Poets and Poems: Baruch November and “The Broken Heart is the Master Key”

More than 40 years ago, I discovered the stories and novels of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1991). I don’t remember how I came across his work, but I found myself reading stories about a culture that had largely vanished, not long before I was born. 

My understanding, if I had one of the Yiddish culture, had been shaped by a play that became a movie, Fiddler on the Roof, the story of Tevye, his wife Golda, and their daughters as they navigate the forces of modernism and anti-Semitism changing their lives. It’s set in the Jewish Pale of Settlement in Russia, around the turn of the 20^th century. And then I read Singer’s stories, which not only provided a richer context than the movie but also made the culture seem more real. As much as I enjoyed the movie, it was Singer’s stories that showed the reality without the Hollywood framing.

 

As I started reading The Broken Heart is the Master Key: Poems by Baruch November, I was almost catapulted back to Singer’s stories. November’s poems aren’t about a culture that had almost disappeared; instead, they reflect the echoes of that culture, two generations after Nazi Germany destroyed it in Poland, eastern Europe, and western Russia. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Doubly – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

How to Write a Found Poem – The Many Tools to Discover Treasure – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“A Psalm of Life,” poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“In Time of Plague,” poem by Thomas Nash – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Due to the Loss of Field Roast Artisan Grain Sausage – poem by L.L. Barkat at Every Day Poems.

 

Some Monday Readings - May 4, 2026

Tolkien, Chesterton, & the Sloth of England – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

Who Really Wrote Philip K. Dick’s Best Novel? – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Plato’s Cave and the Rise of the Highly Educated Radical – Jacob Howland at The Free Press.

 

The Greatest Sentence Ever Written? – Christ Mackowski at Emerging Revolutionary War Era. 

 

Celebrating 15 Years with the Kettle On – Every Day Poems – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Illustration: The Declaration of Independence. 

Partiality is a sin

After James 2:1-13 

Partiality: the tendency

we share to judge

and arrange people

in hierarchies for reasons

of which are legion.

Partiality: A sin.

Heaven’s cafeteria 

contains no reserved 

tables; so, too, should

the church. So, too,

should each of us.

Anything short

of impartiality is

a sin, our sin. 

The widow and

the orphan are 

just as vital 

to God’s kingdom 

as the rich merchant.

A neighbor is

a neighbor. Love him.

We are each and all

made in the image

of God, and he has

no partiality.

 

Photograph by Clay Banks via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Trial of Daily Bread – Greg Morse at Desiring God.

 

Preaching the Gospel to All – Barry York at Tabletalk Magazine.

 

Progressive Christianity’s Metamodern Posture – Jeffrey Beaupre at Modern Reformation.

 

The Sacred Christian Art of Martin Earle – Robert Lazu Kmita at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Saturday Good Reads – May 2, 2026

The closer we get to July 4, the flood of articles relating to America’s 250^th anniversary is becoming a tsunami. Emerging Revolutionary War Era is starting a new video series. One of America’s founders chronicled the beginning in sonnets. Benedict Arnold, whose name became synonymous with treason, was first a hero on more than one occasion. The U.S. Army Museum at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, is using “augmented reality” to bring the revolution to life. And there are more links below. 

I think I was 10 or 11 when I started stamp collecting, a hobby that lasted off and on right up to now. One stamp that also seemed financially out of reach was the very first one – the “Penny Black” issued by Great Britain in 1840. It’s still financially out of reach, at least for most of us. But it transformed how letters were mailed, and it made postal management possible on a national and international scale.

 

Some 40 years ago, when I was in a graduate seminar on the Latin American novel, I was trying to tackle Conversations in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa for my seminar research paper and oral presentation. About 100 pages in (it’s a 600-page novel), I almost gave up in despair. I couldn’t figure out what the story was about. Instead, I started over, but this time I briefly outlined each chapter. After the first five chapters, I cracked the code. It was actually a narrative of four interrelated stories, each one told in successive chapters. So the story in chapter one picked up in chapter five, nine, and so on. Maybe it was the work I put into it, but Conversation in the Cathedral remains one of my favorite novels. Henry Oliver at The Common Reader has some observations about difficult writing and difficult novels and poems. 

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

Money and the Making of the American Revolution – Kevin Diestelow at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Thoughts on Thoughts on Government – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Revolutionary Era. 

 

When Germany Invaded America – Jonathan Horn at The Free Press.

 

American Plans for a Fourth Invasion of East Florida – Him Piecuch at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

George Washington’s American Monarchy – Frank Prochaska at History Today.

 

American Stuff

 

The Myth of the American West – Elizabeth Stice at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Faith

 

From Sermon to Life: The Powerful Story of Lloyd-Jones and Stott’s Reconciliation – Peter Withowski.

 

How Jesus Saves from Identity Crisis – Justin Poythress at Digital Liturgies. 

 

Life and Culture

 

A Letter to Me – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Who Killed the Book Review? – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

A.A. Milne’s crossword-puzzle heart in the Hundred Acre Wood – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Why MacDonald’s Phantastes is Essential Reading – Annie Nardone at Anselm Society.

 

Forsaking Success: Wendell Berry’s Return to Kentucky – David Demaree at Front Porch Republic.

 

Poetry

 

Sweet Darkness – David Whyte.

 

“Blue Girls,” poem by John Crowe Ranson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy) – Jordan Kauflin

 Painting: Student Monk, oil on canvas (1890) by Eduard von Grutzner (1846-1925).

Radical inclusion

After James 2:1-13

 

We are the body

of Christ, equal

in his eyes, equal

in our own eyes,

the CEO no different

from the plumber,

the driver of the Mercedes

no different from

the driver of the rent-a-wreck.

 

Because he died for each

of us, because he died

for all of us, he leveled

the distinctions we love

to make. He destroyed

human hierarchies. He

erased the boundaries

we make for ourselves.

He removed partiality

from the church dictionary. 

Photograph by Alicia Quan via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Some Friday Readings

 

“Thou Who Dost Write Thy Name,” poem by Emma Latham – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Ordering the Church for Ordinary Growth – Jake Wright at For the Church.

 

The God of the Astronauts – Spencer Klavan at The New Jerusalem. 

When I Feared Who God Might Be – Lara d’Entremont at A Mother Held.

Poets and Poems: Sr. Sharon Hunter and “Light Before the Sun”

In her 2021 poetry collection, To Shatter Glass, Sr. Sharon Hunter explored childhood and memory, an interior pilgrimage toward understanding and forgiveness. Her new collection, Light Before the Sun, continues that pilgrimage, but it goes beyond, toward something that is more like acceptance and resolution.  

“Life is a stained-glass window,” she writes, using the metaphor to suggest light, color, and brokenness. She will be looking back before she looks forward, and she will the brokenness and dysfunction of the relationships that shaped a childhood, but she will also see the beauty and the purpose within it. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“After the Winter,” poem by Claude McKay – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Threads – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Epigram on Rough Roads,” poem by Robert Burns – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Some Wednesday Readings - April 29, 2026

Language matters: On the media’s anti-American animus – The New Criterion. 

Churchill and the Debt Battle That Made America a Superpower – Amity Shlaes at The Coolidge Review.

 

How Lewis and Clark Invented the Western – Craig Fehrman at Literary Hub.

 

Does reading do us any good? – Flora Champy at Aeon.

 

“Raining cats and dogs,” and other sayings with critters in them – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

I’m Not a Content Creator. I’m a Writer – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

The Mersey Funnel: Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral – Andrew Eberlin at Photos, photographers and photobooks. 

 

The Great Lost Gothic Novel of Italian Romanticism – Idara Crespi at CrimeReads.

Illustration: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.