This past week, we watched the movie Pressure (2206), about the final 72 hours of the run-up to the D. Day invasion in World War II. The top three stars are Brendan Fraser as Dwight Eisenhower, Damian Lewis as a rather nasty Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, and Andrew Scott in an incredible performance as British meteorologist James Stagg. It is Stagg who must determine if the weather allows a go or no-go for the invasion. It’s riveting. History Extra has a podcast on the true story behind the movie.
Historians (and everybody else) will likely argue until Doomsday about the role the Christian faith played in the founding of the United States. But the U.S. Constitution was itself based on several state constitutions, which were based on various Puritan covenants, which were based on the Bible. Jerry Newcombe at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics explains the importance of the first English Bible printed in the United States.
We know that C.S. Lewis’s Anglican faith helped shape the writing of The Chronicles of Narnia. But what about J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings? D.J. Taylor at Literary Hub explains how it was Tolkien’s Catholic faith that shaped not only LOTR but all of his writings.
Outraged by his words, furious he would suggest that others were worthy of love, they resorted to violence, dragging him out of town, this man they knew, the carpenter’s son, the man whom they believed had blasphemed because he suggested others had gained God’s favor. They drove him to the hilltop, prepared to cast him down, prepared to kill, but he simply moved through their midst, away from the cliff, away from the hilltop, and left.
Painting: The Brow of the Hill Near Nazareth, oil on canvas by James Tissot (1836-1902), Brooklyn Museum.
I’ve read Paul Kingsnorth for years, first his novels, then his poems, and then his essays. The writer who began as something of a radical environmentalist who discovered faith, explored Ireland’s holy wells and met wild saints, became a popular speaker, and, in a way, anticipated the promise and peril of artificial intelligence and the rise of what he calls “the machine.” It would be an oversimplification to call him England’s (or Ireland’s, since he lives there now) answer to Wendell Berry. But there would also be some truth to that oversimplification.
Bery often wrote and spoke about industrial agriculture and the death f rural communities. Those themes are also part of Kingsnorth’s “machine,” but he goes further. He includes technology in general, and particularly digital technology, global economic systems, and the aspects of modern life he sees as soul-crushing.
Poet and writer Rachel Hicks has lived in some unusual places. She was born in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains, and she’s lived in India, Pakistan, Jordan, the Republic of Congo, Hong Kong, China, and the United States. Her nomadic background comes into full play with her debut poetry collection, Accumulated Lessons in Displacement.
When I started reading, I expected to see those international experiences reflected in the poems. And they’re there. What I did not expect was the find so many poems of a haunting beauty, that leaves you with a sense of awe. But that’s what I found.
There has been an abundance of posts and articles lately about the death of reading, the end of the traditional book, the decline in book sales, and so one. Everyone seems ready to pronounce the death of books as we know them. Not so fast, says Daniel Darling at One Little Word. He makes the case for why paper books will endure.
In the category of “I am not making this up,” Nellie Bowles at The Free Press cited a new report by the United Nations Women organization, “Facts and figures: Women, peace and security.” The big concern: nearly one in four civilian deaths associated with war and violent conflicts around the world are women and girls. The organization also highlighted the statistic with a dramatic graphic on X, formerly known as Twitter. The report does acknowledge, in an offhanded kind of way, that three in four civilian deaths in war and violent conflict are men and boys, but I suppose we need to focus on what’s important.
As I read Think of It as Music, the new poetry collection by Penelope Moffet, the first word that kept coming to mind was precision. It was followed by a related word – etching. Reading these poems is not only like looking at etchings; it’s like reading an etching. And then came the third word – landscape.
Moffet writes in a very precise, deliberate way. Words are chosen carefully; then she positions them in the order that makes her meaning completely clear. And then you discover she’s drawn the landscape. Sometimes, it’s the natural landscape; other times, it’s more a personal landscape. She’s etching a picture that describes exactly what she wants it to describe.
The first book I ever read by L.L. Barkat was Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places. I read it straight through, likely because I was reading it in a hard and hidden place. I had finished a group bike ride across about half of Missouri with an unexpected meeting with construction on a bridge. I thought I was shaken up but generally okay for the next three days, until I was in a work meeting and suddenly discovered I was having trouble breathing. I made it home, and my wife drove me to the Emergency Room. On the way out the door, I grabbed Stone Crossings, thinking I’d have something to do while waiting in ER.
By 1:30 a.m., I was in a hospital room after a diagnosis of four broken ribs and a partially collapsed lung. I couldn’t sleep, so I read the book. I will likely connect Stone Crossings with broken ribs for the rest of my life. My crossing wasn’t stone, but it was hard; the bridge was made of wood. And the impact was hidden for three days.
My bike trip and reading the book came a few short weeks after meeting Barkat on what was then called Twitter and an impromptu poetry jam that started one Saturday afternoon in June 2009. She organized the poetry jams that ultimately became Tweetspeak Poetry. A year later, I joined her on the editorial staff of The High Calling.
I write all of this because we have a good history. I’ve read all her books. I’ve read her poetry. She published two of my books, Poetry at Work and Brookhaven. I’ve read the books of her daughter Sara. And I am singularly incapable of writing a fair, unbiased, objective review of L.L.’s new poetry collection, The Book of Joy: 100 Poems for Your Heart.
.jpg)
