Singing to remember

After 2 Samuel 22 

I wrote a song, once,

a song of thanksgiving

and redemption, a song

I remember now. It is

a song of life,

a song of my life.

the song I wrote

to remember always

celebrates who

the author is,

the author of salvation,

the author of redemption

and rescue, the author

who takes me and

protects me in the cleft

of the rock, the author

who brings me to

the oasis in the desert,

the author who writes

my story. I sing

that song to remember.

 

Photograph by Vitalii Khodzinskyi via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Spiritual Discipline of Unlearning – David Prince at Prince on Preaching.

 

Holy Humor – Joshua Budimlic at Iotas in Eternity.

Saturday Good Reads - Feb. 14, 2026

Ah, those Valentine Day candy hearts, with those little messages that read like they anticipated text messages decades later. “Luv U.” “U R Mine.” I was surprised to learn that they originated during the Civil War. See “Hub Wafers: A Yankee Delight” at Emerging Civil War.  

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all over the media – stock market drops, worries about impact on jobs, already beginning to redefine industries. More than a year ago, a former colleague at work asked me if I’d embraced ChatGPT. I surprised her when I shook my head no. “Not for me,” I said. “I think I’d prefer to give up writing altogether.” AI popped all over my inbox this week. Writing coach Ann Kroeker asks whose voice is on your page. Writer Paul Kingsnorth sees it as the latest manifestation of what he calls “the machine,” and tells writers to oppose it. And Samuel D. James takes a look at that latest AI article that went viral.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence: The Present Status of the Controversy – Scott Syfert at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Just Call It Washington’s Birthday – Jonathan Horn at The Free Press.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Twenty-one reactions to Wuthering Heights (from 1847 to 2007) – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Shakespeare in the Bardo – Tana Wojczuk at The Baffler.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Popular Progressive Podcast Calling Evangelicals ‘Cancer’ – Bonnie Kristian at The Free Press.

 

Ten Books No One in Education Wants You to Read – Michael Rose at Classical Compass.

 

How Jamaica’s Bobsled Team Became an Unlikely Global Sensation – Kareem Nittle at History.

 

Poetry

 

A Sonnet on the Transfiguration – Malcolm Guite.

 

“On Stella’s Birth-day,” poem by Jonathan Swift – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poet Laura: Month of Fevers – Donna Hilbert at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Faith

 

All Those Undone Days – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

American Stuff

 

The Oath I Took – Sarah Harley at Front Porch Republic.

 

Winters Remembered – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

All Because of Mercy - Casting Crowns

Painting: A Woman Reading, oil on canvas (1920) by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). 

Poets and Poems: Dave Malone and "Bypass"

I’m reading a poetry collection, and an image forms in my mind, a memory I hadn’t recalled in years. I’m 11, and my mother arranged for me to spend a week with my widowed aunt who lived in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.  She was the family historian, and I was the family reader, so I suppose my mother thought we’d be a match. We were. 

She was a force to be reckoned with. In her lifetime, she crossed swords with reluctant neighbors, homeowner associations, historical commissions, the New Orleans City Council, and just about anyone whom she saw standing in the way of historical preservation and urban beautification. She also buried every deceased pet in her deep back yard, well behind her pre-Civil War house.

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

Some Friday Readings

 

Found in Translation: Love’s Fire and Ice – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“Hendecasyllabics,” poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Formalist, Farmer, and Faithful – Marie Burdett at New Verse Review.

Remembering a song

After 2 Samuel 22 

I remember a song

I sang before, long before,

a song to celebrate,

a song to remember

my rescue ar a time

of peril, a time

of disaster, a time

when my life seemed

over. Yet it wasn’t.

I sang a song

of deliverance, a song

of rescue, a song

of salvation, a song

of redemption fom

disaster. I sang

the song then;

I sing the song

now.

 

Photograph by Hailey Reed via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Holy Sonnet VII by John Donne – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“Psalm XIII,” poem by Sir Philip Sidney – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“When Jesus Left His Father’s Throne,” hymn by James Montgomery – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Right Here – poem by Seth Lewis.

In Praise of Art Museums as Sources of Inspiration

I’d heard that, as you age, you often become more interested in art. What I didn’t expect was to discover how that growing interest in art would affect my fiction writing.

I wasn’t a stranger to art, but I can’t say it was a major preoccupation, either. I had two semesters of art history in college; I took two, because the same textbook was used for both, and it was more expensive than the tuition. I’m also not an artist.

I know when my connection of art to writing fiction started. It was some 50 years ago. We were young twenty-somethings living in Houston, and we saw two exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts. One was the works of Paul Cezanne, and it was stunning. But the one that captured me was “Master Paintings from the Hermitage and the State Russian Museum, Leningrad.” Houston was one of five cities hosting it. 

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

Painting: Lumpeguin, Cigwe, Animiki, by Anselm Kiefer, from collection of the artist on display at the St. Louis Art Museum.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The genre that came in from the cold: Why we love spy fiction – Andy Owen at The Critic Magazine.

 

Fierce, wild, intractability: Emily Bronte’s untameable spirit – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader. 

Surf’s Up in Slop City – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

Poets and Poems: Linda Nemec Foster and the Extraordinary Ordinary

A few weeks ago, I looked by Bone Country, the recent poetry collection by Linda Nemec Foster. It was like a travel guide to Europe, but not what you expected from a travel book. She explore through both real and imagined stories, and you came away with a strong sense of what the people and places are really about. 

Since then, I’ve looked at two of Foster’s previous collections, Talking Diamonds, first published in 2009 and reissued in 2023, and Bue Divide, published in 2021 and republished in 2023. In both cases, the first publisher had closed its doors and the collections were reissued by Cornerstone Press of the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. It’s not difficult to see why. Both Talking Diamonds and Blue Divide are excellent, with sharp imagery, moving stories, and an original voice. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Fire in the Earth – poem by David Whyte.

 

Poetry Prompt: Meet Your Muse Erato – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

An Answer Without a Question – poem by Robert Cording at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Verses on the Prospects of Planting Arts and Learning in America, poem by George Berkeley – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"Shooting Season" by David Gatward

If you had told him three months before, DCI Harry Grimm would have laughed. He’s on loan (or “secondment”) to the police in Yorkshire, and he first couldn’t wait to return to his base in Bristol. But now, the landscape and the people are growing on him; he’s even tried the local preference for cake with cheese and discovered it’s not too bad. 

Grimm and his team are called into to handle a missing person report. A bestselling London author, in York to promote his newest book, has driven off into the dark. They soon discover the people attached to the author – his agent, his editor, his personal assistant, his accountant, and two “friends” – may have al had axes to grind. But where is the author?

 

David Gatward

He soon turns up, or his body does. It appears to be suicide by shotgun, except both triggers were pulled in succession. Suicide it wasn’t, and the list of suspects grows to include a woman who made a scene at a local bookstore author event, accusing the man of stealing someone else’s words. And if a murder investigation isn’t enough, Grimm’s criminal father shows up with two thugs, attempting to bring his son “into line.”

 

Shooting Season is the fourth novel in the DCI Harry Grimm series by British author David Gatward. Rather than a slow development toward the conclusion, this one finds Grimm and his team stymied at every turn, chasing leads that go nowhere – and that lasts for most of the book. What that means is that the story is less about the mystery and more about Grimm’s own development – and setting the stage for his possible permanent assignment to York.

 

In addition to the DCI Harry Grimm series, Gatward has published children’s and teen fiction, taught creative writing sessions, worked as an editor, started a small publishing firm, and returned to writing when the COVID pandemic arrived. He grew up in the Cotswold’s and Yorkshire in England (including the town for the setting of Grimm Up North), and he’s also lived in Lincolnshire and the Lake District.

 

Related: 

Grimm Up North by David Gatward.

 Best Served Cold by David Gatward. 

Corpse Road by David Gatward.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Köln Revisited: Or why our art needs this non-ideal world – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

The American Revolution and the Fate of the World by Richard Bell – review by Phill Greenwalt at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

From the Stacks: A Place on Earth – Jeffrey Bilbro at Orange Blossom Ordinary.

 

River Reversed: The New Madrid Earthquake of 1812 – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Art competitions a forgotten part of Olympic history – Anne Handley-Fierce at St. Louis Art Museum.