Poets and Poems: Megan Merchant and "Hortensia, in winter"

I’ve been fascinated lately with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Courtship of Miles Standish, and how he worked to include real people into his epic poem of the Mayflower and the settlement of Massachusetts. I have a personal connection with two of my great-grandparents, Samuel and Octavia Young. Samuel was the youngest boy in the family, the last to enlist in the Civil War, and the only one of the three Young brothers to survive the war. After the war ended, he married Octavia Montgomery, his childhood sweetheart. She could officially trace her ancestors directly to Priscilla Mullin and John Alden of Mayflower fame, the very same hero and heroine of Longfellow’s great American poem. “Speak for yourself, John Alden.” 

It's like having Longfellow in your DNA.

 

As I began reading Hortensia, in winter: Poems by Megan Merchant, I was delighted to discover that Longfellow wasn’t the only poet to incorporate real people into his poems. Merchant’s “grandfather’s great-grandmother” was a pioneer woman named Hortensia Merchant, born in 1824 and died in 1905. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Not the Halloween You Remember – Joe Carter at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Trick or Treat? The Trap of Our Desires – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review on Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.

 

Ray Bradbury’s “The Halloween Tree”: A Chilling Delight – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

“When the Night Wind Howls,” poem by W.S. Gilbert – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

My Mother’s Diary: “Who Am I?” – poem by Megan Willome. 

The Journalists' Prayer

St. Bride’s Church in London’s Fleet Steet is known as the “Journalists’ Church.” The church and the area around it have a long history with writers, publishing, printing, and newspapers. But it’s history – the newspapers that once occupied the buildings of Fleet Street are long gone, absorbed into other newspaper or moved to other locations. 

British journalism grew up here for a simple reason: the first printing press with moveable type was brought to the area in 1500, and the printing (and later the newspaper business) grew up around it. But a church had occupied the site since about 500 A.D.; the current St. Bride’s was completely rebuilt in the late 1950s to restore what had been destroyed during the German Blitz of December 1940.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Governor is Calling – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian. 

 

Why Christian Culture is Essential to Our Education – Ian Pace at The Critic Magazine.

 

Israel’s Iran Strike – and Washington’s Strategic Weakness – Niall Ferguson at The Free Press.

 

Poets and Poems: Sarah Carey and “The Grief Committee Minutes”

A year passed before I came face to face with the grief over the death of my father. There wasn’t time for me to grieve; I was the executor of his estate, and his estate was a mess. A huge mess. He’d kept my mother unaware of just what a mess it was, and she was as bewildered as the rest of the family. When we finally emerged from the financial fog, grief hit me like a freight train. 

“There is no grief like the grief that does not speak,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote. The man knew what he was talking about.

 

Poet and writer Sarah Carey knows about grief. Her new poetry collection, The Grief Committee Minutes, isn’t solely about grief, but much of it is. What I particularly like is how Carey identifies and explores the kinds of grief.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

T.S. Eliot Put His World Back Together Again – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

New Release! The Colour Out of Space Graphic Novel, Illustrated by Sara Barkat – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

The Cure – poem by Gabrielle Myers at Every Day Poems.

 

How I Turned My Family History into a Novel – Joanne Howard at Writer’s Digest.

 

“Mr. Flood’s Party,” poem by Edward Arlington Robinson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“Trapped in the Tunnel” by Katrina Hoover Lee

Young teens Terry, Gary, and Larry Fitzpatrick live with their parents on Brady Street in a small town in Indiana. The streets rather isolated; it’s near the river the boys love and has only two neighbors, an abandoned house next door and a home owned by “the German woman” Tina down the street. It’s early summer 1987, and the three boys find all kinds of things to keep them occupied.  

The boys have heard stories of how their area supposedly was part of the Underground Railroad before and during the Civil War. But it’s only when the local antiques dealer gives them an old map that their imaginations take flight. It appears that there are tunnels connecting the houses on their street, secret rooms in the basements, and all manner of secret doors.

 

Katrina Hoover Lee

They hunt for clues and soon begin to find them, including in their own basement and in the abandoned house next door. But things take a turn for the really exciting, and dangerous, when they’re asked to care for Tina’s dog while she’s away. 

 

In Trapped in the Tunnel, Katrina Hoover Lee tells the boys’ story. She combines strong Christian elements along with the things young teens can do to keep themselves occupied, with a good dose of mystery and mounting tension. The targeted age group for the series is roughly 8 to 13. And this is the  time before personal computers, mobile phones, iPads, and the worldwide web, so the book is a treat for those of us adults who can remember those ancient times.

 

Lee has published seven books in the Brady Street Boys 1980s Adventure Series, of which Trapped in the Tunnel is the first. She’s also published several other books, both fiction and non-diction. The Brady Street Boys originated as stories she told her brother, growing up on a Mennonite farm. She lives with her family in Elkhart, Indiana. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

“My Letters! All Dead Paper,” poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The False Promise of Device-Based Education – Amy Tyson at After Babel.

 

Democracy in America: an introduction – Roger Kimball at The New Criterion.

 

Stark Truth: All the King’s Terrible Choices – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

Rest has meaning

After Exodus 20:8-11 and Matthew 12:1-14 

To rest is not doing

nothing; to rest is

to recognize we have

limits, that we cannot

do everything. To avoid

rest is destructive; it

will destroy you. To rest

is to acknowledge

dependence on one who

is greater. To rest is

to know we are not

the center of the universe.

To avoid rest is

to embrace slavery.

To worship busyness

is to worship self.

 

Photograph by Jessica Mangano via Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Bottle Collector – poem by Liz Snell at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Absent Fathers in Children’s Literature: A Problem? – Betsy Farquhar at Redeemed Reader.

 

For Richer, for Poorer: How to Steward Money in Marriage – Randy Alcorn at Desiring God.

Saturday Good Reads - Oct. 26, 2024

He was born more than 30 years after the end of the Civil War, but that conflict shaped William Faulkner and his writing more than any other single factor – and this despite that he rarely if ever wrote about the war directly. Author Michael Gorra wrote a book about it, The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War, and he talks about it on a podcast with Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War. (I read Gorra’s book while doing research on my historical novel, and it's excellent.) 

While a few diehard conspiracy theorists still cling to the claims of “Russiagate,” the legacy media have generally moved on, with very few acknowledging how they themselves helped to propagate it. Now we had something credibly substantiated: Britaingate. The Britain-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), founded by the man who is now the chief of staff for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, apparently put both the Trump campaign and Elon Musk’s Xsocial medium in its crosshairs. Leaked files show how the elimination of X was the group’s main target. And then there’s Labourgate – with Britain’s Labour Party sending activists to campaign for Harris. So if it’s Russia or China trying to interfere, it’s bad, but British interference is good?

 

Samuel James at Digital Liturgies is a fan of the rock group Coldplay (full disclosure: I share at least some of his enthusiasm). He listed to the group’s recently released album – and was disappointed. But he realized something about the album and culture generally, and he understood how that album explained our current political situation. Another full disclosure: I think his analysis is spot on.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

A Good Death? – Warren Peel at Gentle Reformation.

 

What is New York’s Abortion Amendment Hiding? – Maud Maron at Tablet Magazine.

 

Bring That Hammer Down – a talk by Paul Kingsnorth, The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Actually Existing Postliberalism – Nathan Pinkoski at First Things Magazine.

 

The Post-Cold War Apotheosis of Liberal Managerialism: A response to Nathan Pinkoski – N.S. Lyons at The Upheaval.

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Long Defeat of History: Tolkien’s hope for the entropy of ages – Jake Meador at Comment Magazine.

 

The Story Behind Shogun – Sky / History UK.

 

British Stuff

 

‘Vessel’: An Art Trail Along Remote Rural Churches in the Black Mountains of Wales – David Trigg at Religion Unplugged.

 

She Was Arrested for Praying in Her Head – Madeline Kearns at The Free Press. 

 

The Last Great Englishman: Arthur Wellesley – M.E. Bradford at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

WW2 Helmets Found in France Linked to SS Massacre – Katy Prickett at BBC News.

 

American Stuff

 

Independent and Unaligned – Ana Kasparian at Unaligned.

 

BLM Collected Over $90 Million in Donations. Where Did It Go? – Sean Patrick Cooper at The Free Press.

 

News Media

 

I am (not) one of the most 57 powerful people in media – Hamish McKenzie.

 

Why Is The New York Times Not Disclosing a Source’s Ties to Hamas? – Olivia Reingold at The Free Press.

 

Faith

 

It Was Never Just ‘Thoughts and Prayers’ – Daniel Darling at The Remnant.

 

Assisted Suicide and the Meaning of Life – Seth Lewis.

 

Letter #149: The Punchline of the Universe – Spencer Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

Poetry

 

“Alcaics: To H.F.B.,” poem by Robert Louis Stevenson – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Israel

 

Ad for Israel Book Canceled Because ‘Customers Might Complain’ – Francesca Block at The Free Press.

 

His Glory and My Good – CityAlight

 Painting: Scholar Reading an Illuminated Manuscript, oil on canvas by Claus Meyer (1856-1919). 

A day of rest

After Exodus 20:8-11 and Matthew 12:1-14 

It is a day of rest,

a day set aside,

a day to set work

aside, and rest.

The example is

there from

the beginning,

to work hard

six days and rest

on the seventh.

 

Rest does not mean

idleness, or a day

to observe rigidly,

without exception.

It can be a day

to do good, to bless,

to show empathy,

to show care and

compassion. That is

not work; that is

loving the Lord

of the Sabbath.

 

Photograph by Sincerely Media via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Autumn – poem by Rainer Marie Rilke at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

 

Every person is a tree. Every tree tells stories – Pierce Taylor Hibbs at Moments That Make Us.

 

The Good Life – poem by Rusty Rabon at Society of Classical Poets.

"Death at Silent Pool" by Benedict Brown

It’s 1928. Lord Edgington, retired head of Scotland Yard, is called to Silent Pool, the home of Abraham Hindmarsh. Hindmarsh is a member of Parliament and an undersecretary in the Cabinet, and his wife Patience has vanished, leaving behind on the estate a wrecked car with blood all over the interior. No body has been found, and no one has reported anything about the missing woman. 

Christopher Prentiss accompanies his grandfather, as he has been doing for the pat several years when the great detective is called in. What the investigating pir discover is a highly toxic brew of Hindmarsh himself, five adult children who seem to hate each other, and a niece who is treated with near contempt by most of her cousins. 

 

While they’re investigating, they hear gunshots; Hindmarsh has been shot dead. And his death won’t be the last, as the case is flooded with evidence that night or might not apply, bubbling anger, and the siblings physically attacking one another.

 

Benedict Brown

Death at Silent Pool is the fourteenth Lod Edgington mystery by British author Benedict Brown, and it takes a decidedly different turn from its predecessors. The previous stories had a strong element of humor, mostly emanating from Christopher and his observations, and a lightness to the story. Death at Silent Pool is a good, intriguing story, but it takes a much darker path.

 

In addition to the Lord Edgington stories, Brown has written seven Izzy Palmer mystery novels and three novellas. A native of south London, he lives with his family in Spain. The Lord Edgington mysteries are likely aimed at both the general reader as well as the young adult audience. And they’re well-researched stories, full of information about the mid-to-late 1920s.

 

I’m glad to see that a 15^th Lord Edgington mystery, The Christmas Candle Murders, returns to a more lighthearted story line. It’s due out Nov. 24.

 

Related:

 

Murder at the Spring Ball by Benedict Brown.

 

A Body at a Boarding School by Benedict Brown.

 

The Mystery of Mistletoe Hall by Benedict Brown.

 

 Death on a Summer’s Day by Benedict Brown.

 

The Tangled Treasure Trail by Benedict Brown.

 

The Curious Case of the Templeton-Swifts by Benedict Brown.

 

The Crimes of Clearwell Castle by Benedict Brown.

 

The Snows of Weston Moor by Benedict Brown.

 

What the Vicar Saw by Benedict Brown.

 

Blood on the Banisters by Benedict Brown.

 

A Killer in the Wings by Benedict Brown.

 

The Christmas Bell Mystery by Benedict Brown.

 

A Novel Way to Kill by Benedict Brown.

 

The Puzzle at Parham Hall by Benedict Brown.

 

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Place of Murder – Sydney Graves (Kate Christensen) at CrimeReads. 

 

The Long Art of the Short Story – Elly Griffiths at Writer’s Digest.

 

The Everlasting Man – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule on G.K. Chesterton.

Some Wednesday Readings

Thou shalt not pray? – Lois McLatchie at The Critic Magazine. 

What Salman Rushdie Doesn’t Want to Talk About – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

Writing in Spare Moments of Life – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Confederate Guerillas: Effective Commands or Detrimental Service? Part 1 and Part 2– Daniel Welch at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Morphing: Lessons from Year of the Monarch – Dheepa Maturi at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Bookish Diversions: Lewis and Tollkien, Pen Pals – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

3 Goals for Writing Great Historical Fiction – Ryan Coleman at Writer’s Digest.

 

“I, Being a Woman and Born Distressed,” poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Generations by Jean Twenge – book review by Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

Photograph: Mosby's Rangers during the Civil War, with John Mosby in the center wearing a feathered hat.

Poets and Poems: Hedy Habra and “Or Did You Ever See the Other Side?”

“Or” is a curious, and unexpected, word to begin a title of a poetry collection. It’s more unexpected to begin each of the 67 poems in that collection with the word “Or.” Or maybe it isn’t. 

Curious and unexpected or not, that’s what poet, author, and essayist Hedy Habra does in Or Did You Ever See the Other Side?, her most recent collection of poetry. What happens is that each title suggests it’s an alternative to the original – an alternative title, an alternative theme or idea, or a different approach, description, or telling. As I began to guess an “original” title for each one I read, a rather fun exercise in and of itself, I began to understand what she’s doing here. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

“To Autumn,” poem by John Keats – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Fogs & Smog of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

 

“Look Up,” a poem inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – T.M. Moore at the Society of Classical Poets.

 

Poetry Prompt: Aisling – Vision or Dream – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

A Ritual to Read to Each Other – poem by William Stafford at Every Day Poems.

"The Last Waltz in Zurich" by Amir Tomer

Some years (decades) back, I discovered the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978, and his stories had a collective purpose: to keep alive and commemorate the Yiddish culture of Europe, especially Poland, that had been destroyed by the Nazis in World War II. I was fascinated. I knew nothing of the world he was describing. It was full of folklore, magic, quirks, twists, the expected and unexpected, dreams, nightmares, and humor.  

I’d not read anything like these stories until The Last Waltz to Zurich and Other Stories by Amir Tomer. Tomer’s stories are not about Yiddish culture in Poland. Instead, they are about contemporary culture in Israel. And yet there is same sense of magic and twists, dreams and nightmares, and a very wry sense of humor that I found in the Singer stories. 

 

A man wakes up in the hospital after an automobile accident; he’s missing an eye, but the eye is still watching at the accident scene. An oil painting becomes real life. A man runs into an old rival for his wife, is invited to meet the man’s wife, and discovers it’s his own. A milkman leads children astray. A Holocaust survivor remembers huddling with her friends. 

 

In the title story, a man is dancing with the woman he considers the most beautiful in the world, his wife, when she suddenly dies in his arms. Later, not wanting to live, he decides to go to Switzerland for a legal suicide. In another story, a soldier contemplates a proposal. In another, a convention hotel provides the opportunity for a professor to pursue a student, but life changes. And there’s a man who abandons his work promotion to take the time to wreak vengeance, and the man pursued by a lighthouse becoming a woman becoming something else. And a story of man preparing to die on the gallows, and his life flashes before him. 

 

Dr. Amir Tomer

The collection contains 20 stories in all, a few containing graphic scenes. Together, the stories describe people searching for what they think is happiness, or the ordinary suddenly becoming extraordinary – and threatening, or relationships that never quite work out the way they were expected. And each story contains a twist, an unexpected development, a narrative surprise that suddenly changes our understanding of what’s been happening. 

 

Tomer, a professor of software engineering, received three degrees in computer science and has worked in the defense industry in Israel. He established a software engineering department at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee and headed the department for more than a decade. The Last Waltz in Zurich is his second book. His first, a poetry collection titled Love Designer, was published in Hebrew in 2021.

 

The Last Waltz in Zurich and Other Stories is unsettling, surprising, full of twists and turns, and a highly entertaining read.

Note: The book will be released in the United States on Nov. 23.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

What Makes Good Historical Fiction? – George Garnett at History Today.

 

Meet the American who conjured up ‘Legend of Sleepy Hollow’: Washington Irving, first US celebrity author – Kerry Byrne at Fox News.

 

What The Invisible Man Made Visible to Me – Renee Hale at Miller’s Book Review.

 

‘There was eye-watering fear’: Jon le Carre’s son on writing a new George Smiley novel – Alex Clark at The Guardian.

 

Horatio Nelson: The Darling Hero of England – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

In vain

After Exodus 20:7 and Matthew 7:15-23 

Better to not say

his name, than

to take his name

in vain. To take 

his name in vain

imputes guilt

by default.

 

Who takes his name

in vain? Consider

false prophets, acting

as sheep but behaving

as ravenous wolves, 

trees bearing poisonous

fruits, worth only

to be cut down and

burned. The wolves

arrive at heaven’s gate,

demanding entrance,

wolves not recognized,

wolves never known.

 

Photograph by Cajin Clement via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Humanity of Hospitality – Carl Trueman at First Things Magazine.

 

Freedom of Conscience in a Culture of Death – Matthew Hosier at Think Theology.

 

A Sonnet for St. Luke’s Day – Malcolm Guite.

 

A digital pilgrimage for Edwardtide – Westminster Abbey.

 

Saturday Good Reads - Oct. 19, 2024

It’s rare to see the major legacy media in full-blown propaganda mode, but, man, are they in that mode now. Maybe when the election’s over they’ll try to return to something approximating journalism. Take the story that almost didn’t happen. For two or three years now, we’ve been told “Crime is down! Crime is down!” And then the FBI try to quietly say by stealth editing its web site that the 2022 crime statistics had been revised. Instead of a 2.1% drop; there had been a 4.5% increase. Who covered the revision? The Tampa Free Press, the New York Post, Straight Arrow News, Washington Examiner, and a few others. I saw the story via Real Clear Investigations. Like the Washington Post says, democracy dies in darkness! 

To no one’s surprise, Gallup reported that the American public’s trust in news media and Congress has hit an all-time low. But for the first time, trust in media has slipped below that for Congress.

 

Another inconvenient story: America’s fastest-growing criminal enterprise. Madeleine Rowley at The Free Press looks at sex trafficking, especially of women and children, fueled by the massive influx of immigrants via the southern border.

 

More Good Reads

 

Israel

 

The Hundred-Year Holy War – Eli Lake at The Free Press.

 

Sinwar’s Death Will Hasten the End of the War – Matti Friedman at The Free Press. 

 

Art

 

St. Vincent: The acclaim is excessive but the talent undeniable – D.H. Robinson at The Critic Magazine.

 

An author’s waking nightmare: Van Dyck dreaming and color proofs of a shadowy masterwork – Bendor Grosvenor at The Art Newspaper.

 

Life and Culture

 

Why I Brought My Toddler to Watch SpaceX’s Flying Skyscraper – Tim Urban at The Free Press. 

 

We Are in Need of Renaissance People – Victor Davis Hanson at The Free Press.

 

On “Public-Private Partnership” – N.S. Lyons at The Upheaval. 

 

Poetry

 

Early Morning Train – Paul Wittenberger at Paul’s Substack.

 

Parting Gifts – Benjamin Myers at First Things Magazine.

 

I Drank Alone, ‘Neath the Spheres – Jared Gilbert at Frivolous Quill.

 

What is it Like? – poem by David Whyte.

 

Faith

 

In Unfriendly Territory: The Bible on Social Media – Rebekah Matt at Great and Noble Tasks.

 

Why Do People Deconstruct? Beware the Grand Theories – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition. 

 

A Key Discipline: Observe Without Judgment – Tim Challies.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Euripides’ Lost Plays – Alexander Lee at History Today.

 

The Stranger Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

T.S. Eliot: Hope Beyond the Waste Land – Haylee Wuensche at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Wheeler Catlett’s Love Beyond Organization in Wendell Berry’s “Fidelity” – Isaac Wood at Front Porch Republic.

 

The Other Side of the Keyhole: Russell Kirk’s Ghost Stories – Robert Woods at The Imagintive Conservative.

 

British Stuff

 

The Dead Man in Clerkenwell – Spitalfields Life.

 

A Beautiful Life – from the Netflix film

 Painting: Woman Reading, oil on canvas by Alfred Stevens (1823-1906). 

When I say

After Exodus 20:2-4 

When I say I am

the Lord your God,

have no other gods

before me, I’m serious,

deadly serious, for it is

a matter of life and

death. I am the Lord.

I am.

 

When I say you shall

have no other gods

before me, I mean none.

That includes politics,

work, celebrity,

self-beauty, animals,

smart phones, the number

of likes and followers,

public acclaim, money,

possessions, your house,

your garden, your car,

your dreams, your degrees,

your jewelry, your art,

your music, your hopes,

any of your created things,

any of your imagined things,

anything that you would

think you can replace me

with. I am a jealous God;

don’t think you can

replace me with anything.

Before you were,

I am.

 

Photograph by Michael Kroul via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Onesiphorus: courage in a time of persecution, part 1 – Michael A.G. Azad Haykin at Historia ecclesiastica. 

 

Letter #142: Will God Save Us? – Andrw Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

Blue Light – poem by Stella Nesanovich at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

 

Beginning of Months – poem by Cody Ilardo at Power & Glory.

 

Rain on the Window – poem by Seth Lewis.