Poets and Poems: Baruch November and “The Broken Heart is the Master Key”

More than 40 years ago, I discovered the stories and novels of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1991). I don’t remember how I came across his work, but I found myself reading stories about a culture that had largely vanished, not long before I was born. 

My understanding, if I had one of the Yiddish culture, had been shaped by a play that became a movie, Fiddler on the Roof, the story of Tevye, his wife Golda, and their daughters as they navigate the forces of modernism and anti-Semitism changing their lives. It’s set in the Jewish Pale of Settlement in Russia, around the turn of the 20^th century. And then I read Singer’s stories, which not only provided a richer context than the movie but also made the culture seem more real. As much as I enjoyed the movie, it was Singer’s stories that showed the reality without the Hollywood framing.

 

As I started reading The Broken Heart is the Master Key: Poems by Baruch November, I was almost catapulted back to Singer’s stories. November’s poems aren’t about a culture that had almost disappeared; instead, they reflect the echoes of that culture, two generations after Nazi Germany destroyed it in Poland, eastern Europe, and western Russia. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Doubly – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

How to Write a Found Poem – The Many Tools to Discover Treasure – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“A Psalm of Life,” poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“In Time of Plague,” poem by Thomas Nash – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Due to the Loss of Field Roast Artisan Grain Sausage – poem by L.L. Barkat at Every Day Poems.

 

Some Monday Readings - May 4, 2026

Tolkien, Chesterton, & the Sloth of England – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

Who Really Wrote Philip K. Dick’s Best Novel? – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Plato’s Cave and the Rise of the Highly Educated Radical – Jacob Howland at The Free Press.

 

The Greatest Sentence Ever Written? – Christ Mackowski at Emerging Revolutionary War Era. 

 

Celebrating 15 Years with the Kettle On – Every Day Poems – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Illustration: The Declaration of Independence. 

Partiality is a sin

After James 2:1-13 

Partiality: the tendency

we share to judge

and arrange people

in hierarchies for reasons

of which are legion.

Partiality: A sin.

Heaven’s cafeteria 

contains no reserved 

tables; so, too, should

the church. So, too,

should each of us.

Anything short

of impartiality is

a sin, our sin. 

The widow and

the orphan are 

just as vital 

to God’s kingdom 

as the rich merchant.

A neighbor is

a neighbor. Love him.

We are each and all

made in the image

of God, and he has

no partiality.

 

Photograph by Clay Banks via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Trial of Daily Bread – Greg Morse at Desiring God.

 

Preaching the Gospel to All – Barry York at Tabletalk Magazine.

 

Progressive Christianity’s Metamodern Posture – Jeffrey Beaupre at Modern Reformation.

 

The Sacred Christian Art of Martin Earle – Robert Lazu Kmita at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Saturday Good Reads – May 2, 2026

The closer we get to July 4, the flood of articles relating to America’s 250^th anniversary is becoming a tsunami. Emerging Revolutionary War Era is starting a new video series. One of America’s founders chronicled the beginning in sonnets. Benedict Arnold, whose name became synonymous with treason, was first a hero on more than one occasion. The U.S. Army Museum at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, is using “augmented reality” to bring the revolution to life. And there are more links below. 

I think I was 10 or 11 when I started stamp collecting, a hobby that lasted off and on right up to now. One stamp that also seemed financially out of reach was the very first one – the “Penny Black” issued by Great Britain in 1840. It’s still financially out of reach, at least for most of us. But it transformed how letters were mailed, and it made postal management possible on a national and international scale.

 

Some 40 years ago, when I was in a graduate seminar on the Latin American novel, I was trying to tackle Conversations in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa for my seminar research paper and oral presentation. About 100 pages in (it’s a 600-page novel), I almost gave up in despair. I couldn’t figure out what the story was about. Instead, I started over, but this time I briefly outlined each chapter. After the first five chapters, I cracked the code. It was actually a narrative of four interrelated stories, each one told in successive chapters. So the story in chapter one picked up in chapter five, nine, and so on. Maybe it was the work I put into it, but Conversation in the Cathedral remains one of my favorite novels. Henry Oliver at The Common Reader has some observations about difficult writing and difficult novels and poems. 

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

Money and the Making of the American Revolution – Kevin Diestelow at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Thoughts on Thoughts on Government – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Revolutionary Era. 

 

When Germany Invaded America – Jonathan Horn at The Free Press.

 

American Plans for a Fourth Invasion of East Florida – Him Piecuch at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

George Washington’s American Monarchy – Frank Prochaska at History Today.

 

American Stuff

 

The Myth of the American West – Elizabeth Stice at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Faith

 

From Sermon to Life: The Powerful Story of Lloyd-Jones and Stott’s Reconciliation – Peter Withowski.

 

How Jesus Saves from Identity Crisis – Justin Poythress at Digital Liturgies. 

 

Life and Culture

 

A Letter to Me – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Who Killed the Book Review? – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

A.A. Milne’s crossword-puzzle heart in the Hundred Acre Wood – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Why MacDonald’s Phantastes is Essential Reading – Annie Nardone at Anselm Society.

 

Forsaking Success: Wendell Berry’s Return to Kentucky – David Demaree at Front Porch Republic.

 

Poetry

 

Sweet Darkness – David Whyte.

 

“Blue Girls,” poem by John Crowe Ranson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy) – Jordan Kauflin

 Painting: Student Monk, oil on canvas (1890) by Eduard von Grutzner (1846-1925).

Radical inclusion

After James 2:1-13

 

We are the body

of Christ, equal

in his eyes, equal

in our own eyes,

the CEO no different

from the plumber,

the driver of the Mercedes

no different from

the driver of the rent-a-wreck.

 

Because he died for each

of us, because he died

for all of us, he leveled

the distinctions we love

to make. He destroyed

human hierarchies. He

erased the boundaries

we make for ourselves.

He removed partiality

from the church dictionary. 

Photograph by Alicia Quan via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Some Friday Readings

 

“Thou Who Dost Write Thy Name,” poem by Emma Latham – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Ordering the Church for Ordinary Growth – Jake Wright at For the Church.

 

The God of the Astronauts – Spencer Klavan at The New Jerusalem. 

When I Feared Who God Might Be – Lara d’Entremont at A Mother Held.

Poets and Poems: Sr. Sharon Hunter and “Light Before the Sun”

In her 2021 poetry collection, To Shatter Glass, Sr. Sharon Hunter explored childhood and memory, an interior pilgrimage toward understanding and forgiveness. Her new collection, Light Before the Sun, continues that pilgrimage, but it goes beyond, toward something that is more like acceptance and resolution.  

“Life is a stained-glass window,” she writes, using the metaphor to suggest light, color, and brokenness. She will be looking back before she looks forward, and she will the brokenness and dysfunction of the relationships that shaped a childhood, but she will also see the beauty and the purpose within it. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“After the Winter,” poem by Claude McKay – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Threads – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Epigram on Rough Roads,” poem by Robert Burns – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Some Wednesday Readings - April 29, 2026

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

Churchill and the Debt Battle That Made America a Superpower – Amity Shlaes at The Coolidge Review.

 

How Lewis and Clark Invented the Western – Craig Fehrman at Literary Hub.

 

Does reading do us any good? – Flora Champy at Aeon.

 

“Raining cats and dogs,” and other sayings with critters in them – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

I’m Not a Content Creator. I’m a Writer – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

The Mersey Funnel: Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral – Andrew Eberlin at Photos, photographers and photobooks. 

 

The Great Lost Gothic Novel of Italian Romanticism – Idara Crespi at CrimeReads.

Illustration: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. 

Poets and Poems: D.S. Martin and “The Role of the Moon”

Like many literary terms, “metaphysical poetry” was not something that the designated poets themselves invented. Instead, in the decades after they flourished, it was John Dryden (1631-1700) and Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) who popularized the description. They did not mean it as a compliment. Instead, they saw this group of 16^th century poets as writers who abandoned the rules of poetry and created something unnatural. It wasn’t until the 20^th century, led by figures like T.S. Eliot, that the metaphysical poets were seen as something important and creative in and of themselves. 

The five poets usually labeled as “metaphysical” were John Donne (1572-1631), Henry Vaughn (1621-1695), George Herbert (1593-1633), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), and Richard Crashaw (1613-1649). Sometimes a sixth is added, that of John Milton (1608-1674), but Milton doesn’t quite fit what the other five were about. One of Donne’s short poems has entered the collective consciousness, with its famous lines of “No man is an island” and “For whom the bell tolls.” 

 

Using conversational, everyday language, the metaphysical poets wrestled with big ideas. They often abandoned meter to delve deeper into what they were writing about. Three of them – Vaughn, Marvell, and Crashaw – lived and wrote through the tumultuous decades of the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, and the restoration of the Stuart monarchy. Crashaw was an exile who died in poverty. 

 

Poet, writer, and editor D.S. Martin finds the metaphysical poets to be inspirational and creative. And he’s published a poetry collection, The Role of the Moon, to pay tribute. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

It is a gift – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Butchering,” poem by Rhina Espaillat – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“Song of Myself,” poem by Walt Whitman – Every Day Poems.

 

Some Monday Readings - April 27, 2026

The Hunger for the Real – Christine Rosen at Commentary. 

Who is Blake Whiting? – Andrew Lawler at The American Scholar on the most productive historian in publishing.

 

The Secret of Shakespeare’s London House – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Review: The Wandering Army: The Campaigns That Transformed the British Way of War by Huw J. Davies – Ben Powers at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Agatha Christie & the metaphysics of murder – Theodore Dalrymple at The New Criterion.

 

The right-wing case for social media – Alex Yates at The Critic Magazine.

 

Create a System for Consistency – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

The American Way is Under Fire – The Editors at The Free Press.

Photograph: Agatha Christie at work.

We are the same

After James 2:1-13 

We are poor,

we are rich,

we are noble,

we are common,

we are black,

we are white,

we are the church.

 

We are educated,

we are illiterate,

we are titled,

we are born low,

we are uptown,

we are ghetto,

we are the church.

 

Within the church,

we are the same,

Within †he church,

we are equal.

Within the church,

we are equal before God.

We are the church.

 

Photograph by Sincerely Media via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Shooting Up by Jonathan Tepper – review by Tim Challies.

 

Surrender All, Not Some – Jessica B. at Desiring God.

 

Do I choose an old or a new church? – Murray Campbell at Murray’s Substack.

Saturday Good Reads – April 25, 2026

In the summer of 1776, Abigail Adams faced a hard tough decision for herself and her children. Years earlier, she’d watched her husband John make the same decision, and she had struggled with worry. Now it her turn, and the turn of her children. Her husband was in Philadelphia at the meeting that would lead to the Declaration of Independence. She finally made the decision for herself and the family – and got inoculated for smallpox.  

Some 37 letters written by the poet John Keats to his great love Fanny Brawne were owned by John Hay Whitney, a former U.S. ambassador to Britain. They were stolen in the 1980s. They had been in the possession of Brawne’s children after her death in 1865, and then they’d been sold at auction in 1885. At some point Whitney had purchased them. After the theft, they had disappeared for 40 years, until an unnamed individual tried to sell some rare books inherited from his grandfather. Included with the books were the Keats letters. And now they’re back with the family they were stolen from. 

 

My wife and I have a significant difference over reading William Faulkner. She had to read “The Bear” and “Barn Burning” in required English classes in college (I took English literature, so I missed Faulkner’s stories). She was not a fan. I came to Faulkner years later, via the authors of the Latin American Boom, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. They’d been heavily influenced by Faulkner, so I decided to read The Sound and the Fury. I was hooked, even with Faulkner’s tendency to often forget about punctuation. But One thing I never considered – some people find reading the author to be therapeutic.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

How Jefferson Crafted a Case Against Slavery – Cara Rogers Stevens at The Coolidge Review.

 

Paul Revere’s midnight ride unfolds in broad daylight – with a police escort – Michael Casey at Associated Press.

 

The French Connection – Jonathan Horn at The Free Press.

 

The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and the Battle for New York City – Keli Holt at Just Enough History.

 

The Capital has fallen! The Philadelphia Campaign from Brandywine to Valley Forge – Boom Goes the History via Spotify.

 

10 Books That Reframe the American Revolution – Sophia Hollander at History.

 

Faith

 

Why Did (almost) All of Christian Music Become Worship Music? – Andrew Osenga.

 

Why Religious Freedom Matters – Allen Hertzke at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

The Puritan Theology That Built America & the Church Abandoned – Virgil Walker at the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics.

 

Once and Future Saints – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Life and Culture

 

The timeless specter of Western decline – Victor Davis Hanson at The New Criterion.

 

Poetry

 

Hatley St. George, a poem for St. George’s Day – Malcolm Guite.

 

“Here,” poem by Rhina Espaillat – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Why Read Shakespeare? – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

He Arose – Tommee Profit and Phil Wickham

Painting: Woman Reading Newspaper, oil on canvas by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916).

Worthless religion

After James 1:26-29 

A definition

of religion:

to visit orphans

and widows

in affliction.

Beyond that:

keep unstained

from the world,

If you can’t

control your

tongue, you’re

deceiving yourself

about your faith;

it’s worthless. 

Your tongue 

speaks from

your heart, so

guard your heart

and bridle 

your tongue.

 

Photograph by the blowup via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“Dwelling,” poem by Nellie deVries – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

The Fundamentals of the Faith: Why Creeds & Catechisms Still Matter – Jonathan Shirk at Gentle Reformation.

 

Searching for a Sign – Seth Lewis.

 

A Mundane Life Is a Courageous Life – Alan Noble at The Gospel Coalition.

I Grew Up in "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

I was sitting in a graduate seminar called “The Nature of Story.” About 20 of us, all in a Master of Liberal Arts program, sat at tables gathered in a U-configuration. We were discussing the first reading assignment, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  

This was not your typical graduate seminar. The program was designed for people who’d been out of college for a while, and we ranged in age from 30s to 70s. I was 35 at the time – and the youngest in the class. Professors tended to love these classes, and the university had a waiting list of teachers wanting to have a course in the program. We were not the kind of students they were used to; we’d all had life experiences, work experiences, and we tended to challenge the professor (and each other) more than not. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“Prophecy,” poem by Elinor Wylie – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Lost Federico Garcia Lorca verse discovered 93 years after it was written – Sam Jones at The Guardian.

 

Ten Years Later – poem by David Whyte.

 

“George, Who Played with a Dangerous Toy, and Suffered a Catastrophe of Considerable Dimensions,” poem by Hillaire Belloc – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

The Christmas Solo – my new story at Cultivating Oaks Press

I have a new story at Cultivating Oaks Press. Entitled “The Christmas Solo,” it’s a tale of a man floundering after a marriage disaster who finds his way back with a Christmas song.  

It’s inspired by a song that has a short but strange history on YouTube, of all places. Early last October, a suggested video showed up on my YouTube page. Because it used a photo of the singer Josh Groban, I thought it was a new song by him. It was called “Light of Heaven,” and after listening to it a couple of times, I realized it sounded like Groban singing but wasn’t. Then I ask myself, what is this? Something done with an AI program? Identity theft? But if it was on YouTube, shouldn’t it have been vetted or approved with a new channel?

 

There were a number of similar videos, most using Groban’s picture and the voice sounding like Groban’s, but not quite his. A few other videos used other well-known singers like Rihanna. 

 

But I liked “Light of Heaven.” I’d listen to it while I did my periodic walks. Slowly, as I listened, a story began to shape itself in my mind. A song about the Nativity could become a way of redemption for a broken man. 

 

That’s the story I wrote for Cultivating Oaks Press. 

 

I had continued to listen to “Light of Heaven” on YouTube until this past weekend. It was still available on Saturday. On Sunday, clicking on the link brought this message: “Video unavailable. This video has been removed due to a contractual obligation with a music licensor.” Not only had the video vanished, but its channel, along with all the other songs, was gone as well.

 

It’s a story based on a song that became a ghost. All that’s really left of the song is this story. 

 

Photograph by Tom Allport via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Wisdom through the awful grace of God – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

The Adams Book Club: An Introduction – Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Archaeologists stunned to find Homer’s Iliad inside ancient Egyptian mummy – Vishwam Sankaran at The Independent. 

 

Vagabondia – Spitalfields Life.

Poets and Poems: Catherine Lawton and “Where All Things Meet, Mirror & Mingle”

Faith poetry has a long history, extending back at least to the Psalms of the Old Testament of the Bible and likely even earlier. What’s almost curious, but understandable, is how contemporary poetry has separated, largely if not entirely, into secular and religious streams. It’s a mirror of the culture at large, but not everyone mimics that mirror. 

But not every poet has followed that divergence. Some take a more holistic approach, integrating all of life in their poetry. One of those poets is Catherine Lawton. 

 

Lawton is an author, essayist, and a poet. She’s published numerous books, including fiction, memoirs, non-fiction works like Write and Publish Organically, and poetry collections such as Glimpses of Glory. Her newest poetry collection, Where All Things Meet, Mirror & Mingle, reinforce her recurring poetic theme of life and faith as a collective whole

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

At the typewriter – poem by Amelia Friedline at Innocence Abroad.

 

“The Scholars,” poem by William Butler Yeats – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Hair on Fire at the Church Lady’s Brunch – Renee Emerson at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Ars Poetica – poem by Megan Willome at Every Day Poems.