Poets and Poems: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and "The Unfolding"

In August of 2021, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer was in Georgia with her husband, daughter, and son, helping her parents move into a retirement home. Two nights later, her 19-year-old son committed suicide. Later that year, her father died of kidney failure. Two close family deaths, close together. One inexplicable. One understandable, but still a loss. 

Trommer’s The Unfolding isn’t about the stages of grief. I don’t think that kind of loss can have stages, which imply gradually getting over it, coming to terms, and acceptance. Suicide doesn’t work like that.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

Belonging to the Garden – Matt Miller at Front Porch Republic.

 

At St Botolph Without Aldgate – A London Inheritance via Spitalfields Life.

 

Little Christmas Carol – James Witmer at Story Warren.

 

A Single Word – Laura Lynn Brown at Every Day Poems.

 

Hybrid Publishing is a Viable Option – Vin Zandri at The New Daily Journal.

"The Grey Wolf" by Louise Penny

It starts as a series of seemingly unrelated events. Two unrelated people are killed, hundreds of kilometers apart, in the exact same execution style. An elderly visitor leaves a bottle of terrible-tasting liqueur at the bistro in Three Pines. An old coat belonging to Armand Gamache, head of Homicide for Quebec’s Surete, is stolen from his Montreal apartment, and then returned. In a pocket is a list of spices, and a single word – water. Then a young man, an activist for an environmental group, meets with Gamache – and run over in a car inches away from Gamache himself. The driver is later founded murdered. 

Gamache and his team, Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste, will soon learn that they are dealing with a planned terrorist act, designed to destabilize the government, institute a dictatorship, and involving officials at almost the very top of Canada’s political leadership. They will travel to remote monasteries, the Vatican, Washington, D.C., and a remote fishing village in Labrador, desperately trying to determine what’s planned and when.

 

Louise Penny

The Grey Wolf is the 19^th novel in the Armand Gamache series by Canadian author Louise Penny. It’s a gripping, creative fast-paced story, with an ending that keeps the reader on the edge of his seat to the very end. And while it does its predecessor novels proud, very little of the story involves Gamache’s home village of Three Pines and its collection of unusual residents. On the plus side, it avoids the trap its predecessor novel, A World of Curiosities, fell into, when we were given a bit too much of the author’s personal politics.

 

What it does have, however, is the promise of the next installment in the series. Because with a grey wolf, there is a black wolf.

 

Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache novels have been bestsellers in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries. She’s received numerous awards, including a Crime Writers Association Dagger Award and the Agatha Award, and she’s been a finalist for the Edgar Award. In 2017, she received the Order of Canada for her contributions to Canadian culture. She lives near Montreal. 

 

Related:

 

My review of Kingdom of the Blind.

 

My review of Glass Houses.

 

My review of A Great Reckoning.

 

My review of The Long Way Home.

 

My review of How the Light Gets In.

 

My review of The Beautiful Mystery.

 

My review of The Hangman.

 

My review of Penny’s A Trick of the Light.

 

My review of Penny’s A Fatal Grace.

 

My review of Penny’s Still Life.

 

My review of Penny’s The Cruelest Month.

 

My review of Penny’s A Rule Against Murder.

 

My review of The Brutal Telling.

 

My review of Penny’s Bury Your Dead.

 

My review of A Better Man.

 

My review of All the Devils Are Here.

 

My review of The Madness of Crowds.

 

My review of A World of Curiosities.

 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Patron Subjects: Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings? – Jean Strouse at The American Scholar.

 

Fading Light – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.

 

Monumental painting in SLAM’s collection only known survivor of its kind – St. Louis Art Museum. 

 

Bah Humbug: The Crime of Loneliness in Holiday Stories – Lindy Ryan at CrimeReads.

 

The Outsized Impact of George Cukor’s “Gaslight” – Bonnie Kistler at CrimeReads.

Poets and Poems: Catherine Abbey Hodges and “Empty Me Full”

From the first poem in Empty Me Full, I had the distinct impression I had entered of series of successive dreams. I was about 10 poems in when I realized what it was – Catherine Abbey Hodges powerfully uses images to pull the reader to ask fundamental questions. Or is it questioning the fundamentals? 

A few images from the first poem of her new collections: a rising river, a time lapse of the night sky, the torso of heaven, mice nesting in a piano, the arch of a dying oak, a worm in the oak dreaming as it chews. The images come so fast that you’re moving through a metaphorical mist, knowing all the time you’re nearing something important.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Two people – poem and artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

The Red Chair – poem by Maurice Manning at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Daily, Under My Breath – poem by Katherine Whitcomb at Every Day Poems.

 

“The moon looked into my window,” poem by e.e. cummings – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Ekphrastic Poem Prompt: In the Lost House – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Remembrance Day Parade in Gettysburg – Patrick Young at The Reconstruction Era.

When Fiction Seems to Predict Fact

The Dancing Priest novels seem to be back in the fiction-becomes-fact business. 

Last week, after saying he would not resign, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby did, in fact, resign. This followed the release of the Makin Report, which documented the failings of the Church of England (COE) in a cover-up of an abuse scandal. The scandal went back to the 1980s when a barrister named John Smyth abused young teens at COE church camps, slipped out of England when it appeared the law was onto him, and went on to victimize more boys in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

 

Welby’s sin: he learned about the abuse in 2013 but failed to report it to authorities. Smyth could have been brought to justice at that time; he died in 2018.

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

Photograph by Ruth Gledhill via Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

The Ed Tech Revolution Has Failed – Jared Cooney Horvath at After Babel.

 

The Books You Come Back To – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

The Last Words of Alexei Navalny – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” short story by Ambrose Bierce – The Imaginative Conservative.

Why covet?

After Exodus 20:17 and Philippians 4:10-13 

Why covet anything

not yours? Why covet

what you don’t have?

Do you believe that

having what you don’t

will solve your problems,

promote your reputation,

make you happy, make

you fulfilled? Here’s

the secret: even getting

what you don’t have 

or want doesn’t work,

because it’s never

enough.

 

Secret, Part 2: In lack

and plenty, abundance

and need, be content,

because you can do

all things in hm who

strengthens you.

In all things,

be content.

 

“Coveting, at its heart, is character assassination of God.” – Clay Smith, sermon March 17, 2024.

 

Photograph by Fikry Anshor via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

A small change to help the Word really do its work – Stephen Kneale at Building Jerusalem.

 

Ten Correctable Mistakes We Make When Preaching and Teaching – Steve Burchett at Christian Communicators Worldwide.

 

Good Night, My Son: A Father’s Tribute Through Tragic Loss – Conrad Mbewe at Desiring God.

 

Saturday Good Reads - Nov. 16, 2024

In September, British author and journalist Douglas Murray spoke at The New Criterion’s sixth annual Circle Lecture. His subject was the phrase “banality of evil,” first used by political scientist and historian Hannah Arendt. Murray, who is known for saying exactly what he’s thinking and saying it with razor-sharp clarity, said the phrase has a problem: it is both a piece of lazy thinking and “built on a foundation that is fundamentally rotten.” It’s not the banality of evil we should consider, he says, but its profundity. 

At Front Porch Republic, Jesse Russell reviews James Matthew Wilson’s new poetry collection, St. Thomas and the Forbidden Birds. He has high praise indeed, saying Wilson “crafts a moving vision of everyday life in twenty-first century America.” 

It turns out that the most accurate political poll was the Real Clear Politics National Average, which was not a poll but an aggregator of polls. It's consistently done better than any individual poll, and it was trending toward the Republicans the week before the election. The New York Times had a Halloween surprise, attacking the poll aggregator as biased because it didn't "weight" the results. Wikipedia followed suit and actually removed the aggregator's listing. And guess what turned out to be the most accurate of the polls and aggregators? Yep, Real Clear Politics. Since the election, Wikipedia, that bastion of freedom of information, has quietly restored the deleted site. The Free Press has the story.

 

As long as I’ve been attending church, I’ve heard a lot about spiritual gifts – how to discern them, how to know which kind of gift you have, which ones applied in early church times and which ones still apply today. Tim Challies has an entirely different take on the subject, and describes the spiritual gift inventory he believes in.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

Children deserve Shakespeare, not teachers who promote ignorance – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Empty Words: Against Artificial Language – Matthew Miller at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Israel

 

Contextualized and Decontextualized: Israel’s Fight for Truth – Michael Oren at Clarity.

 

Faith

 

Christ versus Christianity: A Paradox There from the Beginning – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

The Harvest is Plentiful, and the Workers Won’ Stay – A Life Overseas.

 

British Stuff

 

The Church of England has to rebuild trust – Marcus Walker at The Critic Magazine.

 

Crowland Abbey – Annie Whitehead at Casting Light upon the Shadow.

 

Poetry

 

A Review of O in the Air: Poems by Maryann Corbett – Steve Knepper at New Verse Review.

 

Have you forgotten yet? – poem by Siegfried Sassoon at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“Poetry,” poem by Marianne Moore – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

American Stuff

 

Tales from the road: A visit to boyhood home of KIA soldier – John Banks at Civil War Blog.

 

How Helene Gave Way to ‘Hurricane Snafu’ in the Carolinas – James Varney, Real Clear Investigations.

 

News Media

 

How Podcasts Swayed the 2024 Election – Aiden McLaughlin at The Spectator.

 

History

 

Joan of Arc’s Grief – David Bannon at Front Porch Republic.

 

Scarlet Thread – Keith and Kristyn Getty and Zach Williams

Painting: Twilight: Interior (Reading by Lamplight), oil on canvas (1909) by George Clausen.

The false witness

After Exodus 20:16 

The false witness,

the liar, wreaks

reverberating havoc.

It does not matter

if the false witness

is on the campaign trail,

or the courtroom,

in the police report,

in the academic paper,

in the classroom,

in the marketplace, 

in the Ph.D. thesis,

in the pulpit or pew,

in the scientific study,

in the home.

False witness is

the acid eating

the bonds of love,

the bonds of community,

the bonds of trust.

It is the wind and water

eroding the foundation

of life, of our life.

Whether by omission

or commission, false

witness destroys until

itself is undone.

 

Photograph by Taras Chernus via Unsplash. Used by permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

The Leak – poem by Seth Lewis.

 

When the Blind See and the Seeing are Blind – Mitch Chase at Biblical Theology.

 

What is the Unpardonable Sin? (Matthew 12) – Dan Doriani at Crossway.

 

Great Gamble: The Failed Launch of Moby Dick – Jason Clark at This is the Day.

 

“Timor Mortis Conturbat Me,” poem by Anonymous – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"The Colour Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft and Sara Barkat

I’m a words guy. I’ve always been a words guy. Yep, I collected comic books, including Classics Illustrated, and I was an avid fan of Mad Magazine, the operating manual for adolescent boys from the 1950s to the 1970s. And, of course, there was television and movies. But still, I was a words guy – all through high school, studying journalism in college, and making a general career of words. 

The arrival of audiobooks and graphic books barely made a dent in my consciousness. Their fans are legion, but I was never among them, although I do enjoy my Kindle e-books (more words). But two things happening almost simultaneously pitched me headfirst into graphic books. First, a friend recommended a new book on the friendship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien called The Mythmakers. I ordered it because I implicitly trusted her judgment on books. When it arrived, I discovered it was a graphic book, combined both non-fiction and informed fiction. Reluctantly, I read it. Enthusiastically, I read it right to the end. I was blown away.

 

Almost within hours of my graphic book initiation, TS Poetry Press announced a graphic version of The Colour Out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), the famous writer of horror and gothic stories. Lovecraft’s original version was all text; this new edition was illustrated, and a bit more than illustrated, by Sara Barkat. 

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

Some Thursday Readings 

 

Triptychs: Interview with Poet Megan Merchant – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

How France uncovered the mystery of the forbidden photos of Nazi-occupied Paris – Eleanor Beardsley and Nick Spicer at NPR.

The Sweet Agony of Waiting

A publisher asks to see your full manuscript. You read it three more times, trying to eradicate all typos, missing words, unclear passages, and confusing lines. You attach it to a politely professional email, which you hope disguises what you’re experiencing in equal measure: hope, fear, and anxiety. 

You hit send.

 

And then you wait.

 

Waiting may be as much or more exhausting than the writing itself, but it is a fact of life in book publishing.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog. 

 

Photograph by David Taffett via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Samuel Pepys at St Olave’s – Spitalfields Life.

 

Meaning in Mystery: Why Noir Speaks in a Morally Ambiguous World – Adam Hill at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Mississippi Heat: Stops along the Vicksburg Campaign – Nathan Provost at Emerging Civil War.

 

“The Rejected Member’s Wife,” poem by Thomas Hardy – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poets and Poems: Robert McDowell and "Sweet Wolf"

Like most people, I love a good story. But I’m a sucker for good stories written in poetry. One of my favorite works to reread is Robin Robertson’s The Long Take, an entire noir novel written in poetic form. 

I hadn’t previously read poetry by Robert McDowell, so I closely read poet Chad Abushanab’s introduction to McDowell’s Sweet Wolf: Selected and New Poems. Two phrases leaped off the page at me – lyrical poetry and, even better, narrative poetry.

 

And I thought, “A storyteller!”

 

I was not to be disappointed. Not at all. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Unsung Shakespeare – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Prompt Celebration! The Colour Out of Space – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Sonnets for Michelangelo – 41 – Vittoria Colanna at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

That’s My Heart Right There – Willie Perdomo at Every Day Poets.

 

“First Time In,” poem by Ivor Gurney – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

"The Mythmakers” by John Hendrix

It was a Facebook post that did it. A fellow book lover recommended The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien by John Hendrix. I highly value her judgment and opinion, and I flipped over to Amazon, pulled up the book, glanced at the price, and ordered it. I went for the hardcover, because my friend’s description sounded like it would be a keeper. 

I didn’t read the details.

 

When the book arrived, I opened it up to discover it was a graphic work. It’s officially a graphic novel, but there’s enough actual statements by both Lewis and Tolkien (and fictional comments informed by what they said) to make The Mythmakers a blend of fiction, non-fiction, and graphic design.

 

I was not a fan of graphic novels. There’s nothing wrong with them, but I have never been seriously interested in them.

 

Until now.

 

The Mythmakers is a “knocked-it-out-of-the-ballpark” kind of work.

 

Almost reluctantly, I began to read, my lack of interest almost noticeable. Until it disappeared. And then I devoured it. 

 

Hendrix tells the story of how Lewis and Tolkien had World War I experience in common, how they met at Oxford, how they became friends, and how their friendship, or “fellowship,” as Hendrix describes it, transformed fantasy literature forever. With Lewis’s encouragement, Tolkien would likely have never published The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Because of pointed criticism by Tolkien, Lewis almost didn’t publish The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Their friendship grew and remained solid, until the years of World War II. And then, to the sorrow of both men, it grew strained. But they continued to support one another’s work.

 

The Mythmakers uses a journey of two fictional characters, a lion (shades of Aslan) and a wizard (shades of Gandalf), through the story of the friendship. And it works. It works beautifully. I laughed, I grinned, I nodded my head, and at one point I even choked up and wiped away tears. The book is that good. Yes, I knew the story of their friendship, but I hadn’t seen it visually portrayed in illustration like it is here.

 

And while The Mythmakers doesn’t make a major case out of it, it does agree with my own assessment after reading so much about both men: Lewis was the truer friend.

 

John Hendrix, the illustrated man

Hendrix has written and illustrated numerous books, including The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler, Drawing Magic: Discovering Yourself in a Sketchbook, Miracle Man: The Story of Jesus, and others. He’s also created a comics collection entitled The Holy Ghost: A Spirited Comic and produced illustrations for numerous comic books and publications. He was named Distinguished Educator in the Arts for 2024 by the Society of Illustrators and currently serves as the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art and the founding Chair of the MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture program at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. He lives with his family in suburban St. Louis (in a suburb so close to mine that we could be neighbors). 

 

The Mythmakers may be aimed at middle grade readers, but it offers a great deal to readers of all ages. And it helped me, or shoved me, away from my apathy about graphic novels.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Best – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

An Astronomer Was Able to Pinpoint the Mystery Location Depicted in a Van Gogh Masterpiece – Jackie Appel at Popular Mechanics.

 

All the Saints, and All the Ones They Leave Behind – Logan Hoffman at Plough Quarterly on Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin.

 

10 Composers to Listen to While Studying – Andrew Benson Brown at The Epoch Times.

 

The Pubs of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

Theft

After Exodus 20:15 and Luke 18:18-30 

It raises a question,

telling us not to steal,

the question being is it

really that simple? If

we don’t shoplift or

rob or burgle or take

what isn’t ours, that

fulfills the command,

right? Theft, however,

comes in many forms,

the most obvious being

the taking of something

we don’t own, something

physical. But there are

other things that can be

stolen, like credit for

something, a reputation

or good name. An opportunity.

A reward. A friend, A place.

A position. And more than

this, there is the theft 

of not giving, of ignoring

a need while having the means

to meet it, turning our faces

away as if we never saw it,

so it doesn’t exist. Remember:

thou shall not steal. Thou

shall not take what isn’t

yours. That shall not ignore

the need you can meet.

 

Photograph by De An Sun via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

“Queen-Anne’s Lace,” poem by William Carlos Williams – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Difficult, Possibly Unfixable Lot of Chronic Illness… in This Life – Jess Habib at The Gospel Coalition.

Saturday Good Reads - Nov. 9, 2024

As you can tell from often-included links here at Saturday Good Reads, I am a subscriber to The Free Press. It’s edited by former New York Times staffer Bari Weiss, who quit the Times when it was clear it had abandoned journalism, not unlike most of the legacy media (print and television). The Free Press still practices traditional journalism, ignores sacred cows, doesn’t make itself an extension of a political party, tackles serious and often underreported stories, and doesn’t think its most important audience is itself. Weiss was one of the journalists who reported on the Twitter files, when Elon Musk opened them up, and we all got to see just how much the major social media took their marching orders from the federal government. So, if you were a Free Press reader, the outcome of the Tuesday’s election was no surprise. 

As more information about the COVID pandemic makes its way into the public domain, we’re now seeing some of the damage that was done, how many dissident voices turned out to be correct, and how little of what was forced on us turned out to be based on science. Matt Taibbi at Racket News discovered that, despite the warnings of the head of the CDC and the President, there was no “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” William Briggs at Science Is Not the Answer considers what the panic did science.

 

Did you know that there’s an annual convention for the fans of Nancy Drew mysteries? Jadie Stillwell and Nicole Blackwell at Literary Hub attended one to find out what it was all about.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

A Warning About Having Children – Jessica Burke at Story Warren.

 

Donald and the Pincer: 'Why did this happen?' and other obvious questions – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Israel

 

Last Night’s Pogrom in Amsterdam – David de Bruijn at The Free Press.

 

Poetry

 

Cosy – Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Auden’s Island: The poet in the postwar era – Alan Jacobs at The Hedgehog Review.

 

“A Chubby-Cheeked, Shabby-Blazered Colossus.” How Dylan Thomas Influenced Generations of Poets – Dai George at Literary Hub.

 

“A Poet to His Baby Son,” poem by James Weldon Johnson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Origin Story – Kelly Belmonte at Kelly’s Scribbles.

 

Faith

 

Nadya Williams and the Good News – Jon Schaff at Front Porch Republic.

 

How to Pray After Election Day – John Pletcher at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

All Will Be Well – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

The Church’s Unsung Hero: The Sunday School Teacher – Trevis Wax t The Gospel Coalition.

 

British Stuff

 

Why was I the only reporter? On the sentencing of the Rotherham grooming gang – Charlie Peters at The Critic Magazine.

 

We Shall Fight in the Buttery: Oxford’s War 1939–1945 by Ashley Jackson – review by Nicholas Rankin at Literary Review.

 

Writing and Literature

 

A Name Nerd’s Guide to Agatha Christie – Naomi Kaye at CrimeReads.

 

B&N on Track to Open 60 Bookstores This Year – Jim Milliot at Publisher’s Weekly.

 

News Media 

 

The Game Really Is Up for the Mainstream Media (Just Like Last Time) – Stephen McAlpine.

 

Nah Neh Nah – Vaya Con Dios

 Painting: Portrait of a Man Readings, oil on canvas by Paul Kotlarevsky (1883-1950).

Five words

After Exodus 20:14 and Matthew 5:27-28 

A message telegraphed

in five words, miscroscoped

like so many messages

into summary simplicity,

meaning more than

its words say. That word,

adultery, means what it

says, its formal definition

of being unfaithful to the one

selected for you, the one 

you loved, the one who loved

you, the one provided to you

to come alongside to be one,

one flesh, the oneness pointing

to the kingdom.

 

And it means more, a synonym

for faithfulness in life, faithful

in all things, to all people,

faithful to your spouse,

your children, your family,

your parents, your friends,

your church, your work,

your society, your culture,

your God. An impossible

standard, only brought

to reality by the One.

 

Photograph by Clay Banks via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Four Years After Our Hardest Day – Tim Challies.

 

The School of Faith – When God’s Ways Are a Mystery – Sarah Walton at Set Apart.

 

The Flight from God, & a Flight into the Country – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Psalm 23 – Megan Willome.