Death by oak tree

After 2 Samuel 18 

The son, favored,

natural leader,

ambitious, the son

with his famous mane

of hair, escapes defeat

and gets his famous

mane of hair entangled

in an oak tree. He’s

caught, dangling,

defenseless. His

ambition and rebellion

have been brought

to this moment,

this humiliation

of one’s pride

entangled and 

immobilized, until

it ends with archers

letting arrows fly.

His pride and

his ambition are

buried in a pit,

buried in stones.

 

Photograph by Andrew Shelley via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Apostle! – a sonnet for St. Paul – Malcolm Guite.

 

“The Burden,” poem by Vasile Voiculescu – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“O Zion, Haste,” hymn by Mary Ann Thomson – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

Noir Poetry: Weldon Kees and Kenneth Fearing

I’m not sure when I first ran across the reference to noir poetry. Several years ago, I read a novel in verse form, The Long Ride by Robin Robertson. I can’t say Robertson was a noir poet so much as he’d written a noir novel as poetry.  

Recently, I read another reference, so I decided to find out what it was about. Noir novelists I knew about – Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, writer usually associated with crime stories from the 1920s to the 1950s. And noir movies, movies like Notorious, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Maltese Falcon, Strangers on a Train, Laura, Double Indemnity, and Sunset Boulevard. (My favorite noir movie, though, was released in 1974 – Chinatown, with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.

 

But noir poetry?

 

Yes, as it turns out. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“Ballet School,” poem by Babette Deutsch – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

A Little Free Library – poem by Karen An-hwei Lee at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

The film – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Faithless Nelly Gray,” poem by Thomas Hood – Joseph Bottum at Pomes Ancient and Modern.

"The Prodigal of Leningrad" by Daniel Taylor

I’m trying to remember when I first became interested in Russian history. Most likely, when I was 10, and one of my Christmas presents (my mother knew me) was a Horizon Caravel book entitled Russia Under the Czars. I must have read it a dozen times. And I still have it. 

My senior year in high school, I discovered Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, and The First Circle. In college, I took two semesters of Russian history, and I was glad I knew more about Russia’s past than most people. The professor was a great lecturer; he was also an unapologetic defender of the Soviet regime. 

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

Some Wednesday Readings

Is Carney’s Davos sermon the way forward? – David Robertson at Christian Today.

 

Only Mozart – Joseph Sobran at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

How Holocaust Denial Became Mainstream – Simon Sebag Montefiore at The Free Press.

The Friend Who Turned Out to Be a Poet

For many years, until they changed the closing time, my wife and I could be found most Sunday afternoons at the YMCA in out suburb of St. Louis. I had a routine – start with cardio like the treadmill or stationary bike and find in the Cybex machine room. There was a fairly regular crowd there each Sunday, working out from about 5 to 6 p.m. One of those regulars was an older man, about six-foot-five. We knew him as Paul. 

My wife started chatting with him first. And then he spoke to me one Sunday, saying he’d heard I was from New Orleans. He had relatives there, too, even though he was from St. Louis. We’d talk while on the Cybex machines, and he didn’t say much about his own life, other than he liked poetry as much as I did and he loved to visit New Orleans.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The same – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

The Poem That Outlived the Holocaust – Douglas Century a The Free Press.

 

“Comin thro’ the rye,” poem by Robert Burns – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Cultivating, Winter 2026: Renewing Gratitude

The winter issue of Cultivating Oaks Press is live, and the theme is renewing gratitude. This issue includes some wonderful essays, articles, and stories by Rob Jones, Annie Nardone, Sheila Underwood Vamplin, Adam Nettesheim, Christina Brown, Lara d'Entremont, Kelly Keller, Maribeth Barber, and many more. I have a short story, "Grateful for the War." 

Some Monday Readings

 

C.S. Lewis Returns to Earth – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Dispatch No. 4: Jayber Crow – Amelia Friedline at Dispatches to Jack.

 

Don’t Quit Your Day Job – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

The forest consumes

After 2 Samuel 18 

The slaughter of battle

is great that day,

thousands falling

to sword and lance

and knife. The dead

lie in heaps, wasted

piles of life destroyed.

And yet, in spite of

sword and lance and 

knife, it is the forest

that consumes more

than the battle, 

the forest with

its trees and logs and

pits and ditches and 

streams and rivers,

the forest capturing

warriors and showing

no mercy.

 

Photograph by Sebastian Unrau via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Who Is Rich and Who Is Poor? – Eric McLaughlin at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Chilling Time – Kelly Keller at Story Warren.

 

It Doesn’t Matter What You Remember – Tim Challies.

 

Where is God’s Love When Life Goes Wrong? – Seth Porch at Desiring God.

 

The Burial of the Faithful – poem by Benjamin Myers at First Things.

Saturday Good Reads - Jan. 24, 2026

Back in 2007, spent a week in Williamsburg. I was biking a lot at that time, and I was able to rent a bike at a local shop. I biked the historic triangle – Williamsburg to Yorktown, and Williamsburg to Jamestown. The parkways connecting them had little car traffic and were generally flat. We visited all three by car as well; 2007 was the 400^th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. If you can’t go, Christopher Klein at History.com explains how the three towns shaped the course of American history.  

It’s been less than week (it seems like months) since the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., experienced a serious disruption in its worship service by protestors looking for a pastor supposedly involved with ICE. We learned a lot of things from that disruption, including protestors were unaware of the FACE Act and former CNN anchor Don Lemon didn’t understand the First Amendment. Several people had some thoughtful responses. Samuel D. James at Digital liturgies wrote that we have to let the church be the church. Jesse Johnson explained that the First Amendment doesn’t give anyone the right to disrupt a worship service. And Al Mohler, often controversial across the evangelical spectrum, wrote in World Magazine that the disruption should be a wake-up call for the church.

 

While we wait to see what happens next in Iran, reporter Ashley Rindsberg at The Free Press took an unexpected look, not at Iran but in her own media world. And she discovered that, for the past year, Wikipedia editors have been helping Iran rewrite its record on human rights.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The Course of Human Events by Steven Sarson – review by Gabriel Neville at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

America’s 250^th Isn’t Just a Birthday – Yuval Levin at The Free Press.

 

Thomas Nelson of Yorktown, Virginia – Nicholas Marsella at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

‘Freedom plane’ to take US founding documents on tour for country’s 250^th anniversary – Benjamin Sutton at The Art Newspaper.

 

The Unlikeliest Hero of the American Revolution – Johnathan Horn at The Free Press.

 

Faith

 

I Might Owe My Students an Apology About Josephus – John Dickson at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Why Is Christianity the Best Religion? – John Piper at Desiring God.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Times New Roman Font War: I’m on Charlemagne’s Side – John Horvat at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

What Efficiency is For – Thomas Kidd.

 

The Semester the Lights Came On – Elizabeth Stice at Front Porch Republic.

 

Save the Humanities from the Slop – Alan Noble at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Tobacco Ruminations No. 4 – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

Poetry

 

The boy Will goes skating in the frosty night – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Yeats, Auden, Eliot: 1939, 1940, 1941 – Colm Toibin at London Review of Books.

 

“The Bust,” poem by W.H. Davies – Joseph Borrum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

An Invitation to the Wonders of Reading – Alex Sosler at Front Porch Republic.

 

Like Walking on Water – Jeff Johnson and Phil Keaggy, poem by Luci Shaw

 Painting: John Keats in His Study, oil on canvas by Joseph Severn (1793-1879).