Word & Song by Anthony Esolen | Substack

From The Twelve-Gated City Listen now | The Second Gate (the Prodigal Son goes to the far country) | This week’s Poetry Aloud is a reading of an excerpt from my book-length poem, The Twelve-Gated City (in progress; © Anthony M. Esolen).

Mar 10

“You’ll Never Walk Alone" is a song of hope, written when the world was literally at war, when so many were suffering so greatly, and when optimism was not enough to win the day. Hope was needed then, and this timeless song still inspires it today.

Mar 18

Word of the Week | Sight is the least material of the senses. The scientists say that photons have no mass: and if that doesn’t approach the purely immaterial, I don’t know what does.

17 hr ago

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz | Dr. Praetorius spent several years in a rural town not as an ordinary butcher pretending to be a healer, but as a healer pretending to be an ordinary butcher. He worked not only with scientific skill but with the human soul and its capacity for…

Mar 16

Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, 1696 | Our Hymn of the Week is one of the most moving of all the psalms, the forty-second, “As the hart panteth after the…

Mar 14

During Dvorak's illness, famed violinist Fritz Kreisler came to visit his friend, and asked him, “Anton, do you have any works that you have not yet…

Mar 11

Elwood P. Dodd is a man who likes everybody he meets, and who, as he says to the director of the Funny Farm where the family’s trying to get him, er…

Mar 9

Charlotte Elliott (1836) | here is our Hymn of the Week, sung by the Kings’ College Choir to a melody specially composed for the poem, the sweet…

Mar 7

More from "Moses on Mount Pisgah"Listen now | In this poem, the speaker, Moses is a very old man, watching the children of Israel far below as they prepare, under Joshua’s leadership…

Mar 3

From John Milton, Paradise Lost | How to describe the feeling of someone wholly innocent and blessed? You can’t describe it. Maybe you can catch a…

Mar 1

Our hymn is a song of longing for that place so near to those who seek it. We don’t know the author’s name, but he lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth…

Feb 28

In every human language, sweetness is a mark of affection. “Don’t yank my head back like that, Candy,” says the motherly cook Berenice to the little boy…

Feb 27

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Word & Song by Anthony Esolen

reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen

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