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Our Journal of Timeless Art and Culture
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“The Artist, it is true, is the son of his age; but pity for him if he is its pupil, or even its favorite! Let some beneficent Divinity snatch him when a suckling from the breast of his mother, and nurse him with the milk of a better time that he may ripen to his full stature beneath a distant Grecian sky. And having grown to manhood, let him return, a foreign shape, into his century; not, however, to delight it by his presence; but terrible, like the son of Agamemnon, to purify it. The matter of his works he will take from the present; but their Form he will derive from a nobler time, nay from beyond all time, from the absolute unchanging unity of his nature. Here from the pure aether of his spiritual essence, flows down the Fountain of Beauty, uncontaminated by the pollutions of ages and generations, which roll to and fro in their turbid vortex far beneath it.”
—Friedrich Schiller, Ninth Letter on the Aesthetic Education of Man
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Fall 2024
Winter 2024
Contents
In this latest issue of New Lyre Magazine, we reconstruct Aeschylus’ lost tragedy of Prometheus Unbound, revisit Plato’s age-old war against public opinion and finally allow the poets into the Republic, then celebrate the many original creative voices and poets who have chosen to stand above the fray of the culture wars. This latest issue also includes a complete and original translation of the Life of Beethoven by French novelist and dramatist Romain Rolland. Among our rich poetic offering, we include a new epic dream in iambic pentameter, Athena, which was inspired by Keats’ unfinished epic, Hyperion; the soulful wonders of Welsh poet Rowland Hughes; and the innovative poetic narratives of DB Jonas, among many others.
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Previous Issues
Spring 2021
Contents
In this first issue, we offer the new soulful-stirring poems of Daniel Leach, including his spiritually teasing “Nefertiti” and his ambitious “Hymn to the Noosphere”'; the hauntingly beautiful poems of Kevin Nicholas Roberts, including “Allayne” and “Orpheus”; as well as the deep philosophical songs and ballads of Paul Gallagher, among many others. Along with a host of original poetic offerings, New Lyre presents readers with an near-overwhelming selection of Michael’s Burch’s unmatched translations of the ancient Greek poetess Sappho, who Plato famously called as the “tenth muse.” Along with a rich offering of new poetry and translation, we feature an essay by poet, composer and essayist Adam Sedia on Homer and his transcendent legacy today.
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Winter 2021
Contents
New Lyre’s second issue features a delicate and—we believe—complementary balance of Eastern and Western classical styles. Each tradition expresses the universal creative spark common to all humanity in an original manner. We believe the unique expression of these principles in both Eastern and Western traditions serves as a prime example of Plato’s “One and the Many” paradox. While there is something different, there is something unchanging. While the techniques, forms, traditions, languages and cultures may vary greatly, we find a common universal longing for beauty, the sublime and the eternal, Moreover, we believe the fine arts constitute the realm in which this innate and universal longing common to all humanity becomes most visible and visceral, and consequently, serves as one of the most important bridges between civilizations.
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Summer 2022
Contents
In this issue, we take readers on a journey of discovery from the early childhood stages of enchantment, to the later intermediary “disenchantment” and, finally, “re-enchantment”—a journey each mortal must undertake for themselves, yet never have to suffer alone. Included in this issue are the ever-thoughtful and soul-searching poems of Rowland Hughes, the spiritually searching ballads and verses of Kevin Nicholas Roberts, and the wonder and magic of Michael Burch and Martin McCarthy’s sublime neo-Romantic verses.
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Spring 2023
Contents
In this Renaissance-themed issue, we offer an extensive journey across the classical Italian world of Dante, Petrarch and Guido Cavalcanti, along with a fiery flurry of new modern classical poems composed in a wide ranges of styles in themes. Among our rich assortment of Italian translations are the mystical sonnets of a young Dante Alighieri possessed by the mysterious “Amore”, as well as his later spiritually mature and deeply edifying “canzoni” (songs), along with a host timeless Petrarchan sonnets rendered in new gripping English translations. Among our many original voices featured in this issue are the ambitious and philosophical sonnets of John H.B. Martin and Daniel Platt, the ecstatic and spiritual songs and ballads of David B. Gosselin and the soul-titillating ditties of Michael R. Burch, among many others.
Along with our lofty offering of classical Italian translations, our featured essay, “The World Needs a Renaissance, Not an Enlightenment,” explores the prospects of what the timeless tradition of rebirth and rediscovery means today.
