Homer, Sappho, and Everything

You looked out to the clear horizon
And saw Homer's warriors
Charging across the plain.
You listened and heard
Sappho singing her melancholy songs
Beside a quiet pool.
And confusion in the city streets grew less,
So did the hidden plots,
The cruel accusations.
And didn't you suspect
In the growing light of day
That the shouting in the market place
Was meant for you?
                        - Sheldon Kranz, 10/5/68

Sheldon Kranz, one of America's true poets and important writers was, early, a student of Aesthetic Realism with Eli Siegel and became a consultant, teaching Aesthetic Realism, in 1971. 

We publish here a courageous story of his from 1944 about race, and another about a son and mother that's been presented dramatically at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in NYC. In classes with Mr. Siegel Sheldon Kranz learned what made him, authentically, a poet, and Aesthetic Realism enabled him to see new meaning in literature. As a result he taught the course Literature and the Self in the 1970s.

• Turning Over a New Leaf; or, What Is Literature? Talk of 1974
  

•  Personal and Impersonal: Six Aesthetic Realists
  Poems by Sheldon Kranz from the book Personal and Impersonal. Begins with excerpt from the major critical preface by Eli Siegel: 

• Reports of Aesthetic Realism Classes taught by Eli Siegel
  Class of March 8, 1948 on the Self & Aesthetics
  Class of March 29, 1948 on Play & Work
  Class of May 24, 1948 on Satire
  Class of September 13, 1948 on Languages
  Class of January 31, 1949 on the 1860s
  Class of July 10, 1968 on Tao Yuan-ming & Lafcadio Hearn
  

• Poetry, Literature, Education Links Page
  
  Anne Fielding, actress, director of the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company, and wife of Sheldon Kranz, along with his colleagues and friends, are proud to bring you this website.