Welcome to Taj Mahal Review June 2012! This issue includes poems, short stories, literary criticism, book reviews, artwork by international artists, and many other interesting features. I hope this massive collection of poems and short stories will reach a worldwide audience. This well-planned and meticulous publication extends the hand of friendship in the true spirit, across the continents.

Our aim is to promote contemporary creative writing and artwork for Peace and Brotherhood across diverse nations. I have included several new authors, lesser known and also absolutely unknown writers for this June issue. The creative artists whose works appear in this edition are selected because of their fresh and true ideas.

It will be very good if we refrain from irreverent criticism of authors. John Keats (1795-1821), one of the greatest Romantic poets who is often compared with Shakespeare due to his phrases charged with a great intensity of imagination, was vehemently criticized by John Gibson Lockhart in Blackwoods Magazine: “The phrenzy of the “Poems” was bad enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half so seriously as the calm, settled, imperturbable drivelling idiocy of Endymion.”

This vituperative and utterly irreverent criticism was quite unjustified. We should not forget that Keats wrote some of the greatest odes, comparable to nothing except Shakespeare’s greatest poetry . One example is the concluding lines of Ode on a Grecian Urn” ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ - that is all / you know on earth, and all ye need to know”. Keats is a Shakespearean poet due to his ‘negative capability’.  I would be failing in my duty if I don’t express my sincere gratitude to all creative artists and poets included in this edition. The truth is that without their generous support and kind help this publication would never have been possible. Many many thanks again for their kind cooperation.

SANTOSH KUMAR
Editor