More books get published today than before. Great talented poets write new books every day and, through book signings and book readings, make their books popular. Contests, sponsored by literary magazines and universities, and on line group discussions are spreading poetry like never before.

Readers get more sophisticated. While they appreciate fiction, they expand their reading to poetry. Poetry has become like Math, a tool that make you stop, wonder and think. Poetry makes the reader a better person intellectually and spiritually. It paints life with all the colors of the rainbow. Poetry plays with alternative meanings of words to evoke and to stir up emotions to grab attention and to create wonder and suspense. Ambiguity, symbolism, irony and passion make the written word very powerful. Romance reaches new heights, drama more intensity, religion a new plateau.

The beauty and sounds of words fascinate the reader by taking him or her on the beautiful planet of fantasy, imagination and ecstasy. Good becomes best. Honesty becomes heroism. Leadership becomes vision and success. Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, and Erato, the muse of erotic poetry, join hands in modern poetry. They embrace the modern man and guide him to new heights, new depths and to a new horizon. Aristotle’s Poetics are still alive today: the epic, the comic and the tragic.

Today’s poetry is richer than ever because it incorporates the form and diction of other cultures, too. Long live Poetry and he or she who appreciates it. Fear not, it’s only poetry; read it and you will love it, I promise you!