Poems, Decoded

A poet walks through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven; he sees exactly what you might expect.

A king steals a hero’s girl, a hero sulks in his tent, and Troy pays the price in blood.

A monster terrorizes a royal mead-hall for twelve years; a visitor from across the sea decides to fix it.

A survivor flees a burning city, survives a goddess's grudge, and finally finds a place to land.

Gods pursue nymphs, heroes sail for gold, and humans turn into trees, birds, or stars at the slightest divine whim.

A disgraced angel launches a spite-driven insurgency against Heaven, targeting a new couple in a garden to settle the score.

The wealthy are hypocrites, the poor are desperate, and everyone is under constant judgment.

A grieving scholar tries to talk logic to a bird that only knows one extremely discouraging word.

Danish princes, Venetian creditors, and shipwrecked sorcerers inhabit this definitive collection of early modern drama and verse.

A Spanish teenager survives shipwrecks, harems, and Russian sieges while his narrator constantly stops to complain about other poets.

A bearded man identifies with everything in America, from the Brooklyn ferry to the grass growing over the dead.

A rowdy group of pilgrims trades stories on a road trip, followed by a parliament of birds and Trojan heartbreak.

A piper charts the shift from sun-drenched meadows to the soot-stained streets of a cynical, adult London.

An old minstrel, a magical artifact, and the longest wedding-feast in literary history.

You arrive like water and leave like wind. Might as well order a drink first.

A farmer explains the weather, gods fight for their lives, and the missing chapters of the Trojan War finally appear.

Siegfried fights dragons, wins a queen, and ruins everything for his in-laws.

A disguised King, a fiery cross, and an exiled lady collide in a mountain chase where honor outweighs every law.

A poet tries to talk a handsome friend into fatherhood before pivoting to professional jealousy and a very messy breakup.

A king fears a one-sandaled man, so he sends fifty heroes on a boat toward a very dangerous sheepskin.

Two poets swap their fancy vocabulary for plain talk and find the world is suddenly weirder.

An Ojibway leader wrestles corn spirits, hunts giant beavers, and courts the daughter of his enemies in relentless trochaic tetrameter.

A farmer writes poetry about mice and theology. The Church is not amused.

A girl breaks into a family home for lunch. The homeowners are not amused.

The wolf is hungry, the fox is lying, and the ant is busy judging everyone.

A crew of specialists hunts an elusive creature with thimbles, forks, railway shares, and a very specific fear of Boojums.

A prince refuses to fight, so his charioteer explains the nature of the universe instead.

Palgrave and Tennyson curate three hundred years of English verse, from Elizabethan sonnets to Romantic meditations on nature.

A scholar spends his life writing a Hebrew dictionary, but history remembers his side-hustle about a sleigh.

A Viking's armor, a blacksmith's anvil, and a youth on a frozen mountain define a world where endurance is the ultimate virtue.

A sailor kills a bird, ghosts haunt the ship, and a wedding guest loses his night.

A skeletal cup-bearer pours a final drink for the King while the Rich Man discovers his gold cannot bribe the grave.

A Canadian poet attempts to fill the gaps in Sappho’s lost scrolls with gold-bound pipes and Mediterranean moonlight.

A gentleman snips a curl at a party, sparking a social war of legendary, tiny proportions.

A landscape of dry stone, empty bottles, and dead sailors where the rain won't fall and the voices won't stop.

An alphabet starts with a pie, a hen lays eggs for gentlemen, and a knave regrets his pastry theft.

A Scottish farmer writes his way from the stable to the salon, roasting hypocrites and apologizing to field mice along the way.

A farmer's wife brandishes a carving knife while pigs go to market and men debate the merits of getting out of bed.

A blind poet dictates the history of the universe, the rebellion of Hell, and a very expensive piece of fruit.

Two Acadian lovers are separated by a mass deportation and spend a lifetime crossing a continent to find each other.

The world ends, the Judge arrives, and the wicked try — and fail — to talk their way out of hellfire.

A scholar surveys how a nation of soldiers and lawyers borrowed Greek meters to document their own bloody history and private passions.

A Trojan prince falls for a defector's daughter, only for a prisoner swap to test if love outlasts a siege.

A Portuguese explorer braves unmapped oceans, jealous gods, and hostile merchants to trade pepper for national glory.

Ovid treats seduction like a chariot race, offering a technical guide to hunting, catching, and keeping a lover in Rome.

A condemned man offers his friend as collateral, Troy falls in ashes, and a diver enters a lethal whirlpool.

The poet tells you how to manage bees, trees, and cows. Your soil does the rest.

A king spends seven years conquering Spain, but his rear guard loses everything in an afternoon.

A lonely shepherd, a dying maiden, and a weary poet contemplate the cold moon and the inevitable decay of all things.

A king forgets his wife, a cloud delivers a letter, and a solar dynasty conquers heaven across eight Sanskrit classics.

A paladin goes mad, a hippogriff visits the moon, and two lovers fight fate to start an Italian dynasty.

Before sailing home, a long-term visitor answers twenty-six questions about how to live without ruining everything.

A traveler in Rome ignores the pillars and palaces to study the anatomy of his lover in a private garden.

A defeated king gathers a ragtag army to defend a white horse on a hill against a Danish apocalypse.

A priest demands a child sacrifice for a flower, and a woman flees a leper husband in these vivid, desperate lyrics.

An exiled prince pursues a phantom deer, loses his wife to a ten-headed demon king, and rallies a woodland army.

The Tao is the origin of everything, but if you can name it, you have missed it.

How to stop your brain from running around like a monkey in a fruit forest.

A poet strolls through Hell, chats with demons, and decides everything that lives is holy.

Viking ships, starving pilgrims, and British redcoats populate this massive poetic ledger of how North America became the United States.

A vast assembly of dramatic voices where a rat catcher, a goddess, and a suspicious lover all share the floor.