Faith, Fiction, Friends: Saturday Good Reads

For a project I’ve been working on, I spent a fair chunk of Wednesday and Thursday reading poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. One poem is one of his best-known works, although not under its official title of “The Landlord’s Tale” from Tales of a Wayside Inn. Better known as “Paul Revere’s Ride,” it is still a soul-stirring poem. At the Society of Classical Poets, Andrew Benson Brown asks the question, whatever happened to great poetry? He sees Longfellow as one of the last of the great American poets.

Speaking of great poetry, it may not be a popular thing to say these days, but the father of Western civilization has long been recognized to be the Greek poet Homer. Joshua Katz at New Criterion writes about the importance of Homer and the poetic tradition.

I had a comment exchange with a friend this week; we represent opposite sides of the political spectrum, but we still manage to keep it civil and mutually beneficial. The great American political divide didn’t happen overnight, nor has it been a development only since the 1960s. As Shaun Rieley at The Imaginative Conservative writes, the divide can be traced back to the late 18^th century, and the conflict of competing ideas (and ideologies) began with Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine.

More Good Reads

Faith

The Worst Thing Was Not the Last – Erin Ahnfeldt at Mere Orthodoxy.

Anna Who Waited: How the Means of Grace Sustain the Grieving – Peter Witkowski.

Six Encouraging Resources to Prepare Your Heart for Lent – Michele Morin at Living Our Days.

Music

The Art of Composition: Eremo by Jeff Johnson and John Van Deusen – Kevin Belmonte at All Nine Muses.

Art

An expert’s guide to Frans Hals: five must-read books on the Dutch Old Master – José da Silva at The Art Newspaper.

Change – Sonja Benskin Mesher.

Albert Turpin, Painter – Spitalfields Life.

British Stuff