is a THT featured poet for a second time. He says of himself, "I am a noise-scarred singer, but by god I still hold the true note." That's no idle boast: his poetry will add multiple exclamation marks to anything anyone might say about him or his work. Jack Butler is simply one of the best poets writing today, and if you haven't read "For Her Surgery" or "Electricity" before, you have missed out, until now. Get back into the loop of poetry sparking like a live wire by clicking here.

Rose Kelleher is one helluva poet,
and we want you to know it.
(Don't dare miss her villanelle
on the perilous charms of the Devil!)

Agnes Wathall is a poet impossible to find on the Internet ... until now! We dunnitagain, doggonit. Our sincerest thanks to Tom Merrill for bringing her work to our attention. Her "Sea Fevers" is a poem we wouldn't mind being shipwrecked with.

We're pleased to be able to publish another of Yala Korwin's fine translations of the poetry of Wladyslaw Szlengel. The title of the latest addition to Szlengel's page is "New Holiday," and if you haven't visited his page before, you really should. In fact, we insist! (Nicely, of course).

Sean M. Teaford won the 2004 Veterans for Peace Poetry Contest and has had over 40 poems published (or scheduled to be published) in The Endicott Review, The Aurorean, Spare Change, and elsewhere. He will have two poems from his book of poems, Kaddish Diary, about Janusz Korczak and the children he nurtured and protected during the Holocaust, in the revised edition of Charles Adés Fishman’s anthology Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust.

Freddy Niagara Fonseca is a talented multi-lingual poet, and is also a mover and shaker on the Iowa poetry scene, where he hosts the popular and innovative Candlelight Reading Series. His poetry has appeared in three of our favorite journals: Pivot, The Eclectic Muse, and The Neovictorian/Cochlea.

CarrieAnn Thunell is an artist, photographer, poet, columnist, interviewer and book reviewer whose poetry has appeared in some of our favorite journals, including The Lyric and The Neovictorian/Cochlea. We admire her for "wearing many hats" and helping advance the art of others (two things we've been known to do ourselves).

And last but certainly not least, we're pleased to be able to introduce the no-nonsense poetry of Juleigh Howard-Hobson, whose work is making increasing waves in Formalist circles, including The Raintown Review, edited by last month's featured poet, Harvey Stanbrough.

March 2006: This month's featured poet is Harvey Stanbrough, who has been nominated for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and several other prestigious awards. Harvey recently resumed editorship of The Raintown Review, one of our favorite poetry journals.

We are more than pleased to announce that we now have English translations of full length poems by Nadia Anjuman, the young Afghani poet who died shortly after her first and only book of poems was published.

Oliver Murray was published in THT's February issue.

Priscilla Barton was also published in the February issue.

The Powow River Anthology looks to be a landmark publication, featuring some of the best contemporary poets working in meter and rhyme. Please check it out and order forthwith!

On a personal note, I was honored to have an interview and ten of my poems published by Poetry Life & Times. I don't often toot my own horn (er, at least not on THT's pages), but this is one I wouldn't mind readers taking a peek at. Also, while I'm at it, I'd like to share a brief piece called "'Fine, even beautiful,' just not for us" about a poetry submission that crashed and burned despite the editor's evident appreciation of the work. Unless I miss my guess, the editor equated my use of meter and rhyme with "less than modern language." I have posted two of the poems submitted to let readers form their own opinions. Please feel free to comment!—MRB

February 2006: This month, we're very pleased to be able to exclusively feature the poetry and photography of Leonard Nimoy. Nimoy, in addition to being nominated for four Emmy awards, has directed three of the best-selling movies of all time and has won both critical and popular acclaim for his poetry, prose, photography and vocals. We hope you'll visit his photography page, www.leonardnimoyphotography.com, assuming you're 18 or older, as some of his photos are intended for mature audiences.

Oliver Murray is a poet with a deft touch and a sure hand. He submitted ten poems and we couldn't find fault with "nary one of 'em"—so here they all are!

Priscilla Barton is an up-and-coming poet whose words have an authentic ring.

We have added "Storms" to the poetry page of T. S. Kerrigan. "Storms" was the closing poem in the current issue of The Raintown Review, which featured poetry by several THT poets. Our congratulations to TRR editor Harvey Stanbrough, who has re-taken the helm of TRR, and we highly recommend a subscription to TRR to our readers. We have updated Harvey's page with a number of poems from his just-released book, Beyond The Masks.

We have also put the finishing touches on the poetry page of Quincy R. Lehr, whose work appeared for the first time in the December 2005 issue.

And for good measure, we have "freshened" the page of Judy Jones, an artist, photographer, poet and storyteller who works among the dying, the homeless, and the "poorest of the poor." We just learned that Judy is facing a life-threatening illness she contracted while doing volunteer hurricane relief work for the Red Cross, and we ask for your prayers on her behalf—not only for her health, but that she will be able to publish two very important books that are dear to her heart. One is on the homeless, and the other is about Mother Teresa.

January 2006: Thanks to Tom Merrill, who took the time to scan and e-mail THT a number of poems by Leslie Mellichamp, a fine poet who is also well known as the long-time editor of The Lyric, we are pleased to feature Leslie Mellichamp's poetry for a second time.

And we're very pleased to be able to feature the poetry and photography of Leonard Nimoy. Nimoy, in addition to being nominated for four Emmy awards, has directed three of the best-selling movies of all time and has won both critical and popular acclaim for his poetry, prose, photography and vocals.

Takashi “Thomas” Tanemori—descendent of a proud Samurai family, Hiroshima survivor, peace activist, poet and artist—is a man who can share not only hard-earned knowledge and wisdom, but also an ebullient spirit.

Thanks to Amy Waldman, a reporter for the New York Times, we have three more lines of poetry by Nadia Anjuman, along with an account that gives us a glimpse of the young woman behind the poems: Swathed in black, she curled up like a cat in her professor's study, black eyes peering from an elfin face. She is 20 years old and has written 60 or 70 poems. As the first person in her family to love words, she has had to fight, like a number of Professor Rahyab's students, for her family's cooperation. She has fought, too, to stave off marriage, fearing it will limit her freedom to write. ''I think I've been quite successful,'' she said. ''Girls are expected to marry at 14 or 15.'' She writes mostly about women's lives, ''because we have suffered a lot.'' She read an excerpt in a high voice:

I was discarded everywhere, the poetic whisper in my soul died.
Do not search for the meaning of joy in me, all the joy in my heart died.
If you are looking for stars in my eyes, that is a tale that does not exist.

Please click her hyperlinked name above to read the full account.

The HyperTexts is honored and proud to have been able to publish a number of unique pages of poetry, art and essays about the Holocaust, some of which have never been published elsewhere. In some cases we don't even have the names of these poets, only their words. For the first time, we have "brought together" all these pages into one convenient index of Holocaust Poetry.

December 2005: Mike Snider is our featured poet this month. In addition to writing poetry, he has what we believe may be the only formal poetry blog at Mike Snider's Formal Blog and Sonnetarium. But forget the blog for a moment and read the man's poetry, because it's authentic with the added umpf that only comes from a man having lived what he's writing about. When you've read his poems, by all means check out his blog.

We're pleased to be able to introduce our readers to the work of Anna Evans. Anna is sure to be a featured poet in an upcoming issue of THT, quite possibly next month, so please be sure to tune your browser to THT from time to time. And please be sure to check out the formal poetry e-zine she edits, The Barefoot Muse. Good things are happening in formal circles, and Anna Evans is one of them!

Simon Harrison is another poet we expect to be featuring in an upcoming issue, but neither we nor you would want to wait to read such fine poems, so don't dilly-dally!

Quincy R. Lehr has only been writing poetry seriously since 2003, but he's making up for lost time. His poetry has been published in Iambs and Trochees and Pivot, and all indications are that he'll go far in formal circles, with ever-widening ripples ...

Nadia Anjuman is a young Afghani poet whose life and words deserve to be remembered and honored.

November 2005: We continue to showcase October's three featured poets: Anton N. (Tony) Marco, Lee Passarella and T. S. Kerrigan. And we're pleased to be able to publish reviews by Midwest Book Review's Laurel Johnson of Outlaw's Retreat by Tom Merrill and 42 Poems in Rhyme & Meter by Mary Keelan Meisel. You can find both reviews on our Essays & Assays page, alongside a review of Emery Campbell's This Gardener's Impossible Dream by Ethelene Dyer Jones. Folks, these are three fine books by three outstanding poets, and we're not going to be shy about tootin' our own horn that we "done brung them out," though in truth all credit goes to the poets and their publisher, Joe Ruggier of MBooks. You can find examples of the work of T. Merrill, Mary Keelan Meisel and Emery Campbell, all recent THT featured poets, by mouseclicking their hyperlinked names. Could we make it any easier fer ya? These books are all first editions printed in initial quantities of 100 books or fewer. Need we say more? Also, we have four late additions this month, just in time for Thanksgiving: R. Nemo Hill, Keith Holyoak, Ellaraine Lockie and Lee Slonimsky. And last but certainly not least, we have a page of art and photos by Karen J. Harlow that includes her "takes" on THT poets Luis Omar Salinas, Michael McClintock and Luis Berriozabal.

Finally, right before Thanksgiving, we're thankful that Laurel Johnson has been kind enough to grace THT with a review.

October 2005: Anton N. (Tony) Marco is a featured poet for the month of October. Tony has been a frequent contributor to THT's pages, and he's also active in the lively Las Vegas poetry scene.

We're also pleased to be able to introduce our readers to the poetry of Lee Passarella, whose poetry has appeared in Chelsea, The Formalist, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Slant, and other journals of note.

September 2005: This month we're fortunate and pleased to be able to feature the poetry of T. S. Kerrigan. Kerrigan has been published in The Formalist, Light, The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Southern Review, and other journals of good repute. His work was recently included in Good Poetry, an anthology by Garrison Keillor issued by Viking-Penguin. He is also a past president of the Irish American Bar Association, and once argued a case before the Supreme Court, which he won.

We have added our third Yala Korwin page. In addition to her personal poetry and Holocaust poetry pages, we now have a page of her visual art.

And for good measure, we've added three new poems to Esther Cameron's poetry page. Also, we have added yet another superior poem, "To the Golden Gate Bridge," to Moore Moran's page. And we've added a delectable poem with the unlikely title "Richard Feynman Orders Nigiri-Sushi" to Patrick Kanouse's poetry page. Bon appétit!

Also, we want to make our readers aware that Richard Moore's new book, Sailing to Oblivion, is now available from Light Quarterly Imprints. Moore is one of the best and funniest poets we have, and therefore Sailing to Oblivion is a must-have book. Please click here for more information.

August 2005: This month we're pleased to be able to feature the poetry of Douglas Worth. Worth was recommended to us by THT stalwart Richard Moore, and his work has been acclaimed by Robert Creely, Richard Wilbur, Denise Levertov and A. R. Ammons, among others.

We're equally pleased to be able to introduce our readers to the work of Michael McClintock, whose name and work are well known in haiku, senryu and tanka circles. In the past he has edited the American Haiku Poets Series and Seer Ox: American Senryu Magazine, and he has also served as Assistant Editor of Haiku Highlights and Modern Haiku. He currently writes the "Tanka Cafe" column for the Tanka Society of America Newsletter, and edits The New American Imagist series for Hermitage West.

We've also added a new poem, "Diving into Morning" to the poetry page of Tony Marco. We hear that Tony is making waves on the Las Vegas poetry scene, and this poem is a good indication of why he's a "splash hit."

While we're trying to find time / to further inundate the world with rhyme, here's "literary/artistic criticism" from an unexpected but helpful and hopeful source:

Fred McFeely Rogers on Boethius, Saint-Exupery and Yo-Yo Ma

July 2005: We're pleased to announce that MBooks and THT have just published books by Emery Campbell and Mary Keelan Meisel, with books by T. Merrill, Zyskandar Jaimot and other THT poets to follow. To order books and CDs by THT poets, and writers of similar caliber, please click this Books Link. We hope our readers will support our continuing efforts to shine a little poetic light "here, there, everywhere."

In the spirit of Independence day, we're pleased to be able to publish a poem by Meidema Sanchez and a drawing by Victoria Lassen, both 8th graders in the class of Marcella Previdi at Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament School. The story of how they became inspired to fight anti-Semitism with art was originally carried by the Queen's Tribune on June 9, 2005. Our thanks to THT poet Yala Korwin for helping us obtain the rights to publish the poem and drawing.

Also in the spirit of July 4th, we have put together a page (not very originally) called Let Freedom Sing! Poetic songs of freedom are often wild and dark, as our readers will see ...

Also in keeping with our July 4th theme, we've added a page of poetry by, about and admired by Abraham Lincoln. If you'll read this page, you'll find lines penned by Lincoln that are at times reminiscent of Dickinson, Poe, Clare and Herrick. You'll also find what might be the raciest poem of the 1860s, also written by Lincoln. This bit of ribald doggerel was said to have been "more popular than the Bible" in southern Illinois! Lincoln was a true admirer and lover of poetry, and once remarked of a particular poem, "I would give all I am worth, and go in debt, to be able to write so fine a piece ..."

THT is pleased to be able to add another fine, refined poem, "Split," to the poetry page of George Held. "Split" was rejected 40 times before finally being accepted. Which proves two things: (1) There is no accounting for taste, especially that of poetry editors. (2) George Held is one perseverant poet, and one to be Held in the highest regard. "Split" will be published in The Art of Bicycling, where it will appear alongside poems by Walt Whitman, Seamus Heaney and Rita Dove.

We think you'll like our newest Mysterious Ways features:

The Stone of Destiny (the Liath Fàil)
Kids on Love: What the Real Experts Have to Say
Albert Einstein on "Things Mysterious"
The Very Mysterious Metaphor of Entanglement

To read any of the articles above, just click here: Mysterious Ways.

June 2005: This month we're pleased to be able to feature the poetry of George Held. Many of our readers will recognize his work from The Neovictorian/Cochlea, The New Formalist, Commonweal, and other journals of note. George has a wonderful personal touch on poetic portraits like "Elise" and "Honey," and one cannot help but be impressed with his ability to work Joe DiMaggio, Bill Gates, W. B. Yeats and Euterpe into a single poem ("Finding My Way").

Christopher T. George is another poet new to THT's pages whose name may ring a bell from familiar journals. His poetry has been published in Poet Lore, Melic Review and Triplopia, among others.

Judy Jones is an artist, a photographer, a poet, and a storyteller with fascinating and sometimes out-and-out miraculous tales to tell of her work among the dying, the homeless, and the "poorest of the poor."

THT had been waiting "eagerly with patience" for the right to publish "Monterey County" by Moore Moran, and now our patience has been rewarded. We have also added a brand-spankin'-new poem, "When Paris Lay at Helen's Side," to one of THT's best poetry pages, so please reacquaint yourself with it forthwith. If you've never visited Moore Moran's poetry page, you should heed these sage (ever-so-slightly-paraphrased) words of Mark Twain: "The man who does not read good poems has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."

This month we also debut a new Mysterious Ways feature: "Kids on Love: What the Real Experts Have to Say."

May 2005: This month it is our pleasure to feature the poetry of Robert W. Crawford and David Gwilym Anthony. Poetry like theirs need no introduction, so please peruse forthwith! It does bear mentioning that Robert W. Crawford is yet another Powow River Poet, joining Rhina Espaillat, A. M. (Mike) Juster, Deborah Warren, Len Krisak, Michael Cantor, Michele Leavitt and Midge Goldberg. That's quite a high-wattage assemblage of poets, and we only wish we could dam and bottle the water they drink in "those there parts" and dole it out, Perrier-like, to some of the more arid regions still experiencing the dearth of postmodernism.

[An interesting sidenote: THT continues to feature the poetry of Pope John Paul II. In an e-mail to me, Robert Crawford pointed out another of those "harmonic convergences" that seem to happen so often with THT these days: "The odd thing (and very humbling) is that when my poem, 'Olber's Paradox,' was in First Things, that particular issue also featured a review of Pope John Paul II's poetry by Joseph Bottum."—MRB]

Ashok Niyogi has agreed to be a traveling poetic correspondent of sorts for THT, and during his current travels through India and some of the remoter Himalayan hinterlands, he has been kind enough to offer to e-mail us his thoughts and impressions in the form of poems. The first such poem, "Letter to Ulitsa Myitnaya from a Himalayan Hamlet," now appears at the top of his THT poetry page. Please click the hyperlink above / to read a tale of Himalayan love [as always, please pardon the doggerel].

And now, as the cliché goes, "for something new and completely different" ... a fugue in five poetic parts about the various perils and sagas of leaves, by Charles "Charley" Weatherford. And while our introduction may not be the height of originality, the poems themselves are quite original, and good fun to boot!

We're also pleased to introduce a new poem to our Mysterious Ways page. The poem is "Escaping the Light of Day" by Mary L. Mazzocco. We have also added a new featured article to Mysterious Ways: "Did Jesus Walk on the Water?" by serial contributor Judy Jones. This is actually an anecdote and is only incidentally related to the story of Jesus walking on water, but it's a short story that is well worth reading and contemplating.

We have also added a new poem, "The Unveiling of Belzec Monument," and several watercolors and other works of visual art to Yala Korwin's poetry page.

April 2005: Thanks to Esther Cameron, we are pleased to announce that Ethna Carbery is our April featured poet. Our sincerest thanks to Esther for supplying us with a rainbow's-end trove of big-hearted, heartfelt Irish poetry!

Our second featured poet is Mary Keelan Meisel, and this time our thanks goes to Joe Ruggier for arranging for us to be able to use poems of hers that he had previously published through his journal The Eclectic Muse and his Multicultural Books small press.

Karol Jozef Wojtyla was an unknown Polish actor and poet long before he became known to the world as Pope John Paul II. Please click the link to the left to see poetry by Pope John Paul II, along with a fairly comprehensive literary bio. An elegy by Joe Ruggier appears at the bottom of the page. [Editor's note: As I worked on the Pope's bio, I noticed a number of interesting similarities between his "literary bio" and that of Ronald Reagan. They both were actors; they both wrote poetry; as young men they both read what seemed to have been "prophetic manuscripts" which profoundly influenced their lives, and which they later fulfilled (the Pope's was a poem; Reagan's was a book, That Printer of Udell's); they both played vital roles in the downfall of the Evil Empire in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe. How interesting that a Polish Catholic Pope and an Irish Protestant President had so much in common!—MRB]

In one of those interesting coincidences or providential convergences that seem to happen quite often, I just finished proofreading a story for a good friend (good in the truest sense of the word because she's doing good work with the poorest of the poor), the artist Judy Jones, and her story Thy Will Be Done (Iron Lung) leads off with a quotation by Pope John Paul II. Her story is on our Mysterious Ways page.

Because we were a tad tardy posting his poetry page last month, Ashok Niyogi remains a featured poet this month. Niyogi was born in Calcutta, India and spent more than 25 years working in various parts of the world, including the former USSR and Russia. Now retired from commerce (other than the commerce of words), he is a professional poet and writer who divides his time between the US and India.

Michael Bennett is a new poet to these pages, but some of our readers will remember him from Poem Online, where his sharp eye and a sharper tongue were often wielded to aid and/or dismay young poets in search of tutelage.

We are pleased to offer two reviews of the third revised edition of This Eternal Hubbub by Joe Ruggier. Please click on this link to our Essays & Assays page to read the reviews: one by Laurel Johnson and one by THT Editor Mike Burch.

We're pleased to announce that THT is now getting between 2,000 to 3,000 hits per month on our main page, more than double the hits THT was getting only a few months ago.

March 2005: T. Merrill is our March featured poet. His poems come like a breath of fresh air on an otherwise insufferably sluggish, muggish August night. Considering the climate of contemporary poetry, we think our readers will appreciate such a freshening!

Ashok Niyogi was born in Calcutta, India and spent more than 25 years working in various parts of the world, including the former USSR and Russia. Now retired from commerce (other than that of words), he is a professional poet and writer who divides his time between the US and India. THT was scheduled to publish his work next month, but because he's en route to the Himalayas as this feature is added (and because he's promised to send us pictures and poems thereof to share with our readers), we have elected to send him this poetic "bon voyage!"

We're delighted to be able to add a truly lovely poem that honors the work of a THT artist, Makoto Fujimura. The poem, "Nihongan Altar," is by Marly Youmans and it appears at the top of her poetry page, so please click on her name to peruse it forthwith.

Just in time for St. Patrick's day, and thanks entirely to Esther Cameron, we have an exotic page to offer, all about a poet you've surely never heard of, but surely should have: Ethna Carbery (our heartfelt thanks to Esther for a small trove of big-hearted, heartfelt Irish poetry!).

We've also added a new poem, "Morning of Departure" to the poetry page of Tony Marco, and it's another "good 'un" that you won't want to miss.

Finally, we're thankful to Esther Cameron for sending us "The Journey to Unity" by Yosef Ben Shlomo Hakohen, which will adorn and grace our Grace Notes page.

February 2005: June Kysilko Kraeft continues as our February featured poet, along with Len Krisak, who won the Richard Wilbur prize in 2000 for his book Even as We Speak. Also, two poems have been added to the bottom of Norman Kraeft's poetry page: a poem entitled "Crescendo Against Heaven" written by THT's editor, and a touching, gentlemanly poem by Norman Kraeft about understanding that is better read than described.

Simon Perchik has been published in Partisan Review, Poetry, The New Yorker and many other journals, and "is the most widely published unknown poet in America" according to Library Journal. His poetry is full of what one reviewer calls "elemental tokens": tokens that sometimes seem simultaneously familiar and alien in the landscapes of his poems.

February seems a fine month for THT to be able to introduce its readers to the poetry of Julie Kane. Her poem "Thirteen" is reminiscent of "At Seventeen" by Janis Ian, a song that has haunted many a teenager to, through and beyond maturity. Kane's poems like "Maraschino Cherries," "Egrets," "Kissing the Bartender" and "Dead Armadillo Song" demonstrate her virtuoso range and what we take for staying power.

We're also pleased
amidst a February freeze
to be able to introduce Laura Heidy,
mother of three:
which makes us sure she's
weathered sufficient stress
to be a poetess!

Please pardon the doggerel!

Michele Leavitt is another poet new to THT's pages. She joins our "powow" of Powow River Poets that now includes Rhina Espaillat, Deborah Warren, Len Krisak, Mike Juster and Michael Cantor.

Midge Goldberg is another new poet, for us at least, although her poems have appeared in some of our favorite journals, including Edge City Review, Pivot and The Lyric. She's yet another Powow River Poet. Just what do they lace the waters of Powow River with? Someone should bottle it, pronto!

It's a particular pleasure for THT to be able to publish two poems by Leland Jamieson. Please allow me to digress, if I may, in a very un-editorly way (or so I hope). While it may be true that power is a dangerous thing, especially in untrained hands, there is a inevitably a downside. The downside to having editorial power—surely the most negligible power imaginable, or perhaps not—is that sometimes the editor ends up in the uncomfortable position of really wanting to publish a poet, yet having to toe the line of his ticklish, pricklish personal inhibitions. My personal inhibition as an editor is that sometimes a poem seems good, but still seems wrong, simply because it could, and therefore should, be better. What I really want is for the poet to see the potential of his or her own poem. If I can see the poem's potential for betterment, why can't the poet? Almost invariably such a proposition leads to an impasse. I hold out that the poem can be improved. The poet holds out that it is already quite obviously perfect. If I defend my position too strongly, the poem doesn't get published. Ditto with the poet. In such impasses, only the better poets prevail over the beleaguered editor, whose last line of defense is invariably "You talk a better poem than you write." But sometimes a poet is amenable to critique and something wonderful happens: the poem improves, it gets published, and everyone involved wins: editor, poet and especially readers. I like to think something like this happened with these poems of Leland Jamieson's. I've been pulling for Lee to make the THT "cut" for some time, and now he has. The best thing of all is that the poems are clever, well written, and (to borrow a word from one of Lee's poems), they "electrify."—MRB

Tara A. Elliott is yet another poet new to THT. She and Gene Justice are co-editors of Triplopia, an eZine that has published work by several THT poets, and she has been a multiple gold medal winner of the Net Poetry & Arts Contest (NPAC), which has been judged by THT poets Tony Marco, Jennifer Reeser, Harvey Stanbrough and Joyce Wilson.

Rhina Espaillat's poem "You Who Sleep Soundly Through Our Bleakest Hour" has been added to her THT poetry page, and also to Mysterious Ways. Also new to her poetry page is "Arbol Vecino," a Spanish translation of Robert Frost's "Tree at My Window," which has been on a banner with the English original, on exhibit all summer in various city parks of Lawrence, MA ...

Esther Cameron's review of THT's Holocaust Poetry now appears on our Essays & Assays page.

January 2005: This month we have a very special featured poet, June Kysilko Kraeft. As many of our "insiders" and "frequent fliers" know by now, June Kraeft passed away July 21st of last year. June was a writer, a poet, a photographer, a cook, a prize-winning horticulturist, and the co-author with her husband Norman Kraeft of several books on American art. Her THT poetry page will not only showcase her own poetry, but will also be a place for family, friends and admirers to say their last words on her behalf. If you knew June Kraeft, or if you read and admired her poetry, please feel free to e-mail your thoughts, poetry or prose, to THT's editor at mburch@aocg.com.

This tribute page will be a work in progress that will be updated frequently, so please visit it throughout the month.

Our thanks to Richard Moore for contributing his thoughtful, insightful essay "Pain and Death" to Mysterious Ways, where it is now the featured article.

We continue to feature Wladyslaw Szlengel because Yala Korwin has been kind enough to translate several of his poems and allow THT to publish them first. These are important poems by an important poet most readers have never encountered. If you've missed our past issues, you may want to visit related pages that THT has published recently: Esther Cameron's translations of poems about Janusz Korczak, a page of writings (some recast as poems) by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, poetry by the third Pulitzer Prize nominee we've published, Charles Adés Fishman, a page of Yala Korwin's translations of the poems of Jerzy Ficowski and Jewish ghetto poets, and a special page of Yala Korwin's own Holocaust poetry.

December 2004: We have added a poetry page for Wladyslaw Szlengel that ties in well with similar poetry pages THT has published recently: Esther Cameron's translations of poems about Janusz Korczak, a page of writings (some recast as poems) by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, poetry by the third Pulitzer Prize nominee we've published, Charles Adés Fishman, a page of Yala Korwin's translations of the poems of Jerzy Ficowski and Jewish ghetto poets, and a special page of Yala Korwin's own Holocaust poetry.

This month we're pleased to introduce our readers to the work of Jill Williams, who numbers among her credits a Broadway musical, songwriting, an album published by RCA Victor, celebrity interviews, four nonfiction books, two poetry books, and poems in some of our favorite journals, including Light Quarterly, Edge City Review and The Lyric. She has dared to capture a yawning lion on film, and (even more daringly) has taught creative writing to college students! Oh, and she also does poetry readings across the United States and Canada.

We're also tickled pink 'n' polka dots to be able to publish the light verse of Edmund Conti, an accomplished humorist who has had over 500 poems published, although he claims not to keep count! Somehow we suspect he's not highly enough paid (is any living poet?) to make your lawsuit anything other than frivolous, so we suggest you rest your case and indulge in a little light-hearted frivolity.

It's an honor and a pleasure to introduce our readers to the poetry of Marc Widershien, an accomplished, often-published poet whose influences include Samuel French Morse, John Malcolm Brinnin, Robert Lowell, Daisy Aldan and Ezra Pound.

Len Krisak will be the featured poet in an upcoming issue of THT, but we're pleased to be able to offer our readers a "sneak preview" of his poetry page just in time to kick off the new year with a bang!

Also this month we've updated the poetry page of Zyskandar Jaimot with a new poem, "Siacon," and some of Zaj's own amazing imitations of the masters. If you haven't seen his page lately, you'd be remiss to miss the changes we've made!

November 2004: This month we're pleased to be able to review The Consciousness of Earth, a book-length epic poem by this month's Featured Poet, Esther Cameron. The Consciousness of Earth strikes me as an important poem, so much so that I took the time out of a hectic, haphazard schedule to review it myself. Hopefully, other more qualified reviewers will step forward to do the poem better justice. I'd love to hear what Richard Moore and other THT luminaries think about Esther's poem, in depth. Till we hear from them, If you're interested to hear what I think about the poem, please review my review forthwith. We've also added two new poems to Esther's poetry page, so please be sure to "check in and check out" both hyperlinked pages above. Also, as a corollary to Esther's pages and to the pages of Holocaust poetry we featured from August to October, THT is pleased to be able to feature a page of writings by, and poems about, Janusz Korczak. These are compelling words about a compelling figure in the history of man's seemingly never-ending struggle to overcome evil: in this case the most loathsome evil of all, the evil that slaughters defenseless children.

We've "broken the mold" so to speak, and have published Jo-Anne Cappeluti's "Letter to Lord Auden" (an exception we think you'll be glad we made). While THT doesn't generally publish extremely long poems, this one seems worth many hyperbolic acres of hyperspace. And while we insist on a cluckish matronly "Tsk! Tsk!" to paper-and-ink journals for making poems like Jo-Anne's virtually impossible to publish these days (imagine: a long poem that, egad!, rhymes), we're happy to be able to do our part and publish it "virtually." So much so, in fact, that we're also publishing another longish poem by the same poet: "The Impotence of Being Earnest(ine)."

Another new poet this month (or at least new to THT) is Catherine Chandler. Catherine has been writing formal poetry for some time, but is somewhat new to the "publication game." So, as we say in these parts, we're "right proud" to be among the first journals to publish her work, along with two of our favorites: The Lyric and Iambs & Trochees.

J. Patrick Lewis is a poet of considerable formal skill who seems to enjoy poetry and a good laugh as much as the children he exuberantly teaches. So we hope you'll not only visit his THT poetry page, but use it to explore his web site, which will be of interest to anyone who has children, grandchildren, or who remains something of a child at heart.

Carolyn Raphael is a poet whose name will be instantly recognized by those who run in formal circles, which means she's among good friends here.

Wendy Videlock is an up-and-coming poet whose work has been published by a number of excellent journals and web sites.

We've also added a new poem "From a Widow's Diary—9/11/01" to Yala Korwin's poetry page.

We also have a bit of wonderful late-breaking news: Jared Carter, a THT Featured Poet, has been invited to read his work at the Library of Congress on December 9, 2004. For more information, please click here.

We are also pleased to be able to publish a new essay, "Thomas Stearns Eliot, an Early Re-assessment for the New Century" by Joe Ruggier. This essay is very much in the spirit of our new Grace Notes page (more on this below). How refreshing to read that a contemporary poet not only values Eliot as a poet, critic and mentor, but as a source of consolation and comfort!

Please check our Thanksgiving special, which includes two hard-to-find poems by Langston Hughes, along with various pearls of wisdom and poems from Robert Frost, Louise Bogan, Hart Crane, Edward Arlington Robinson, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, and others. Frequenters of THT will be pleased to find poems and excerpts of poems by a number of THT poets: Jim Barnes, Beverly Burch, Jack Butler, Esther Cameron, Jared Carter, Rhina P. Espaillat. I even manage to sneak in a "poem" of my own, perhaps my first or second haiku or haiku-like poem (a fairly recent happenstance, and one not highly likely to be repeated). But there are extenuating circumstances, explained alongside the poem.

Also this month THT is introducing a new page, called Grace Notes.

August 2004: This month we're pleased to be able to feature Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel along with the third Pulitzer Prize nominee we've published, Charles Adés Fishman. And we're doubly delighted to be able to bring our readers wonderfully moving translations by Yala Korwin: translations of the poems of Jerzy Ficowski and of Jewish ghetto poets who speak to us now—largely anonymously, and thus forever united, as one Voice—from the ghettos of WWII-era Poland. And for good measure, we have a special page of Yala Korwin's own Holocaust poetry. Also, our thanks to Esther Cameron for allowing us to link to her outstanding Point & Circumference Homage to Paul Celan. And here's a link to the Norton Poets Online page for Paul Celan. Esther Cameron personally recommends the University of Wisconsin's Paul Celan page.

In closing, I'd like to publish a letter by one of the most talented, loveliest and nicest poets I know: Rhina Espaillat ...

"I've just visited the site—after a long time away from the internet altogether, because I've been up to the ears in projects, paperwork, translations and houseguests!—and I want to tell you how lovely it is, and how unfailingly interesting and instructive it remains. The addition of new work by Yala [Korwin], and the use of the photograph to accompany one of her poems, are great assets to the site and one more gift you've given the reading public."

"And here's some very sad news you may not have heard yet: I had a call two nights ago from Norman Kraeft, to tell me that [his wife] June died July 21, after a painful but mercifully brief bout with pancreatic cancer. She died—and I was not surprised to hear this—as courageously and uncomplainingly as she had lived, and left behind a final magnificent poem she had not shown anyone. He read it to me on the phone; it gave me goose pimples. Luckily he has very good friends living nearby who have been helpful and kind."

"And, finally, much happier news from here. I have two new publications out this year: a full-length book titled The Shadow I Dress In, from David Robert Books (it won their Stanzas Prize), and a little chapbook titled The Story-teller's Hour, from Scienter Press. Also, several of my translations of Robert Frost poems into Spanish are being used by the Robert Frost Foundation as part of their coming Frost Festival on October 23, in Lawrence. One of them—my Spanish version of "Tree at my Window"—is on display all summer, with the English original, on a banner that's flying in several of the city parks of Lawrence, a nearby city in which Frost and his wife both grew up, and that now has a large Hispanic population. I'm very pleased over that, as I like to see the arts used to forge living links between neighbors from different cultural groups."

July 2004: This month we are pleased to be able to feature the work of Makoto Fujimura. Fujimura is an artist and an essayist, but his art is poetic and his essays are poetic, and it's hard to imagine that anyone will quibble if we make an exception (to our rule of normally featuring poets) in his case. It helps our case (not that our case needs help) that Fujimura has created art based on T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets." Noted artist and critic Robert Kushner tells us: "The idea of forging a new kind of art, about hope, healing, redemption, refuge, while maintaining visual sophistication and intellectual integrity is a growing movement, one which finds Fujimura's work at the vanguard."

We are also featuring the work of Edward Zuk, who has an interesting background to complement his highly interesting, skillfully written poetry. Zuk was born in Surrey, British Columbia, in 1971. He graduated with a B.A. in mathematics and English from the University of British Columbia and went on to earn an M.A. in English from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of British Columbia, where he wrote his dissertation on uses of the sonnet by American poets of the first half of the 20^th century. Being half-Japanese, he has pursued haiku poetry to explore that part of his heritage. He has served as the British Columbia coordinator for Haiku Canada.

Beverly Burch is also new to our pages, and no, she's not related to me [THT editor Michael R. Burch]. But the way she writes poetry, I'd like to think that I share a few poetic genes with her!

We also continue to feature the work of June's Featured Poet, Moore Moran. And for good measure, we also continue to feature our tribute page to Ronald Reagan, with lines of his own poetry "batting leadoff."

We have also added an important, touching picture to the poetry page of Yala Korwin. The picture inspired her poem "The Little Boy with His Hands Up." We hope you'll revisit the poem now that the picture is in place. Yala Korwin's poem and an essay "The America I Love" by Elie Wiesel, graciously mailed to us by THT poet Esther Cameron, seem to go hand in hand, and so we have also added a poetry page and links to six important essays by Elie Wiesel. We hope you'll take time to read these essays by a Nobel Peace Laureate who reminds us:

There is divine beauty in learning, just as there is human beauty in tolerance.
To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth.
Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps.
The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons,
mothers and daughters,
teachers and disciples.
I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests.
And so are you.
— From "Have You Learned the Most Important Lesson of All" by Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel was described by the Nobel Committee in 1986 as “a messenger to mankind,” whose “message is one of peace, atonement and human dignity.”

We've also added three poems to the poetry page of Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, and they're poems you won't want to miss (and will be excuseless if you do).

At the Art of Love competition organized by LondonArt.co.uk (Britain's largest contemporary art website, exhibiting nearly 10,000 artworks by over 750 artists), two of Carmen Willcox's poems were selected to appear in an exhibition (and accompanying catalog) at the Arndean gallery in London during February 2004. The poetry entries were judged by Andrew Motion, Britain's Poet Laureate. We've updated Carmen's poetry page, and we invite you to revisit it, or to visit it for the first time if you've been remiss in the past . . .

And to wrap things up, here's an Uncle Flatboot review of The HyperTexts originally published by www.triplopia.com (our thanks to Triplopia editor Gene Justice and to "Uncle Flatboot" himself, Paul Sonntag, for allowing us to use the review here).

June 2004: Our featured poet this month is Moore Moran. Readers have only to expend a hyperclick to find themselves vigorously nodding agreement with John M. Daniel, who says: “Moran is a fine writer, a really wonderful poet. He shows education without showing it off; he shows sensitivity without being sentimental." As is so often the case with the fine poets we publish, the poems of Moore Moran need no further assistance on our part, so please indulge yourselves forthwith! Also this month we've updated the poetry page of Zyskandar Jaimot with two new poems. The poems are "Substance of the image" and "Abraham's Diner, Machias, Maine." We also have a tribute page to Ronald Reagan, with lines of his own poetry batting leadoff. We hope it might please and surprise our readers to know that Reagan at age 17 penned the following lines:

Our troubles break and drench us.
Like spray on the cleaving prow
Of some trim Gloucester schooner.
As it dips in a graceful bow ...

Our Ronald Reagan page is still under construction but is worth checking out. If you have a poem, essay, anecdote, one-liner, or anything else you'd like to see added to this page, please submit it forthwith. To do so, please click the e-mail link on my poetry page at the bottom of the Contemporary Poets index.—MRB

April 2004: Our featured poet this month is Robert Mezey, about whose poetry we could go on at length, but whose words need no assistance on our part. We agree wholeheartedly with Galway Kinnell that what we find in Robert Mezey's work "that ultimate tenderness toward existence which is the dream of great poems." We welcome you to enter and discover, in the poet's own words, "the warm rooms of the pentameter." We are also pleased to be able to publish the poetry of V. Ulea, the pen name of Vera Zubarev. Ulea is a literary critic, writer, and film director. She has a Ph.D. in Russian Literature from the University of Pennsylvania where she currently teaches. She has published books of prose, poetry, and literary criticism and has recently finished her full feature movie, Four Funny Families, based on Chekhov’s plays. Readers familiar with Neovictorian/Cochlea and The Eclectic Muse will no doubt recognize her distinctive style and themes. We have also added four new poems to the poetry page of Marly Youmans, and we know that you will enjoy reading them as much as we enjoyed publishing them.

March 2004: Our featured poet this month is Luis Omar Salinas, and we are especially honored to have been given the rights to publish his major poems in perpetuity. Although it will take some time for us to publish our entire allotment of the career-defining poems Luis Omar Salinas has personally selected for The HyperTexts, please click on the hyperlink above to see the poems we have published to date. As Zyskander Jaimot says in the introduction he penned for our readers : "Yes, attention should be paid to Luis Omar Salinas. Attention paid, to a fine poet." We couldn't agree more! Also, please read an excellent tribute poem to Luis Omar Salinas, contributed by another outstanding poet, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal. We have another tribute poem, this one dedicated to Leslie Mellichamp by Norman Kraeft. Also, please check out our latest, greatest page: Mysterious Ways. Mysterious Ways will be a permanent feature, updated frequently, akin to our Masters and Esoterica pages. We are also accepting unsolicited submissions for Mysterious Ways; please see the page intro for submissions guidelines. However, we will not allow poems to "limbo" beneath our high standards bar, so please be forewarned and submit your very best poems!

We know that many of our readers are writers, and we also know that writers are always interested in having quality books published at reasonable prices. Although we don't allow ourselves to be paid for advertising, we're not above "playing matchmaker" to writers and publishers. So this month we're suggesting that if you want the best possible book published at the best possible rates, please consider Joe Ruggier's excellent small press and publishing service: MBooks is a small press run by Joe Ruggier, a much-published writer and one of the best-selling poets in Canada. In a century that has seen "big name" poets sell perhaps only dozens of "important" books, Joe Ruggier has single-handedly sold over 20,000 books! (About half his own books, the other half those of other writers.) If you want to deal with an editor and publisher who is also a poet and who knows how to create books that actually sell, we can't think of a man or woman better qualified than Joe Ruggier. For explanation of the services he provides to other writers, please click here. We have a feeling you'll be glad you did.

Yet another worthy cause is the new poetry collection listening to the birth of crystals, edited by Alan Corkish and co-edited by Andrew Young. For information on ordering listening to the birth of crystals, please visit Alan Corkish's website and browse down to the bottom of the "Publications by Alan Corkish" page. Proceeds go to benefit deaf children, and the poets include Harvey Stanbrough, Mary Gribble, William J. Middleton, and others our readers will undoubtedly recognize, and prize.

November 2003: Our featured poet this month is Norman R. Shapiro, who has supplied us with too many outstanding poems for us to possibly do them justice in a single issue. Which presents us with two dilemmas: what to use, and what to leave out. Rather than leaving out more than we can use in one sitting, we hope to be able to publish (pending his approval) a small number of poems from several of Shapiro's excellent books in semi-regular installments over the next few months. Please stay tuned, but in the meantime you can find three superb translations from Charles Baudelaire: Selected Poems from "Les Fleurs du mal by clicking the hyperlink above. We're also pleased to be able to publish the poetry of Marly Youmans, of whom no less an authority than William Harmon says, "I wish more poems were like these." We've added two poems to the poetry page of Joe Ruggier: poems he says are among his "best-loved creations." And we've also added Esther Cameron's insightful review of Ruggier's "Door-to-Door to CD-ROM" literary CD, which is a collection of nineteen books on one disk.

October 2003: Our featured poet this month is Alfred Dorn. Dr. Dorn has been absolutely essential to the preservation of an endangered species: traditional English poetry. A former Vice President of the Poetry Society of America, he is the Director of the World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets, which has sponsored international contests since 1980. His efforts on behalf of traditional poetry, narrative and metrical poetry in particular, are greatly to be applauded. And Dom is a poet, critic, and art historian of note, having won more than seventy awards. Anthony Hecht tells us, "The poems of Alfred Dom seem to me vigorous, imaginative and original, graced with elegant formalities when the occasion warrants, manumitted and free when the spirit moves." We invite you to experience those elegant formalities by clicking on the link above.

We're also pleased to bring you the poetry of Michael Cantor, whose poetry reflects a variety of interests and influences, and ranges from traditional sonnets to rib-tickling humor to oriental affairs.

The HyperTexts is pleased to be the first on-line journal to announce the availability of a new poetry CD edited by Joe Ruggier, a CD in which I was pleased to play a very small part. The CD is a compilation of nineteen books which Joe has painstakingly converted to .PDF format, and it's a great value for the price, which you can obtain from Joe by clicking the link above and going to the bottom of his poetry page, where you will find his address and phone number. You really should call Joe on the phone if only to hear what my wife says is "the loveliest, gentlest voice ... a boon for the soul." Beth, who seldom reads poetry except for the poems I write about her (which she wisely professes to like, in between stifled yawns), upon having spoken to Joe on the phone for the first time, made me immediately find her all the poems of Joe's that I had in my possession. Do you think she's ever asked to read all my poems? Hah! Back to the CD: the books include The Best of The Eclectic Muse (1989-2003), collections of poems by George Borg, Mary Meisel, Roy Harrison, Philip Higson, John Laycock, and Ruggier; "Savitri," a long prose poem by Chandrampatti; a collection of letters in verse between Ruggier and Esther Cameron; and a collection of letters between Ruggier and Roy Harrison. My contribution to the CD was technical assistance with the autostart feature of the CD, done through the computer consultancy I own and the valiant efforts of Fred Born and Rod Allen, two of my programmers. It turns out that older versions of Windows can only autostart programs, not files such as the Table of Contents file Joe needed to have launched automatically when the CD is inserted in a user's drive. But Fred, Rod and I put our heads together and found a freeware program that can launch Adobe Acrobat Reader even when the exact name and version of the AAR program are unknown, if not saving the day, at least helping to end it on a poetic note.

Last month I mentioned an "Arkansas connection" with Greg Alan Brownderville joining Jim Barnes, Jack Butler, and R. S. (Sam) Gwynn on THT's pages. This month, with the addition of Michael Cantor, I think it bears mentioning that we also have a "powow" of Powow River Poets that, in addition to Mr. Cantor, includes Rhina Espaillat, Deborah Warren, Len Krisak and Mike Juster. For information on a poetry workshop "done right," please click on this link to our write-up on the Powow River Poets and the poetry contest they sponsor in conjunction with the Newburyport Arts Association. Even more importantly, please browse our Contemporary Poets index and read the work of these fine poets.

After I posted the October issue, Rhina Espaillat e-mailed me the following: " It's wonderful, also, to have our group [the Powow River Poets] mentioned in the same issue with Alfred Dorn, who is an old and valued friend to me, from NYC days, and to the Powows. He's honored us by reading here several times, with his wife, Anita, who is a fine poet herself. I can't tell you what a difference this man has made in the lives of the countless poets he's taught, encouraged, and spurred to new effort and new thought, both through example and through his unique yearly contest. Many of us wait all year for the World Order of Narrative & Formalist Poets Contest guidelines, which are like notes from several excellent college seminars! The kind of competition his contest engenders has little to do with money, and everything to do with meeting the challenges tossed out by a first-rate poetic and critical intelligence. But what he really is, at heart, is the kindest and most generous of mentors: any number of young poets today will attest to that." Of course, we know many poets who feel exactly the same way about Rhina!

I'd also like to share Rhina's comments about THT poet Yala Korwin: "I want to tell you again what a joy it is to see Yala Korwin's work posted on your site, attracting the readers she deserves. Her poetry gives the lie to the remark by Paul Celan that she uses as an epigraph to one of her poems, about the impossibility of telling one's own truth in a language that is not one's first. Yala's work is so passionate and wise about her truth—the truth of her personal experience and that of her generation—that it would somehow make itself understood if she stammered it in Chinese! Thank you for giving a forum to those of us who try to defy Celan's observation by doing our "telling"—our singing—in the language of the Other."

On a personal note, I was pleased and surprised to have Writer's Digest call me on the phone with the news that two of my poems ("See" and "At Wilfred Owen's Grave") had finished 3rd and 7th out of over 18,000 overall contest entries in the recent Writer's Digest Rhyming Poetry Contest. The poems are a mouse-click away for anyone who'd like to peruse them: just click here. — MRB

September 2003: Our featured poet this month is John Morgan. His poetry has appeared in some of our favorite journals, including Light Quarterly, The Neovictorian/Cochlea and The Eclectic Muse. But that's virtually all that we know about him, other than that we like his poetry, and that we know you will too. We have another poet new to THT this month: Greg Alan Brownderville, who tells us: "I was born and reared in a musical family of Pumpkin Bend, Arkansas, where I absorbed the blues, Southern gospel, country preaching saturated with the King James Bible, and the rural rhythms of life in the Mississippi River Delta. Rhythm ruled." Biblical, rural, biblical-rural, rural-biblical ... no matter the names we contrive for the rhythms of his poems, they seem simultaneously both unique and familiar—a hallmark of the best blues and gospel music. And just in time for fall, we've added "Spring Villanelle" to the poetry page of Tony Marco; it was an interesting experience to see Tony reconstruct this nearly forgotten poem from memory, as he e-mailed in tantalizing passages as they returned to him. And to top things off, we've added new poems by Frost, Poe and Dickinson to our Masters page. Interestingly, we have quite an Arkansas connection forming on the pages of THT, as we add Greg Alan Brownderville to a group of fine poets with Arkansas roots: Jim Barnes, Jack Butler, and R. S. (Sam) Gwynn. And because my wife hails from Arkansas and has introduced me to the Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival, mayhaw jelly, garlic cheese grits, vacation houses on stilts, and other such esoterica ... well, I feel that I have a foot in the door of this rather exclusive club!—MRB

August 2003: Our featured poet this month is Esther Cameron. It's also a pleasure for us to be able to publish the work of Max Gutmann. His poem "The Villanelle's Appeal" had stuck in my mind (a good thing for a poem to do) ever since I first read it in Piedmont Literary Review. So when Max queried us about a submission to THT, I immediately asked if he'd let us use "The Villanelle's Appeal," which he graciously did. Max Gutmann's work has appeared frequently in Light Quarterly, so prepare to be both amused and be-mused. Also, we've added three new poems to the poetry page of Richard Moore, the three poems at the top of his page. For readers new to THT, Richard Moore's poetry page is a good place to start browsing, because the man is a helluva poet: a poet who will be known to future generations if we have anything to say in the matter. Or even if we don't and good taste in poetry has anything to do with who gets read. A poem of Moore's that I particularly like is "In the Dark Season," and to me these three lines are an almost perfect description of the mysterious art of writing poetry:

One studied a new language in the darkness,
looked far down into the well,
into the hints of sunlight in its depths.

I'd encourage our readers to do what I have done myself: buy all of Richard's books, read his poems, study his essays. Get him to sign his books, because according to Richard he's pissed off his share of publishers, which means his signature may be a rare and valuable commodity in the future.—MRB

July 2003: Our featured poet this month is Jack Butler, who says of himself, "I am a noise-scarred singer, but by god I still hold the true note." That's no idle boast; his poetry will add multiple exclamation marks to anything anyone might say about him or his work. Jack Butler is simply one of the best poets writing today, and if you haven't read "For Her Surgery" or "Electricity" before, you have missed out, until now. Get back into the loop of poetry sparking like a live wire by clicking here. We're also pleased to bring you the poetry of Yala Korwin, who came to English poetry in the most roundabout of ways, but we're glad she did. We also have a several new additions to our Essays & Assays page, including two reviews of Joe Ruggier's Songs of Gentlest Reflection, one by Mary Rae, the other by yours truly.—MRB

June 2003: Our featured poet this month is Jim Barnes. Samuel Maio tells us, and we concur, that "Barnes is a masterful poet, a most worthy voice for his generation." Brian Bedard says "His poems are a singing in the rain which he knows falls on us all but which, in spite of its chilling touch, also gives life to the earth we must wander over and disappear into." James Dickey says "It is a deep new pleasure to come on a poet with the imaginative boldness of Jim Barnes." So without further ado, let us point you to his poetry page. We're also pleased to bring you the poetry of Kevin Walzer. Kevin has published three books of literary criticism and has had poetry published in Connecticut Review, Sparrow, Poetry Magazine, and other journals. He is also one of the founders of WordTech Communications. Publishing through Word Press and other imprints, WordTech Communications has grown into a major force in poetry publishing with plans to publish more than 40 books in 2004. We also have a new addition to our Essays & Assays page, a review of Joe Ruggier's Songs of Gentlest Reflection, reviewed by Mary Rae.

May 2003: Our featured poet this month is Jared Carter. Dana Gioia said of Carter's first book, Work, for the Night Is Coming: “From beginning to end, this volume has the quiet passion of conviction, the voice of a poet who knows exactly what he wants to say and how to say it.” Henry Taylor described Work, for the Night Is Coming as “one of the clearest and strongest first books to have appeared in recent decades.” Galway Kinnell obviously agreed about the merits of Work, for the Night Is Coming, awarding it the 1980 Walt Whitman award. Carter's second book, After the Rain, attracted similar notice. “Extraordinary,” Gioia wrote “a dark, haunting book in the tradition of Frost.” Ted Kooser found After the Rain to be “a moving and masterful book, charming in the best sense of that word.” It offered “proof,” according to Robert Phillips, “that the art of poetry is alive and well in America.” Robert McPhillips called it "the finest, most varied, and most rewarding volume of poetry published in 1993.” We could go on, but we'd rather point you directly to Jared Carter's poetry page. And we're also pleased to add three new poems to the poetry page of Terese Coe. While French delicacies may currently be out of favor in certain circles, we think our readers will enjoy Terese Coe's delicate translations and interpretations of the French poet Pierre de Ronsard. With poetry, discrimination is good thing, so please read and enjoy!

April 2003: Our featured poet this month is X. J. Kennedy. Richard Moore says Kennedy is "one of the best poets we have." Jan Schreiber says "Very little human experience is beyond the range of his keen eye and his well turned lines. We are fortunate to have him working among us." Those of our readers who are fans of Light Quarterly, one of this editor's favorite journals, will already be well acquainted with the work of one of earth's best "unserious poets," so please be sure to thoroughly investigate his poetry page. We've also added a new poem, "The Rusish Baths," by Zyskandar Jaimot.

March 2003: Our featured poet this month is R. S. Gwynn. Dana Gioia has called him "one of the truly talented and original poets of my generation," praising his "depth of feeling and intense lyricality." Richard Wilbur says: "R. S. Gwynn's No Word of Farewell is ... a richly varied, highly accomplished collection from one of our best." X. J. Kennedy says: "A wonderful satirist, a master translator, a keen observer of ironies, Gwynn commands a wide range of forms, some of them daunting in their difficulty. Moreover, he clearly holds with the ancient wisdom that a poem ought to bring gladness. That is why, every time I spy one of his new poems in a magazine, I read it before anything else." On that note, we suggest that you do as Mr. Kennedy does, and without further ado, let us direct you to R. S. Gwynn's poetry page. This month, we're also pleased to publish poems by Terese Coe. Her work includes her own delightfully original poetry and a translation from Pierre de Ronsard. We continue to feature the work of the great Romantic poets and their literary heirs on our Masters page. Also, we'd like to announce the debut of a new literary web site, the home page of The Eclectic Muse. The Eclectic Muse is edited by February's featured poet, Joe M. Ruggier, a poet who has worked tirelessly to promote our kind (and we hope your kind) of poetry: poetry that sings and moves, poetry that embraces rather than denies or defies the traditions of English poetry. If you believe as Joe Ruggier does—that there is a revival of traditional poetry, and that the world is better place for it—then we think you'll find The Eclectic Muse well worth the price of a subscription.—MRB

February 2003: Our featured poet this month is Joe M. Ruggier, a man who has done something to make all bewailers of the "state of the art" of contemporary poetry take note, having sold over 20,000 books, many of them door-to-door, including over 10,000 books he wrote and published himself! Now that's something even Robert Ripley would find truly amazing. We encourage our readers and poets not only to visit Joe's poetry page, but also to support him in his efforts to, as it were, singlehandedly jumpstart the revival of traditional English poetry. Joe was born in Malta and now lives in Richmond, Canada, where in addition to writing English and Maltese poetry and outselling most "major" poetry presses by himself, he is also a literary critic and editor who publishes a fine poetry journal, The Eclectic Muse. As if that isn't enough, Joe has translated the poetry of the Maltese poet George Borg. He's truly a man of many talents (and many hats!). And what better month than February to revisit the work of the great Romantic poets, so on our Masters page we're featuring the work of a number of Romantic poets, from William Blake and Robert Burns to Dylan Thomas and Hart Crane, and we've also included two darkly romantic poems by a perhaps unlikely candidate, Robert Frost. In the necessarily humble opinion of this editor, Frost's "Acquainted With The Night" and "Directive" are far darker, more chilling and disturbing, and simply better than anything written by Poe.—MRB

January 2003: Our featured poet this month is Emery Campbell. Emery, in addition to being a talented poet, fiction writer and translator, is active in the Georgia Poetry Society and, like many of the poets who breathe life into the pages of The HyperTexts, is contributing to the current renaissance of traditional poetry by actively encouraging the efforts of other poets. If you like witty poetry and metrical/rhymed poetry, you'll doubly like the poetry of Emery Campbell. Also, at Emery's request, we've added two new poems to our Masters page: "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden (of which Emery says, "I find it one of the most poignant and powerful poems I have ever read.") and "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot who died in action at the age of 19 on December 11, 1941.

Another poet I've enjoyed swapping e-mails with is Richard Moore. As anyone who visits this page regularly knows by now, I'm a fan of Richard's poetry, and it seems that I'm constantly finding new poems of his (or at least poems of his that are new to me) and asking him for permission to use them for THT. I don't consider myself a critic of poets, just an avid reader of poetry, but if I had to take a stab at naming poets in my ever-widening circle who might come to be highly valued by future generations, Richard Moore would be my first choice. As the editor of THT, I've never subscribed to the "less is more" thing. Instead, I think to myself "best is more," and so we've added three new poems to Richard Moore's poetry page: two that were published recently in Romantics Quarterly, and one that was the lead poem in the most current issue of Edge City Review, a fine journal edited by Terry Ponick, and one that should be on everyone's reading list.—MRB

December 2002: Our featured poet this month is Jennifer Reeser. The featured poet on our Masters page is Elizabeth Bishop. We have also updated Jendi Reiter's poetry page with a picture and information about her first book, A Talent for Sadness. Our congratulations on the book, Jendi! The featured essay on our Essays and Assays page is Dana Gioia's "Can Poetry Matter?" We have also added a Essays and Assays link to Gioia's follow-up to his essay, titled "Hearing from Poetry's Audience." Gioia's comments about the response to "Can Poetry Matter?" are interesting: "Letters poured into The Atlantic, copies of which they shipped to me in thick bundles. Other mail came to me directly or through my publishers. Reporters phoned at the office for interviews. Newspaper and magazine articles appeared. Radio producers asked me to discuss the article on the air. Friends phoned with anecdotes about the article's impact. Strangers called to ask advice. And for months the mail continued. Eventually I received over 400 letters from Atlantic readers. They were overwhelmingly favorable. Many of them felt I had not gone far enough in criticizing the inbred nature of the poetry world." Fascinating stuff, and we think Dana Gioia is an excellent, excellent choice for the next chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

November 2002: Our featured poet this month is Harvey Stanbrough, who was nominated for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize and the 2000 Frankfurt Award. Our newest Contemporary Poet is Jendi Reiter, a most welcome addition. We've also added a new poem/song lyric, "Annette's Song," to Tony Marco's poetry page, and we've also added an interview with Tony to our Essays & Assays page. Correcting a longstanding oversight, we've added a picture of Jan Schreiber to his poetry page. Also, while we're trying to obtain the rights to publish Steve Kowit's timely essay, "The Mystique of the Difficult Poem," here's a link for anyone who wonders, as we often do, why Harold Bloom's critical libido is stirred at the merest whiff of cognitive difficulty. Oh, and by the way—our poets were paid a well-earned compliment by Michael Morton, Director of the Net Poetry and Arts Competition, who recently said: "As I told one of our members, The HyperTexts reads like a 'Who's Who' in contemporary poetry today!" Our sentiments exactly!

October 2002: Our featured poet this month, Leo Yankevich, speaks to us all the way from Gliwice, Poland, while Essays & Assays features Esther Cameron's thought-provoking essay "I, Human" and two essays by Richard Moore: "The Balancer: Yeats and His Supernatural System" and "Poetic Meter in English: Roots and Possibilities." We've also put a few finishing touches on Richard Moore's poetry page, which is one readers should revisit often. And we've added two new poems to Gail White's page: poems that will mercilessly tickle our readers' funnybones. The first poem will remind you of someone you know (perhaps even of poets who've appeared in these pages!). The second will pepper you with sage advice. These are "must reads," folks.

September 2002: Our featured poet this month is Gail White. Also, this month we're pleased to showcase the poetry of Deborah Warren in our Contemporary Poets section. And in our continuing attempt to refute the modern adage "less is more," contending that if the words are good enough, we'd rather have more, not less, we've also added five new poems by Richard Moore: ones you'd be amiss to miss. We've also added a number of poems to our Masters page, and this month we're featuring some of the best love poems of all time, from poets like Roethke, Jonson, Auden, Yeats, Herrick, Bishop and Bogan. Our congratulations to Rhina Espaillat, whose latest book Rehearsing Absence was reviewed (positively, of course) in the September issue of Poetry. Rhina has a problem to which most poets secretly aspire: she's been the topic of so much interest and discussion recently, that, in response to her on-line interview with Poetic Reflections being delayed, she expressed relief, saying, "I don't want readers/viewers to say, 'What, HER again???'" Is that a twinge of empathy we're feeling, or is it the sting of envy?

August 2002: This month's featured poet is Zyskandar A. Jaimot. Our thanks to Noah Hoffenberg, poet and editor of CRUX Literary Magazine, for bringing the poetry of Mr. Jaimot to our attention. Which leads us to thanking Richard Moore for putting us in touch with Mr. Hoffenberg, whose poetry now appears in our Contemporary Poets section. We owe a second round of thanks to Richard Moore for pointing us toward Richard Wakefield, whose poetry also appears under Contemporary Poets, as does that of Jack Butler, who also has a selection of essays on our Essays & Assays page. This month, we've updated our Masters page with poems by Auden, Bishop, Bogan, Baudelaire and Keats, with the latter's poem being suggested to us by Esther Cameron. (Thanks Esther.) We've also updated Patrick Kanouse's page with a picture and two new poems. Patrick is the editor of The Raintown Review, stepping into the position previously held by Harvey Stanbrough. The Raintown Review is a champion of metrical poetry in general and blank verse in particular, so please be sure to support both Mr. Kanouse and his journal with your subscriptions and your submissions.

July 2002: We're running behind on publishing a number of new poets (new to THT, but names many of our visitors will immediately recognize, although we also have a few surprises up our sleeves). Our apologies for the delays, but please console yourselves with our editor's promise that your wait will eventually be worth his weight in gold (discounting, of course, his feet of clay.) In the meantime, we've added a new page we think will be of interest: Essays & Assays. Here, you'll find interviews and essays on "things poetic." We hope to soon add roundtable discussions in which poets scream and pull out their hair debating mindbending things like what the hell "free verse" means, and whether Joseph Salemi has been teaching American Idol's Simon Cowell a few tricks.

June 2002: Our featured poet is Leslie Mellichamp, for the second month. We continue to receive poems and testimonials in the honor of a poet and editor we greatly admired. So please revisit this month's updated Featured Poet page. We have also added a number of poems to our Masters page, and our thanks to Gail White and Zyskandar Jaimot for suggesting the poems debuting at the head of the Masters page this month. Both Ms. White and Mr. Jaimot will be featured poets in upcoming issues of THT. Also, thanks to Allen Heinrich, editor of Carnelian, for two poems ("Exile" by Hart Crane and "No Other Troy" by William Butler Yeats) we "lifted" from his excellent poetry web site. You can find Carnelian, which has published poetry by THT poets Harvey Stanbrough and Jack Granath, on our Links page. In our defense, T. S. Eliot did say, "Mature poets steal."

May 2002: Our featured poet is Leslie Mellichamp, whose death on December 18, 2001 leaves a void poetry will be hard pressed to fill. As the editor of The Lyric, the oldest magazine in North America devoted to traditional poetry, he was one of the standard bearers of accessible metrical poetry when its future seemed, at times, in doubt. In those lean years of the not-too-far-distant past, if a poet had a nice sonnet or villanelle that was languishing unpublished, The Lyric was always a bright prospect: a lighthouse, a star. We are pleased to be able to share Leslie Mellichamp's poetry with you, and if you have a personal testimonial you would like to have added to his poetry page, please e-mail it to Michael R. Burch at mburch@aocg.com. We're also pleased to introduce you to the poetry of Hudson Owen, who appears in our Contemporary Poets section. To show what a small poetic world it is, and also the esteem in which Leslie Mellichamp's journal is held, Hudson Owen listed The Lyric first among his publication credits. Many poets have done the same throughout the years. Also, we've added a new poem by Tony Marco, "Sabillasville Sonnet 3." And we've updated Rhina Espaillat's bio: she now has four books, including Rehearsing Absence, winner of the Richard Wilbur Award. Congratulations, Rhina!

March 2002: Our featured poet is A. M. Juster. We have also added Wendy Taylor Carlisle to our Contemporary Poets section. We have a fine slate of poets who will be added next month, including Jack Butler, Noah Hoffenberg, Hudson Owen, Deborah Warren and Richard Wakefield. We continue to be encouraged by the publication of accessible metrical poetry in journals like Poetry, Harvard Review (which recently used a poem by THT poet Joyce Wilson), Atlanta Review, Hudson Review, Paris Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, and many others. And we're greatly encouraged by the fact that several poetry sites now attract thousands of visitors each month. Web sites like www.poets.org and www.ablemuse.com continue to grow and thrive. But there are thousands of poetry sites that are flourishing, and there is incredible demand for poetry on the Internet. For instance, "poetry" was recently the number eight search term for an entire year on Lycos, ahead of "football," "golf," "wrestling" and most of the "sex kittens." Amazing, but true. Yahoo! had to cancel an on-line poetry bash due to overwhelming demand, and Yahoo! has pretty decent broadcast capabilities. In an attempt to get the word out about "our kind" of poets to an increasingly attentive world, THT editor Michael R. Burch will be conducting a series of monthly interviews for Poetic Reflections. Each month, starting in April, we'll provide a URL to the current interview. The first interview will be with Richard Moore, one of our favorite contemporary poets, time and schedules permitting, so please "stay tuned!"

February 2002: Our featured poet is Rhina P. Espaillat. We have also added Anton N. (Tony) Marco to our Contemporary Poets section, and Tony will be the featured poet in an upcoming issue of The HyperTexts. There is one major change to our format: we have consolidated the poems of the Masters onto one page. We did this to make it easier for visitors to find our Contemporary Poets pages. We have also updated our Links page; there are now several outstanding Formalist poetry sites which appear early in our listings. Speaking of links, we were paid a wonderful compliment by Chris Beaulieu, editor of Poetic Reflections. Chris decided to cull his links down to the best three, and THT made the cut. Since Poetic Reflections itself was named one of the top three poetry web sites by none other than Writer's Digest, we were obviously quite pleased. We were even more pleased when Chris noted that the content of THT is "awesome." On another note, professor Kevin N. Roberts, editor of Romantics Quarterly, is looking for traditional poetry that shows the influence of the great Romantic Poets. If you're interested in submitting to Romantics Quarterly, please contact Michael R. Burch at mburch@aocg.com.

January 2002: Our featured poet is Jan Schreiber. We have completely revamped the Contemporary Poets section to make it easier to find the poets. Contemporary Poets are now listed alphabetically. In the past, we had tried to maintain groupings (Formalist, New Romantic, Free Verse), but as our roster of poets has grown, the lines of distinction have blurred, however pleasingly, and an alphabetized list will probably be easier on both our visitors and the editor, who became famous (or is it infamous?) for not being able to decide who went where with the old method. Also, due to popular demand (or at least an occasional inquiry), you can now find the editor's picture by clicking here. In the February version of THT, we hope to combine the Masters into one page, which will push the Featured Poet and Contemporary Poet sections toward the top of the index.

December 2001: Our featured poet is Claudia Gary Annis. We have updated our Rock Jukebox Page, and we hope you'll check it out. We are adding a number of excellent Contemporary Poets in the near future, including George Amabile, Anton (Tony) Marco, Hudson Owen, and Jan Schreiber, so please visit us again soon!

November 2001: Our featured poet is Richard Moore. We have updated our Links Page to show the THT poets who have been published by the various poetry journals and web sites listed. We also want to congratulate Mary Rae for winning the first prize in the first annual Raintown Review Awards poetry contest, which was jointly sponsored by THT. A special note of congratulation is in order to THT poet Joseph S. Salemi, who was the only poet to have two poems among the finalists. Also, THT poet Michael R. Burch won the Algernon Charles Swinburne poetry contest, sponsored by Romantics Quarterly, with Carmen Willcox finishing second and Mary Rae the first runner up.

Prior to November 2001: Our first featured poet was Richard Moore, as noted above. Prior to November 1, THT didn't have issues, per se, and was not updated on a monthly basis, but merely upon the caprice of its founder and editor (i.e. me, Mike Burch). When did THT start? I don't rightly remember! But I was able to use the Wayback Machine to find the earliest extant version of THT, circa March 2001. At that time we had separate pages for the Masters; they included Matthew Arnold, William Blake, Ernest Dowson, Robert Frost, A. E. Housman, Ben Jonson, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilfred Owen, E. A. Robinson, Dylan Thomas, Walt Whitman, and W. B. Yeats. Our first cadre of contemporary poets included Harvey Stanbrough, Annie Finch, A. E. Stallings (the first "big fish" we landed), Dr. Joseph S. Salemi, William F. Carlson, Jennifer Reeser, Kevin N. Roberts, Michael Pendragon, and Michael R. Burch. From April to October 2001 we added the following contemporary poets: Roger Hecht, Louise Jaffe, Esther Cameron, Jack Granath, Carmen Willcox, Dr. Alfred Dorn, Wade Newman, Patrick Kanouse, Joyce Wilson, Mary Rae (the winner of our first and only poetry contest), Ric Masten and Ursula T. Gibson. In the early days, Bill Carlson was a godsend, as he put us in touch, either directly or indirectly through his website and its links to Expansive Poetry & Music Online, with roughly half the poets we published in our formative days: himself, Dorn, Salemi, Cameron, Newman, Hecht (via Newman, his literary executor), Jaffe, Granath, Reeser and Richard Moore. The second largest "pool" of poets came from to us from the ranks of the New Romantics: Kevin N. Roberts, Michael Pendragon, Carmen Willcox and Mary Rae. We found Harvey Stanbrough through The Raintown Review, which he founded and was still editing at the time. Some poets we found through the "grapevine" and the Internet: Stallings, Finch, Wilson, Masten, Gibson. We found Kanouse either through Carlson or Stanbrough.

Just when was The HyperTexts originally created? I'm not sure. Probably between 1998 and 2000, since the site already had considerable content in early 2001, with a total of 21 poets in its Masters and Contemporary Poets indexes, not to mention fairly extensive Esoterica and Rock Jukebox pages. In July 2004 we recorded our hit counter for the first time: 16,787. But I don't remember when I added it, so any number of early hits were probably not recorded. In four months of 2008 alone, THT had around 30,000 hits on its main page. So our readership has obviously grown dramatically. We seem to get as many hits in four months as we once did in four years.

Why did I start The HyperTexts? Again, I really don't remember. I know I bought a copy of Microsoft Frontpage, the program I used to create THT, probably just before the turn of century, in order to edit the website of the software company I own, Alpha Omega Consulting Group, Inc. At the time Alpha Omega had a programmer, Steve Harris, who had experience designing websites, so I imagine I bought the program on his recommendation. Steve left Alpha Omega toward the end of 2000, so I suppose around that time I had to take over editing the company website. So perhaps I created THT in order to learn the basics of HTML. It would have been natural for me to create a literary website, as a way of learning my way around HTML, because whenever I needed to learn a new programming language, I always started with something functional that I had the expertise to design and critique. I doubt that I had any real intention of being an editor and publisher of poetry at the time. I do remember getting in contact with A. E. (Alicia) Stallings and asking if I could publish a few of her poems. Her graciousness no doubt encouraged me to "go after" other poets. Annie Finch and Harvey Stanbrough were other poets I admired who gave me permission to publish their poems. Through my connection with Michael Pendragon, who published my poems in the literary journals Penny Dreadful and Songs of Innocence and the poetry anthology The Bible of Hell, I met Kevin N. Roberts, the founder and editor of Romantics Quarterly. As I helped Kevin get Romantics Quarterly off the ground, with financial assistance and suggestions, I began to see something of a larger role for myself, in the grand scheme of things, and THT soon became a launching pad of sorts for literary journals on tight budgets that didn't have their own websites. Those were the days before every man and his dog had a blog.

In 2002 I published Rhina Espaillat, and over the years she has helped THT publish the work of a number of her fellow Powow River Poets, including Michael Cantor, Deborah Warren, Len Krisak, Mike Juster and Midge Goldberg.

In 2002 I published Jack Butler, the first poet in an "Arkansas connection" that now includes Jack, Greg Alan Brownderville, Jim Barnes, and R. S. (Sam) Gwynn.

In early 2003 I ran free advertisements for Joe Ruggier's literary journal, The Eclectic Muse, and for his collection of books on CD, which my software company helped Joe create. My relationship with Joe soon led THT to join forces with Joe's Multicultural Books (MBooks) imprint, and before long we had published books by Emery Campbell, Zyskandar Jaimot, T. Merrill and V. Ulea, with hopefully more to come.

Also in 2003 I published Yala Korwin, a Holocaust survivor, and soon with the help of Yala and Esther Cameron, THT was able to bring a number of poems by Jewish ghetto poets and other Holocaust poets that had never appeared in English before. Our early Holocaust pages included those of Janusz Korczak and Elie Wiesel, which were published in 2004.

In 2005, I published the work of T. (Tom) Merrill, and this was the beginning of yet another fruitful relationship. Tom has devoted much time to THT, and he is now our Poet in Residuum. In addition to gracing our pages with his poems, essays and poet intros, Tom is a proofreader par excellence. And he has directed us to a number of poets we wouldn't have known about otherwise, including Agnes Wathall, Eunice de Chazeau and Mary Malone.

In 2006, I published the poetry of Jeffery Woodward, and he has gone on to contribute a number of pages to our "Blasts from the Past" series, earning a honorable mention on our masthead. And so THT's editors and associates now consist of me, Tom, Joe and Jeffrey.

As I pen this retrospective (written on December 12, 2008), THT ranks in the top ten with Google for a number of our primary search terms: the hypertexts (#1), hypertexts (#2), formal poetry (#2), contemporary formal poetry (#3), "the Masters" poetry (#2), Darfur poetry (#1), Holocaust poetry (#10), ghetto poets (#2), Nelson Mandela poetry (#1), Elie Wiesel poetry (#1), Leonard Nimoy poetry (#1), Ronald Reagan poetry (#1), Pope John Paul II poetry (#1), Karol Wojtyla poetry (#1), Nadia Anjuman poetry (#1 and #2), Miklós Radnóti poetry (#1), Formalist poetry (#5). And we're ranked extremely high by Google for searches for many of the poets we've published: X. J. Kennedy poetry (#1), Richard Moore poetry (#1 and #2), Esther Cameron poetry (#1 and #2), George Held poetry (#1), Jack Butler poetry (#3 and #4), Ethna Carbery poetry (#3), etc.

In a few cases, such as Richard Moore's and Esther Cameron's, we even rank above the poets' personal and/or literary websites. And in many cases, we rank number one with Google in searches for our poets' names, sans modifiers, as with Eunice de Chazeau, Alfred Dorn, Rhina P. Espaillat, Roger Hecht, George Held, T. S. Kerrigan, Yala Korwin, Leslie Mellichamp, Robert Mezey, Joseph S. Salemi, and Agnes Wathall, just to drop a few names. These are men and women with serious accomplishments, so it's interesting to see THT ranking number one, even above Wikipedia, as we sometimes do.

Where will THT go from here? Perhaps as high and far as Google can help us fly . . .

Mike Burch
December 12, 2008

The HyperTexts