A Digital Renaissance: The 2020 Symposium of Meter and Rhyme

The year 2020 forced a retreat. Doors closed, halls emptied, and the usual hum of literary gatherings fell silent under the weight of a global pandemic. Yet, silence often invites a different kind of listening. For the Society of Classical Poets, the restriction of space became an expansion of reach. The Symposium, originally bound by geography, migrated to the ether.

A Sanctuary in the Cloud

It was a Sunday, May 31. The context was unprecedented—chaos outside, but a deliberate pursuit of order inside the virtual room. The Society moved its annual celebration to Zoom, a platform usually reserved for corporate drones and fatigued students. Here, it hosted the iambic pulse.

Reconstruction of the Temple T at Selinunte, representing the classical foundation of the event

The shift wasn’t merely logistical. It felt symbolic. Classical poetry relies on constraints—the strict walls of a sonnet, the recurring turn of a villanelle. Finding freedom within the tight frame of a monitor screen mirrored the very art form being celebrated. Evan Mantyk hosted the session, guiding a roster of poets who refused to let the tradition gather dust.

Voices Across the Wire

The lineup brought together distinct timbres. A.M. Juster, known for his sharp wit and translations, shared the digital stage with Theresa Rodriguez and Randal A. Burd, Jr. The audience heard the stark realities of human rights from Jennifer Zeng and Damian Robin.

This wasn’t a dry academic reading. It was a testament to the endurance of the spoken word. James A. Tweedie, C.B. Anderson, and others added their verses to the mix. You could hear the breath behind the lines, the distinct pauses that only a poet knows how to execute. The technology faded; the meter remained.

The Architecture of the Afternoon

The event unfolded in two waves. The first session broke the midday silence, followed by a second wave in the late afternoon. It was a gathering of five hundred minds, separated by oceans but synchronized by the beat of the verse.

The official schedule of readings for the 2020 Online Symposium

Echoes of the Day

Sponsors Mark F. Stone and James Sale helped ensure the transmission of these voices. In a time when the world felt fragmented, the insistence on rhyme—on two disparate things clicking together in harmony—felt less like a literary device and more like a survival mechanism. The Symposium proved that even when we cannot stand in the same room, we can still dwell in the same stanza.