It is a matter of great happiness to release the June 2009 Taj Mahal Review. This issue includes the most spectacular poems by the authors across the world, haiku, book review, short stories, artwork, reflections, literary criticism and much more. My main mission as Editor of TMR is to publish different trends of contemporary writing world-wide by so many voices and so many cultures to promote Peace and Friendship. While selecting artwork and poems, I always keep in mind that great creative artists touch “the hidden nerve” (Tocqueville). In the contemporary postmodern chaos, it would be quite prudent to follow the old tradition of “transcendentalist individualism” (Allen Ginsberg). Jean Paul Sartre aptly says: “Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.”

TMR  December 2008 brings to the readers a varied collection of poems, haiku,  short stories, artwork, book reviews and many other illuminating things such as literary facts, gems of quotations etc. This journal is publishing  creative writings and artwork for several years.  Without the cooperation and kind support provided by the creative artists included in this issue Taj is inconceivable. I have been receiving an increasingly vast number of  poems, shorter fiction and artwork, but it is not possible to publish each artist due to lack of space. Therefore only those compositions have been selected for this issue, which reveal author’s passionate thinking about life, transcendentalism, mood of the new century, idealism in accordance with reason and commonsense, and concentrating on inner experience.  

Welcome to the June 2008 TMR! This issue features a collection of poetry, short fiction, artwork, reflections, literary criticism, book reviews etc. The latest issue offers the best of contemporary creative works by famous and emerging talents. A creative artist of today has full liberty in choosing the content and stylistic approach. But unrestrained subjectivism may lead to chaos, and an artist should know where he is going. An increasingly large number of poems received by me for publication in TMR is a testimony to the fact that the future of poetry is immense in this age of tribulation. Poetry is a good substitute for religion and philosophy. "The strongest part of religion is its unconscious poetry. Without poetry our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry" (Matthew Arnold).

Taj Mahal Review, December 2007 out now, features Poetry, Artwork by international artists, Short Story, Reflections, Book Review etc; here is the longing to promote original creative writing worldwide. The continuous publication is a testimony to the kind support and dedication of its readers. My heart's desire is that Taj should concentrate on publishing original authors and artists. I have kept this in mind while selecting an increasingly large number of poems and short stories. How to save Poetry? Cyberwit is doing something in this direction. Why Poetry? He that rejecteth Poetry and Art will not have a good conscience. They alone clean and save our soul. Poetry is divine. We are cleaned by Poetry. Poetry alone can expose 'hypocrisies of official society', and the totalitarianism of the present machine society. Hope you will enjoy this massive collection of poems, short stories and artwork reaching a worldwide audience. Cyberwit's purpose is to assist authors in the publication of creative writing without them having to suffer the ordeal of going through an agent.  

This issue features most remarkable Artwork by international artists, Poems, Short Stories, Literary Criticism, Interview, Book Review and more. There is a separate section for Haiku, the smallest literary form that originated in Japan in the 17th century. Due to difference in the syllable structure of English language, 5-7-5 format should  not be mandatory.
The authors whose writings appear in Taj are selected because of their heightened sensibilities as well as their fuller understanding of the postmodern period. The poems and short stories included in this issue reveal the author's response towards our unfortunate times dominated by the murderous and plundering forces. The innocent are knocked to pieces, and strangled. But these unpoetic-seeming things can be material for poetry. The ugliness, squalor and horror of the modern age was a new kind of material for Joyce's Ulysses and Eliot's The Waste Land. Stephen Spender aptly says in his World Within World that the poet "instead of having to set himself apart from his time, could create out of an acceptance of it." For example, several poets selected in this volume have adapted their urban sensibility, with undertones of tedium and fugitive sense-impressions mingled with ironic commentary.

The aim of Taj is to promote Art and Poetry for Peace & Brotherhood across diverse nations. This issue contains an extensive selection of most notable artwork, poems and short stories created by artists from all over the world. The artists whose works appear in Taj are selected because of their innovative style, and their faith in limitless freedom of expression  devoid of superfluous ornamentation, empty verbiage and hollow generalities. The most important thing for a creative artist is to posses some inward Platonic reality to face the dark unspirituality and 'homelessness' of the postmodern ethos. The most obvious and inescapable aspect of  the poems, artwork and short stories included in this issue is to convey the idea that there are as diverse ways of creative expression as there are individualities.