Feeling It Doesn’t Make It Real: A Reckoning with Romanticism’s Lie

Romanticism gave us beauty, emotion, and soul—but also blurred the line between feeling and truth. In this essay, we confront its legacy head-on. From lyrical longing to moral relativism, this is the reckoning of a movement that still echoes through our culture, our art, and our identities. Strap in. We’re going deep.

Essays

on Poetry

Dancing in the Shadows: The Beautiful Madness of Dark Romanticism

Dancing in the Shadows: The Beautiful Madness of Dark Romanticism

This isn’t your average moonlit sonnet. This is poetry with a pulse in the dark—where the sublime meets the sinister and the soul gazes into its own abyss. In this deep dive into Dark Romanticism, we explore the obsession with death, madness, and the unhinged beauty of the human mind. Expect Gothic drama, self-destructive musings, and a few candles flickering ominously in the background.

Love at First Sigh: Romanticism’s Over-the-Top Poems (and Why They Still Resonate)

Love at First Sigh: Romanticism’s Over-the-Top Poems (and Why They Still Resonate)

Swooning over a stranger? Writing deathbed love poems before the second date? Welcome to Romanticism in full melodramatic bloom. This essay dives into the emotional fever dream of Romantic poetry—complete with full-length examples from the likes of Byron, Shelley, and Moore—and explores why these over-the-top declarations of passion still hit us right in the heart… even if we also kind of want to mock them.

Romanticism Explained: Nature, Emotion, and the Poetic Rebellion Against Reason

Romanticism Explained: Nature, Emotion, and the Poetic Rebellion Against Reason

Romanticism wasn’t just about flowery poems and wistful stares into the distance—it was a full-blown rebellion against logic, Enlightenment ideals, and the tyranny of tidy reason. In this essay, we dig into the roots of the movement: why it happened, what it worshipped, and how it redefined poetry as a raw, emotional outpouring rather than a polished, rational craft. Expect nature. Expect drama. Expect feelings—lots of them.

Field Notes

Outgrown Shells

Outgrown Shells

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,As the swift seasons roll!Leave thy low-vaulted past!Let each new temple, nobler than the last,Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,Till thou at length art free,Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!...

Redemption in a Stanza

Redemption in a Stanza

As an arrogant and ignorant adolescent and teen, I disdained many of the fine arts, or at least large portions of them. It wasn’t because I had not been exposed to them; perhaps my rejection was based more upon the fact that I had been exposed to them. You know,...

All Entries

in the notebook

Romanticism Explained: Nature, Emotion, and the Poetic Rebellion Against Reason

Romanticism Explained: Nature, Emotion, and the Poetic Rebellion Against Reason

Romanticism wasn’t just about flowery poems and wistful stares into the distance—it was a full-blown rebellion against logic, Enlightenment ideals, and the tyranny of tidy reason. In this essay, we dig into the roots of the movement: why it happened, what it worshipped, and how it redefined poetry as a raw, emotional outpouring rather than a polished, rational craft. Expect nature. Expect drama. Expect feelings—lots of them.

Perfectly Poetic

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