Saturday Good Reads - Oct. 10, 2026

One thing email and texting has done is almost eliminate the old-fashioned letter. And letters were the stuff of biographers and historians. Example: we know a lot about poets like T.S. Eliot because of the letters he wrote. Another example: Robert Frost. Ben Myers, writing for Portico, looks at Frost’s letters and asks, “Did Robert Frost Despair for His Soul?” 

In 1825, a hero of the America Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette, retuned to America for a visit. He survived the French Revolution, which didn’t treat aristocrats kindly, because the American Revolution and the role he played made him a national hero in France as well. Fifty years later, he came back, and the return was a triumph.

 

I mentioned to my wife the other day that if an art museum wants a successful exhibition, then make it about the Impressionists. There’s one at the St. Louis Art Museum opening Oct. 17 about “Women Impressionists and the Land.” And the new major show at London’s National Gallery is “Renoir and Love,” and Alexandra Wilson at Engelberg Ideas has a report. 

 

More Good Reads

 

Writing and Literature

 

Explaining Wendell Berry – Doug Sikkema at Comment Magazine.

 

Cormac McCarthy’s Desert Wanderings – Michael Crews at Portico.

 

Tolstoy’s Path Out of Skepticism – Marc Sims at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

America 250

 

250 Years Ago, a Cannonball Beheaded a Hessian Soldier. Did He Become the Headless Hoseman? – Ryan Thomas LaBee at Military.com.

 

Life and Culture

 

Ed Sheeran Proves Trueman Right: We All Live in Marx’s World Now – Tim Challies.

 

Poetry

 

A Song Inspired by Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” – Gunny Markefka at Society of Classical Poets.

 

What to Remember When Waking – poem by David Whyte.

 

Philip Larkin by the Book – Dana Gioia at New Verse Review.

 

“The Base Stealer” and “Pitcher,” poems by Robert Francis – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Disabled,” poem by Wilfred Owen and “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways,” poem by William Wordsworth – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Larkin’s Anthology: An Extract from Dana Gioia’s New Catalogue – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

British Stuff

 

Lucinda Douglas-Menzies’ Portraits – Spitalfields Life.

 

History

 

‘Hitler was a lazy criminal who slept in until noon’: why most of what we think we know about the rise of the Nazis is wrong – Philip Oltermann at The Guardian.

 

Faith

 

‘What Is the Meaning of Christian in This American Life?’ – Sarah Rexford at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

“When You Are Old,” poem by W.B. Yeats – Read by Cillian Murphy

Painting: Woman Reading, oil on canvas attributed to Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), The New Art Gallery, Walsall, England.

The reward for truth

After Luke 3:1-22 

He spoke truth;

he called out sin

and wrongdoing

among the low

and the high, coming

to the attention

of Herod, tetrarch,

who felt threatened,

whose wife felt

insulted to be called

out for sin.

 

He spoke truth,

and for speaking truth

he experienced

what all prophets

experience: he was 

punished, imprisoned,

cast into a cell

to stop his speaking,

his truth telling,

his words afflicting

the comfortable 

and embarrassing 

the powerful.

 

Photograph by Bruno van der Kraan via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“Veni Creator,” poem by Czeslaw Milosz – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Parenting Like Aslan – Junius Johnson at Story Warren.

 

Don’t Suppress Young Men – Clint Himfrey.

 

Carousel – Brian Sudlow at The Imaginative Conservative. 

When a Poem Completely Eludes You

I read a considerable amount of poetry. I read all kinds of poetry – ancient, modern, Romantic, Victoriam, contemporary, poetry in translation, Japanese haiku. I’ve read The Odyssey, The Iliad, The Aeneid, Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and Green Knight, Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s sonnets. I can invariably find something to like, in whole or in part, of virtually everything I read. 

Then I encountered The Song of Roland.

 

It’s a famous poem, author unknown. It’s called the national poem of France. It’s the story of Charlemagne’s nephew who falls in battle against the invading Saracens at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778. It’s a story of courage, betrayal, and ultimate victory. For centuries, it’s inspired playwrights, writers, poets (contemporary poet Mark Jarman wrote a poem about it), novels, stories, and even a rock song and a video game.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

Finding Poetry in Unexpected Places – Lucille Lang Day at Writer’s Digest.

 

He Who Saw the Abyss: The Immortality of Gilgamesh – Elijah Perseus Blumov at New Verse Review.

 

Ulysses – poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The Case of Jacob W. – poem by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

 

The Poetry of Injury: Inside Down Syndrome & Kimani – T.S. Poetry Press.

 

“The Old Ships,” poem by James Elroy Flecker – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"An Academy of Murder" by Luke Davis

Detective Cameron Ballack is not only back; he’s on a roll. Two mysteries so far this year! 

The wheelchair-bound detective is the creation of writer Luke Davis. He’s works with the Greater St. Louis Special Investigative Division. The unit functions as a special task force focused on murder and occasionally general mayhem. 

 

In The Burning Glow, published in June, he helped track down a car bomber. In his recent adventure, An Academy of Murder, Ballack finds himself on farm more familiar ground. A janitor has been found dead at King’s Prep, a private Christian school. It almost looks like suicide, but the forensic investigation shows it was murder.

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

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Of Popes and Ploughmen – Ben Sisson at Front Porch Republic.

 

Steinbeck, Homer, and Us – Spencer Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

The Last Whole Earth Agrarian – Alan Cornett at im1776. 

 

How to find editing when you can’t afford editing – Nthan Bransford.

"Paul Celan: A Life" by Anna Arno

He was born Paul Anschell in 1920, an only child. His life was framed by the place where he grew up and the tumultuous events of the mid-20^th century that destroyed his family and everything that was familiar. Yet he survived. Under the name of Paul Celan, he continued continuing to write the poetry he began in his teens, poetry full of the images of life and death.  

Previously, there’s been only one full biographical study of Celan, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew by John Felsteiner(1936-2017), published in 1995. In 2021, writer Anna Arno published Paul Celan: A Life, and it has now been translated from Polish to English by Soren Gauger.

 

It’s an engaging, enthralling biography. Arno brings to life a man haunted by tragedy, horrendous events, and loss, and she shows how he folded it all into his poetry.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

It Never Lies! – poem by Paul Freeman at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Cosmic Anger – A.E. Stallings at The Lamp.

 

A Sonnet for St. Francis – Malcolm Guite.

 

What Is the Measure of My Days? – poem by Peter Venable at Society of Classical Poets.

 

The Middle of the Story –poem by Christy Lee Barnes at Every Day Poems.

Some Monday Readings - Oct. 5, 2026

 

Unconditional Poverty: The Final Days of Francis of Assisi – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

The Way the World Could Be, or the Way the World Is? – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review on AI, science fiction, and The Last Upheaval by Peco Gaskovski.

 

Napoleon Revisited – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative on The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton.

 

New and Notable Author / Series Spotlight: Urcelia Teixeira and her Angus Reid Mystery Series – Mark at Thoughts of a Sojourner.

 

If My Kids Get Into America’s Most Prestigious Colleges, I Hope They Do Not Go – Clayton Wood.

 

Would you have gone through the cockpit door? – Tsahi Shemesh at American Thinker.

 

Why Followup is Critical – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Walking the Rocque Ring, Part 4: Hyde Park Corner, Wellington Arch, a Missing Horse and an Elephant – A London Inheritance.

 

A Future Self – Patti Callahan Henry.

 

Murders for October – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

Photograph: The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton.

Is this the One?

After Luke 3:1-22 

They hear the words

searing their hearts.

Their experience

the simplicity of

the words turning

their hearts. They

ask the obvious:

is this the One?

 

They ask, they feel

his gaze on them.

I am not, he says.

I baptize with water;

he will baptize with

the spirit. 

He is mightier than I;

I am not worthy 

to untie his sandals.

He will baptize 

with fire,

his winnowing fork

in his hand, cleaning 

the threshing floor,

gathering the crop,

bringing the wheat

into his barn,

the chaff to be burned.

 

Photograph by Dyu-Ha via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

From Scotland to the Ends of the Earth – John Ross at Desiring God.

 

The Problems with So Much More: A Critique and an Apology – Botkin Sisters.

 

Reflections on Steve Larson’s Latest Book – Mark Jones at Reformation 21.

 

Why Does Life Seem to Move Faster as We Get Older? – Brad Hambrick.

 

The Mercy of God When Formulas Fail – Kirsten Black at Gospel-Centered Discipleship.