By David Gosselin (originally published on The Age of the Muses) “If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.” ― Aldous Huxley Parting with our illusions is never easy. We love them as though they were the real thing. Indeed, the power of…
Tag: Poetry
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) and the Mask of the Twentieth Century
By David Gosselin [Originally published on The Age of the Muses] “BUT for the cruel aspersions upon the character and life of America’s poetic genius, EDGAR ALLAN POE, this volume would have remained unwritten. EDGAR ALLAN POE has been more misunderstood than any other poet of the recent past. While his life was beautiful and…
Symposium: The Edgar A. Poe You Never Knew
On June 8, 2019 a symposium hosted by the Rising Tide Foundation titled “The Edgar Allan Poe You Never Knew” was held in Montreal Canada. 160 years of slanders begun by Rufus Griswold and enemies of Poe have kept alive a false image of this great poet which this event intended to disprove. The first…
Re-discovering the Odyssey of Homer. Was it History or a Myth (Updated Edition)
By Gerald Therrien With all the hoopla about a new movie on Homer’s Odyssey, I decided it was time to correct certain errors in my presentation of Homer’s Odyssey first presented to The Rising Tide Foundation in 2022. In that earlier location, I had attempted to sort out all the different questions about whether or…
Beyond the Lines: Shelley’s “Ozymandias”
By Adam Sedia Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is one of his shortest works, but also one of his best known, anthologized to the point of ubiquity. But it deserves every bit of the reputation it has gained. Short, yet powerful and descriptive, it illustrates the sonnet at its best. And it is one of the…
Beyond the Lines: Keats’ “Ode on Indolence”
By David Gosselin The question has been raised by many critics, academics, scientists, and artists, “What is Creativity?” In the spring of 1819, the poet John Keats experienced one of the greatest bursts of creativity in the history of art and science. When fully considered, the astounding poetic achievements of the spring of 1819 parallel…
Prometheus and Atlantis
By Gerald Therrien In Part 1 of my recently published Trilogy on the School of Athens (The Pre-Socratic Philosophers Explored), we read that, ‘Prometheus therefore, being at a loss to provide any means of salvation for man, stole from Hephaestus and Athena the gift of skill in the arts, together with fire, and bestowed it…
Beyond the Lines : ‘Mending Wall’ – Robert Frost and the Good Neighbor Poetry
by Gerald Therrien [The following is a transcript of the above lecture as part of the RTF symposium “The Role of Art in Shaping a Sovereign Citizenry“.] Mending Wall is a nice poem that also tells a fun little story, about someone, about his neighbor and about a wall. Frost takes this old saying, that…
On Geopolitics, War and the Role of the Poets (featuring Hall Gardner)
As modern poetry has often been stereotyped as focusing primarily on subjective concerns, this week’s RTF guest lecturer Hall Gardner will lecture briefly on the simple, but seemingly overlooked, fact that geopolitical issues and wars have influenced poets at least since the oral histories of “Homer” and the late Beowolf poet., among many others. He…
Geoffrey Chaucer and the Last Knight in England
Gerald Therrien sheds light on the real Geoffrey Chaucer as an epistemological warrior who used the power of the pen to shape entire kingdoms, subvert the growth of the Feudal Norman Barons and corrupting romanticism while also forming the english language. Watch Gerald Therrien’s accompanying lectures here: In Defense of King Arthur • In Defence of King Arthur [Gerald Therrien… Marlowe vs….