Poets and Poems: Fanny Howe and "This Poor Book"

Fanny Howe (1940-2025) was the author of some 13 poetry collections, five novels, and numerous short stories and essays. Her collection Second Childhood: Poems (2014) was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her Selected Poems received the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and she received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2009.  

Shortly before her death in 2025, Howe completed another manuscript, This Poor Book: A Poem. It is and isn’t a poem. It is and isn’t a poetry collection. It is and isn’t a memoir, an autobiography, a poetic essay. It is one of the most unusual works I’ve read.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Bringing Characters to Life – 1 – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” poem by William Butler Yeats – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“Restless Dead” by David Gatward

DCI Harry Grimm, somewhat “exiled” from the police force in Bristol to one in Yorkshire. And Yorkshire, even the idea of eating cheese with cake, is growing on Grimm. His team members are noticing the boss introduced as interim is sounding more and more like a local. 

Grimm is also very good at solving cases, tough, difficult, impossible cases. And he’s taken the step of making it permanent.

 

The call comes in. A sheep farmer, inf act the father of one of Grimm’s own team members, is reporting the theft of a prized herd. Since trouble, and cases, never arrives by itself, another case arrives – an elderly couple run off the run, and the wife has been killed.

 

David Gatward

The theft of the sheep will take the police team into barns and an auction yard, while the death of elderly woman will take them deep into a family’s passions and secrets – and possibly a ghost.

 

Restless Dead is the fifth DCI Harry Grimm mystery by British author David Gatward. It’s a bit different from the previous four, with a hint of the supernatural, which will eventually have a natural explanation. Mostly.

 

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.

 

The DCI Harry Grimm novels are well-written stories, well thought out and developed with additional aspects added to over the series. They’re good stories, entertaining stories, with regular characters you care about and want to read more about.

 

Related: 

Grimm Up North by David Gatward.

 Best Served Cold by David Gatward. 

Corpse Road by David Gatward.

Shooting Season by David Gatward.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Revolutionary History: Gordon Wood’s Idea of America – Scott Spillman at The Point.

 

The Walls Have Ears – Mark Rothschild at Accidental Wisdom.

 

Congress Establishes the Board of War and Ordnance – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

The Festival of Britain and the South Bank – 75 Years Later – A London Inheritance.

 

Britain: How the Southport riots broke Starmer’s government – Mike Jones at The Critic Magazine.

The solution to pride

After James 4:1-10 

The spirit dwells

within us; more grace

is given, grace is

given to the humble.

Submission to God

buries the pride.

Draw near to God,

and he draws near

to you. Cleanse

your hands; purify

your hearts. Mourn

and weep; turn

the laughter of pride

to the mourning 

of faith. It’s

a conundrum:

humble yourselves,

and he will exalt you.

 

Photograph by Timo Wagner via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

David’s God-Entranced Song – John Piper at Desiring God.

 

The Gift of Finitude – A.D. Donahue at Bandersnatch Books.

 

The Terrible Possibility of Adultery – Benjamin Vrbicek at Desiring God.

 

The Lie of Living Your Truth – Rosaria Butterfield at the Institute for Faith and Culture.

Saturday Good Reads - June 13, 2026

Two hundred and fifty years ago, events were accelerating in Philadelphia. The drafting committee for the Declaration of Independence was itself being drafted. As it turned out, Thomas Jefferson wasn’t the only writer, although he’s the one who usually gets the greatest credit. The colony of Virginia not waiting for Philadelphia, drafted its own declaration of rights. The Continental Congress was already showing signs of political factions, with the Nationalists – those who wanted to jump directed to a unified national government – almost winning the day.  

Boston, of course, playing a hugely significant role in the coming of the American Revolution. The spark may well have been the Boston Massacre in 1770, when British troops fired on civilians. Then there were the Boston women who burned “Madame Suchong.” And a year before the Declaration of Independence, colonials battled the Redcoats at Lexington and Concord, just outside Boston. 

 

And if you ever wondered why colonial Americans wore in 1776, Lesley Kennedy at History has the story (and the pictures).

 

America 250

 

The Abandoned American Offensive After Yorktown: the Attack that Never Was – Joshua Shepherd at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Indispensable Virtues of the Indispensable Man – Joseph Prud’homme at Philanthropy Daily. 

 

News Media

 

When the Bottom Stories Are the Real News – James Meigs at The Wall Street Journal (unlocked).

 

Art

 

Idiots: On Munch and von Trier – Karl Ove Knausgaard at The Paris Review.

 

Doreen Fletcher in Her Own Words – Spitalfields Life.

 

Faith

 

The God of Small Churches – The Churchman’s Quill.

 

American Stuff

 

There Were Two Civil Wars, and We Weren’t Always Sure Which We Were Fighting – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Liturgy and Middle-Earth – Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Three Ways to Lose a Romance Reader – Jenn Windrow at Writers on the Storm.

 

Mercy and Forgiveness in Modern Literature – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Poetry

 

“Proud Maisie,” poem by Sir Walter Scott – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

164 – Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“The Hollow Men,” poem by T.S. Eliot – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Englishman Visits St. Louis to Honor WWII Pilot – Nine PBS

 Painting: Gentleman reading in an interior, oil on canvas by Gabriel Deluc (1883-1916).

The world

After James 4:1-10 

How do you

define the world?

Quarrels, fights,

passions at war

within, desire,

covetousness, pride,

misguided praises,

adulterousness.

To befriend that,

to be a friend 

of the world,

is to be an enemy

of God, is to declare

war on heaven.

 

God is jealous;

he wants your heart.

It’s why he made

the spirit to dwell

within us.

 

Photograph by Greg Rosenke via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“What the Young Saint Said,” poem by Gerard Smyth – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

How to Read the Bible When Your Heart Feels Cold – Andrew Dacis at Ligonier.

 

Columba and my calling – Malcolm Guite.

 

“Teach Me, My God and King,” hymn by George Herbert – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

The Overseas Trip Where Language Didn't Matter

Our missions trip was scheduled for September 2001. We’d been preparing all summer. But 9-11 intervened, and the trip was postponed.  

We were an unusual missions team. The mission we’d be visiting had specifically asked for it – a small team devoted to communications to help the mission tell its story, produce a short film for a building fundraiser, and interview missionaries who could use videos and stories to send reports to financial supporters and home churches. We were a team of three: team lead/logistics guy/organizer/general factotum; the videographer, aka the guy with the camera; and me, the writer, the guy with the laptop who would be typing away in airports, planes, homes, offices, and in the car. 

 

We’d be in central Europe for a week, with a schedule so packed I thought we’d need slotted times for breathing. Four countries, five languages, cultural shocks, and no time to detox from jet lag.

 

I could probably write pages about that trip, story after story, detail after detail. But what sticks with me were a few examples of how communication didn’t depend upon language.

Photograph of Dresden by Lukas D via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Some Thursday Readings

 

Poet Laure: Going Fishing with Dad – Donna Hilbert at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“Casey at the Bat,” poem by Ernest Thayer – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“In School-Days,” poems by John Greenleaf Whittier – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

 

“The Atlas of Independence” by Chris Mackowski

If I had a mental image of John Adams, it was of a rather dour individual who bridged the presidencies of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, whom my history teachers in high school and college seemed to find much more interesting. 

Then came the 2008 miniseries John Adams, with Paul Giamatti in the title role and Laura Linney as his wife Abigail. I almost skipped it, but we decided to watch it. And I began to understand that my teachers and I had all missed the boat on this major figure of the American Revolution.  I sought out some biographies and histories, and I discovered my understanding of the second U.S. president was seriously misguided.

 

It was with that improving understanding that I began reading Atlas of Independence: John Adams and the American Revolution by Chris Mackowski. 

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

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Bob Dylan: ‘I’m a Religious Person’ Who Reads Scripture Daily – Stephanie Martin at Church Leaders.

 

Britain’s Great Self-Loathing Crusade – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

Ghosts in the Field – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.