Poets and Poems: Angela Alaimo O’Donnell and “The View from Childhood”

We all have childhood and family stories, good ones, bad ones, and usually some of each. Childhood shapes us, helping us be the adults we eventually become. We learn things, directly and indirectly, by living in the families we have. 

In The View from Childhood: Poems, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell takes both a candid and loving look at her Italian Catholic immigrant family. It’s a loving look, one that includes thankfulness to her elder siblings for introducing her to serious poetry (she says she originally wanted to be an opera singer). But like all families, there are things you don’t want to learn and prefer not to see. But they’re there, and you learn to come to terms with them. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Orthodoxy – poem by Scott Cairns at The Rabbit Room.

 

Praise Song for My Mother – Andrea Potos at Every Day Poems.

 

The Charge of the Light Brigade – poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson at Every Day Poems.

“A Summer Shadow” by H.L. Marsay

The summer is unusually and rather miserably hot for York in northern England. Detective Chief Inspector John Shadow of the York Police is attending a cricket game. Cricket happens to be about the only sport he enjoys watching. And being outside has the advantage of catching whatever cool breezes might unexpectedly arise. His detective sergeant, Jimmy Chang, is there as well. 

And the during a break in the game, the elderly man who’d been serving as scorekeeper is discovered dead in the scorekeeper’s shed. And rather gruesomely murdered, in fact. At first glance, Shadow wonders who could possibly have wanted to kill an elderly man who was simply keeping score.

 

 H L Marsay

As Shadow and Chang will learn in A Summer Shadow, the ninth DCI John Shadow mystery by H L Marsay, the list of suspects is longer than one might initially think. It turns out that the man, a retired city planning officer, had something of a habit of expecting bribes from developers, and then, after retirement, expecting payment from people he was blackmailing. It almost becomes a case of who isn’t on the list of suspects.

 

It’s a fast-paced, entertaining story, with enough twists and turns to keep a slalom skier on constant alert. The case takes on an entirely different turn when a skeleton is discovered in the basement of the former newspaper building – and it might possibly be related to the death of the cricket scorekeeper.

 

A member of the Crime Writers Association, Marsay lives with her family in the city of York in England. She’s also published The Secrets of Hartwell trilogy and The Lady in Blue mysteries. 

 

A Summer Shadow shares a number of characteristics with its eight predecessors – a DCI who is curmudgeonly on a good day, an irrepressible detective sergeant who keeps his bubbly charm intact no matter what his boss throws at him, and a stop at one if not several York restaurants. It’s great fun.

 

Related: 

A Long Shadow by H L Marsay.

A Viking’s Shadow by H L Marsay.

A Ghostly Shadow by H L Marsay.

 A Roman Shadow by H.L. Marsay.

A Forgotten Shadow by H L Marsay.

A Christmas Shadow by H L Marsay.

A Stolen Shadow by H.L. Marsay.

A Saxon Shadow by H L Marsay.

Betrayal at the Old Hall by H L Marsay.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Calvin Coolidge, Christianity, & the American Founding – Nathaniel Urban at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Why did police handcuff Henry Nowak? – Andrew Tettenborn at The Spectator.

 

Soiled Work – Adam Gustine at Comment Magazine.

 

Ground Zero in the Reading Crisis – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Whistler in Wapping – Spitalfields Life.

The tongue as metaphor

After James 3:1-12 

Of all the works of man,

none is so powerful as

the tongue. It does

great good, and it does

great harm. If we teach,

we must remember

it is the tongue which

makes us stumble. It

guides the whole person,

like the bit in the horse’s

mouth, like the rudder

of a ship, like the fire

in the forest, the fire

that provides heat 

in the cold and destruction

among the trees and brush.

The tongue can be tamed,

but only as an act of God;

none of us can tame

our tongues.

 

Photograph by Izzy Park via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Our Mother-tongue is Live: A Sonnet for Pentecost – Malcolm Guite.

 

Steve McQueen, born again, set free – Patrick Luscri. 

 

Even Now, God Can Rescue Your Prodigal – Jill Noble at Desiring God.

Saturday Good Reads - May 23, 2026

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were political enemies, and often bitter ones at times. After Jefferson left the presidency in early 1809, he and Adams began a correspondence that, while it didn’t heal all the old political wounds, it did create a mutual respect. But as Marianne Holdzkom at the Conversation points out, they still disagreed about the American Revolution’s meaning even as they lay dying. And they both died on July 4, 1826, the 50^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which is usually connected to Jefferson, but which Adams played a hidden hand in.

Charles Dickens was famous for his “night walks,” in which he roamed the streets of London when he couldn’t sleep. He discovered that his own restlessness was mirrored in the restlessness of London, and he came upon scenes and people which inspired some of his stories. In 1860, in his magazine All the Year Round, he published an account of his might walks. It was later included in his collection The Uncommercial Traveler.

 

Speaking of Dickens, Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review – not the biggest fan of Dickens – gave another of the man’s works a go. He read A Tale of Two Cities, and he discovered a hidden architecture within the story.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

Why Haldimand and Washington Fought Different Intelligence Wars – Ryan Wagner at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Preamble Before the Declaration – Jonathan Horn at The Free Press.

 

The People’s Declaration – Michael Auslin at The Patowmack Packet.

 

Captain James Wood, Diplomat – Eric Sterner at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Benjamin Franklin and the Franco-American Alliance – Keli Holt at Just Enough History.

 

Writing and Literature

 

To vex the world: Jonathan Swift’s Frustrated Humor – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

American Stuff

 

Battle of Antietam: Clash in the Cornfield – Michael Haskew at Warfare History Network.

 

News Media

 

A Miscarriage of Journalism at The New York Times – Roy Altman at The Free Press.

 

Faith

 

A Veil Before the Eyes of the Enemy: On Tolkien, Foolishness, and the Ordinary Means of Grace – Caleb Wait at Modern Reformation.

 

Life and Culture

 

Some Conservative Thoughts on the Left of Today – Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

British Stuff

 

Museums in England largely oppose proposal to charge admission for foreign tourists – Gareth Harris at The Art Newspaper.

 

Poetry

 

“Ode to the Confederate Dead,” poem by Allen Tate – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

There Is a Fountain – The Village Chapel Worship

Painting: Reading Girl, oil on canvas by Franz Eybl (1806-1880).

Abraham and Rahab

After James 2:14-26 

The writer cites

two examples

of faith with works:

first, Abraham,

who demonstrated

he would give up

what was most

precious if that’s

what God asked;

and Rahab, who

hid the spies,

risking arrest

and death if 

they were found. 

One would 

sacrifice his son,

the other would

sacrifice her

freedom and life.

Both showed faith 

in action; both

showed faith

plus works.

 

Photograph by Gabriel Lamza via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“None Other Lamb,” poem by Christina Rossetti – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

The Trouble Underneath – Seth Lewis.

 

One Step Becomes a Three-Day Walk – Timarie Friesen.

I Am Haunted by the Civil War

I grew up in the Deep South of the 1950s and 1960s. Social change wasn’t only in the air; it was in the streets and, more importantly, in the city buses, the dime store lunch counter, and the public schools. The Civil War had ended a century before, but it seemed like it was still being fought in the civil rights battles that competed for newspaper space with the growing war in Vietnam. 

The school board of Jefferson Parish in suburban New Orleans, anticipating the racial integration of schools, had segregated the high school student populations by gender – boys went to one school, girls to another. The first year of integration saw riots, fights, and protests, the more violent ones at the boys’ high school but including the girls’ school to a lesser degree. Federal marshals became an in-school presence.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“The Graduate Leaving College,” poem by George Moses Horton – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“The Old Swimmin’ Hole,” poem by James Whitcomb Riley – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

The Hawthorn – poem by David Whyte.

 

“On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness,” poem by Arthur Guiterman – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"To Those Who Speak" by Luke Adam Hawker

Luke Adam Hawker is a designer who made the leap to full-time art in 2015. His background is architecture and design, and in his art, he works to connect places and people. His limited-edition prints can be found at several locations in London, including the Royal Opera House, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Old Royal Naval College, and Battersea Power Station. 

Hawker has also published three books. Together (2021) is a graphic novel that turned into a surprise bestseller. The Last Tree: A Seed of Hope (2023) is a fable about a world without trees. This year, he published To Those Who Speak, a much more personal story that’s less a story and more of a non-fictional account with quiet, profound illustrations. 

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

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Ceci n’est pas un Monet – Spencer Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

What AI Can’t Know – John Horvat at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Brexit is not the cause of Britain’s woes – James Piereson at The New Criterion.

 

Gratitude, Not Glory: Why Lincoln Rejected Triumph at Gettysburg – Andrew Lang at The Coolidge Review.

Poets and Poems: Ayala Zarfijian and “A Corner in the World”

“The war endures in you,” writes poet Ayala Zarfjian, “It lingers in your capillaries, / in your arteries, / in your veins. / The war is a river that bridges the past to the present.”  The war she’s speaking about is World War II and the part of the war that made it unlike any other – the Holocaust. If you’re Jewish, the Holocaust is not something that’s ever over. 

That’s the theme that threads through every poem in Zarfjian’s collection A Corner in the World. She wrote the poems specifically for her father, who survived the Holocaust while most of the family perished. Zarfjian has written them so that the stories they tell, and the people they’re about, will not be forgotten, that the Holocaust itself will not be written off as someone’s crazy conspiracy theory but the real destruction of people, millions of people, that tragically, horribly happened.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

An Overness – poem by Anna Friedrich at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Eve Letter: Home Economics – poem by Kathryn Weld at Every Day Poems.

 

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” poem by William Butler Yeats – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Vogue exploring – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

Some Monday Readings - May 18, 2026

A Realist Outline of History – Joseph Woodard at The Imaginative Conservative. 

Why Read? Reading, print culture & liberal democracy – Roosevelt Montas at Commonweal Magazine.

 

God vs. Machine: How to Handle the Rise of Religious Objections to AI in the Workplace – Kit Eaton at Inc. Magazine.

 

David Copperfield: A Hero Beside the Point – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

“Octopus’s Garden” – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: Lord Byron’s Memoirs – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Case Study: 80-Year-Old Author Crushes It! – Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur.

 

“Language matters: On the media’s anti-American animus – The New Criterion.

 

Fuel for Another Disappointment – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Consider the Small Town – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

 

St. Irenaeus on Christian Memory & Tradition – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

Painting: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824).

What did they see?

After James 2:14-26 

I wonder about

the early days,

when followers

of the Way were

growing in number,

growing in geography,

fueled by the Spirit.

But what did 

the people around

them see? Preachers

of philosophies and

new things and 

new gods were 

a dime a dozen;

they were all over

the culture. What

made the Way 

different? It was

because of what

these believers

did, how they

cared for the

the widows,

the orphans,

the rejected,

the sick, the poor,

the shunned – 

all those people

ignored and

left as road kill

by the world.

People watched,

they saw, they

understood, they

acted, wanting

that for themselves.

 

Photograph by Tahamie Farooqui via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

A Sonnet for Ascension Day – Malcolm Guite.

 

Won’t Somebody Think of (Having the) Children – Stephen McAlpine.

 

Saturday Good Reads – May 16, 2026

When the American Revolution started, a group not insignificant in numbers and influence was not impressed. They were known as the Loyalists, and as Kimberly Nath at The Conversation writes, they paid a steep price for their allegiance to Britain. At the same publication, Amanda Moniz writes about an unintended effect of the American Revolution. The conflict which led to American political independence also transformed philanthropy, not only in America but in Britain as well. 

It’s one of the most famous of American short stories. A young couple give up their most treasured possessions for each other. John Savoie at Literary Matters writes that the biblical allusions in “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry is far more present than the story’s title.

 

In 1862, Nathaniel Hawthorne found himself almost unable to write. He was distracted by the growing conflict we now call the Civil War. So, he went to Washington, D.C., to observe what was happening from one of the two epicenters of the conflict. Richard Smith at Emerging Civil War has the story.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

Exhibitions marking 250^th anniversary of the US open in New York – J. Cabelle Ahn at The Art Newspaper.

 

Why 1776? – J.M. McDonald at Emerging Revolutionary War Era. 

 

The Limits of a Propositional Nation – Glen Sproviero at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The Death of Colonel Christopher Greene at Pine’s Bridge, May 1781 – Bjorn Bruckshaw at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Escape from Yorktown – Nicholas Marsella at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Part of the Declaration Nobody Reads – Eli Lake at The Free Press.

 

General Benedict Arnold and the Battle of Saratoga – Keli Holt at Just Enough History.

 

Writing and Literature

 

In Marce Catlett, Wendell Berry Remembers for All of Us – Robert Ordway at Front Porch Republic.

 

Bookish Diversions: How the Pros Do It – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

The Midlist, the Middlemen and the Future of American Literature – Nadya Williams at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Consider the Sister – Lindsey Adler at The Small Bow on David Foster Wallace.

 

American Stuff

 

Lincoln’s Illegal Arrests – Joseph Connor at American Heritage.

 

Life and Culture

 

Beyond the Precipice – Michael Oren at Clarity.

 

Throwback Thursday: Dealing with Crime – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

Faith

 

“Christ Hath a Garden,” hymn by Isaac Watts – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

The Dangerous Days Past Middle Age – Michelle Morin at Desiring God.

 

Poetry

 

“Dream Song,” poem by Walter de la Mare – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

To Tell It How It Is – Christian Lingner at New Verse Review.

 

Nothing But the Blood – Tommee Profitt x Jeremy Rosado

 

Painting: In the Scriptorium, oil on canvas by Friedrich Hornemann (1813-1890). 

Works! Faith!

After James 2:14-26 

Faith alone saves,

but it is faith with

works that justifies.

Works alone do not 

save; they must be

attended and enveloped

by faith. Both matter.

Both are necessary.

Faith without works

is dead. Works without

faith will not save you.

Works come from faith,

not to earn God’s favor,

but to demonstrate 

God’s power to transform.

Works with faith changes

the won who does them 

as much as the one who

receives.

 

Photograph by Billy Pasco via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“The Central Moment,” poem by A.F. Moritz – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

The Best Way to Resist Temptation – Seth Lewis.

 

Heart of the Verse: Psalm 34:18 – Jason Clark at This is Jason.

 

Dimensions – Patrick Luscri.

Poets and Poems: Julia Alvarez and :Visitations

Have you ever read a poetry collection that catapults you back three decades? 

Another lifetime ago (35 years, to be exact), I wrote book reviews for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It was an offshoot from a graduate seminar on the Latin American novel. I had more than liked the assigned readings; I’d discovered a world that went beyond the one Latin American novel I’d previously read, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

 

At the time I started writing book reviews, publishing was in the midst of a Latin American boomlet, an echo of the original “boom” in the 1960s and 1970s. After an introductory conversation, the newspaper’s book editor began routing any book relating to Latin America, Spain, and Hispanic culture in the United States. 

 

One of the books I reviewed was How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) by writer and poet Julia Alvarez. It’s a story about four sisters in the Dominican Republic whose father is forced to flee the Trujillo regime. Her parents return to New York City, becoming with their children people of two cultures. It’s a novel, but it’s drawn from Alvarez’s own family history.

 

Thirty-five years later, I picked up her new poetry collection, Visitations: Poems. And, suddenly, I was back in 1991, reading How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“Shakespeare,” poem by Matthew Arnold – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Blue sky – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Properties of a Good Greyhound,” poem by Dame Juliana Berners – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

When You Hit a Writing Drought

Since the time I was a reporter for my college newspaper, longer ago than I care to admit, writing has been an integral part of my life. I’ve been a reporter, editor, newsletter editor, speechwriter, public relations manager, novelist, short story writer, non-fiction book author, blogger, book reviewer, essayist, poet, and more. Writing has been central in every job I held and every employer I worked for. 

I never had time for writer’s block. A speech had to be written. News releases had deadlines. Contracts had to be met. Employers had expectations (or demands, often unreasonable). I might have a project where I had to pause to understand the challenge fully, but I’d figure out a way through it.

 

What I’ve had for the last year isn’t writer’s block. I still blog, write book reviews, and even write a few short stories. But the flood of writing that’s carried me for 50-plus years has slowed considerably. It’s less of a block and more of a “moderate drought.”

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

 

Photograph by Glenn Carstens-Peters via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Micro Monday #56: Cuba, Missouri, 1961 – short fiction by Tom Darin Liskey at Fictive Dream.

 

Murders for May – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

‘Institutional Poverty’ in Charles Dickens and Barbara Kingsolver – Susan Bruxvoort Lipscomb at Mere Orthodoxy.

Poets and Poems: Fred Chappell at "Ever After"

I came to the writing of Fred Chappell (1936-2024) through his novels. A friend at work, who’d grown up in the mountains of West Virginia, recommended I read I Am One of You Forever. It’s set where most of Chappell’s novels are set – the mountains of western North Carolina. And it’s a wonder. Over the years, I read several of his other novels and story collections. Superficially, Chappell might sound like North Carolina’s answer to Kentucky’s Wendell Berry. Even though they’re approximate contemporaries writing about family, heritage, and place, they’re very different kinds of writers. 

 

It was only in 2015 that I discovered how Chappell had first made his name – through poetry. I happened across a used copy of his 2000 collection, River: A Poem. It’s one poem with 11 divisions, and it tells a story, the story of his grandparents. It’s aptly named; reading it is like wading through a river of memory and family history. 

 

As it turns out that River is one of some 18 collections of poetry that Chappell published between 1971 and 2009. In fact, he published more poetry volumes than works of fiction. In 2024, the year of his death, LSU Press published his last collection, Ever After: Poems.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Fray Alonso in La Florida, A.D. 1587 – Coldy Ilardo at Power & Glory.

 

Morning sticks – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Alice in the Looking Glass,” poem by A.E. Stallings – Joseph Bottum and Adam Roberts at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Apple of Granada – Hedy Habra at Every Day Poems. 

Around Three in the After – Laura Wifler at Rabbit Room Poetry.