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.

Some Monday Readings - May 11, 2026

Revolting England – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Not-so-bookish thoughts about book clubs – Kelly Belmonte at Bandersnatch Books.

 

Serious Reading Was Always a Minority Sport – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Back When the Pulitzer Meant Something – Liel Leibovitz at The Free Press.

 

When You Hear Crickets – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

The Spitalfields Roman Woman – Spitalfields Life.

 

The Royal Festival Hall at 75 – A London Inheritance.

 

The Gratitude Shift – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

 

Photograph by Clay Banks via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The mission

After Matthew 16:21-30 

He explains the mission,

building his church, and

then he amplifies it,

over time, outlining

the story of what was

to come: to go

to Jerusalem; to suffer

at the hands of the elites,

the elders, the priests,

the scribes; to die; to be

raised. Peter, ever ready

to speak, often without

thinking, rebukes him:

it will never happen,

implying they will

rally to his defense

and protect him. Peter

is rebuked, this rock

upon which the church

will be built, called

a hindrance preoccupied

with the ways of man,

not God.

 

Photograph by Luke Miller via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Sunday Style and the Devil’s Beat – Andrew Osenga.

 

Mom, You’re Amazing. Here’s Why – Grace Thomas at Gracenotes.

 

Motherhood is Fun – Nadya Williams at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Missions Will Draw Out the Worst in You – Brett Rahl at Desiring God.

Saturday Good Reads - May 9, 2026

Many of us grew up reciting “Listen, my children, and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” Those opening lines of the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and what followed became our understanding of the famous and mythic ride. But as the Smithsonian Magazine points out, Paul Revere had another race, now forgotten, to secure government documents, of all things.  

Ray Bradbury is famous for the novel Fahrenheit 451 and stories like The Martian Chronicles. He also believed in freedom of speech and fought censorship. Bradley Birzer writes at Modern Age that Bradbury should be seen as an advocate of freedom, not ideology. Speaking of freedom, Birzer himself just published a new book this past week, The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty.

 

Randy Alcorn has a post about heaven, and it’s an intriguing one. He writes that many believe in eight common myths, and that’s all they are, myths.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

Before 1776, There Was Rhode Island – Bjorn Bruckshaw at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

George Washington Crosses the Delaware – Keli Holt at Just Enough History. 

 

The Odyssey and Irrelevance of John Adams – Kevin Diestelow at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

A Naval Battle off Wilmington, DE, May 8, 1776 – Eric Sterner at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Most Powerful Words You’ll Ever Write Change You First – Jana Carlson.

 

Poetry

 

On Nostalgia: Ever Cleaner, Ever More Pillowy – Boris Dralyuk at Poetry Magazine.

 

“Home Thoughts,” from Abroad,” poem by Robert Browning – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Trees – poem by David Whyte.

 

“Mock Panegyric on a Young Friend,” poem by Jane Austen – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Wrong Kind of Black Poet – Ernest Jesuyemi at Compact.

 

‘A Small Rebellion Against the Machine’ – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review interviews poet Seth Wieck.

 

Why Don’t People Like Poetry? – Daniel Cowper at New Verse Review.

 

Faith

 

Why AI Will Not Replace Human Love – Elena Streett at Front Porch Republic.

 

British Stuff

 

‘A remarkable time capsule’: The enchanting history of Oxford University’s 750-year-old medieval library – Christian Kriticos at BBC.

 

Life and Culture

 

How the Far Left Tapped into a Money Machine – Roy Teixiera at The Free Press.

 

Nobody Teaches Arithmetic Anymore – Dan Murphy at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

News Media

 

Substack vs. Twitter – Competitors or Complementary? – Yuri Bezmenov at How to Subvert Subversion.

 

What An Awesome God – Phil Wickham

 

Painting: Reading Woman, oil on canvas by Jacques-Emile Blanche (1861-1942), Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

The rock

After Matthew 16:16-20 

What do the people

say, he asked, who

do the people say 

I am? Perfunctory

and expected answers:

John the Baptist,

Elijah, Jeremiah,

a prophet like them,

that’s what the people

say. He makes it personal:

What about you? Who

do you say I am? 

Simon Peter, ever large

and ever in charge,

answers, the Christ,

the son of the living God.

He responds: blessed

are you, Upon you,

upon this rock, 

I will build my church.

 

Photograph by Zoltan Tasi via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

The One Walking in the Fog Beside Us – Lara d’Entremont at A Mother Held.

 

Let the Lord Handle It – Chris Martin at FYI.

 

“Awake, Arise,” hymn by Christopher Smart – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

The Ingredients of a Petal – poem by Seth Lewis.

 

Milking a Two-Bucket Cow – Linda Egenes at Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices.

Five Ways to Research Your Family History

The writing of my historical novel Brookhaven took about 150 years. 

I must have seen something like this before, but I can’t recall a specific example. Many novels include an acknowledgement page, cutting the people who helped or inspired the author. My historical novel Brookhaven has an author’s note explaining some of the novel’s background. But it also has something you don’t usually see in a novel – a nine-page bibliography.

 

I included more as a reminder to myself of where the novel come from. 

 

A grandmother who referred to the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression.” A father who told slightly mangled family stories, including one that sounded like an epic journey. A research paper in high school on what the “plantation system” really looked like. A family Bible with a mystery embedded in the birth and death records. A mountain of reading old and new American history books. An aunt who spent decades researching family history, long before the invention of the internet. Discovering I liked, as in really liked, the poems of Henry Wadsworth Longellow, once the top-selling poet and author in the United States who was dropped into the dustbin of literary criticism. 

Photograph: A page of family records in the Bible, pre-preservation.

Some Thursday Readings

 

This Just In – poem by J.S. Gilbert at Frivolous Quill.

 

Murmurs in the Cathedral – Jeffrey Streeter at English Republic of Letters.

 

Third Annual Poetry Prize for Submissions – First Things Magazine.

 

“A Look at the Heavens,” poem by John Clare – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poet Laura: Mother in Satin – Donna Hilbrt at Tweetspeak Poetry.