Poets and Poems: Lisa Marie Basile and "Saints Of"

I had a college roommate who wore a St. Christopher (second or third century A.D.) medal around his neck. The saint, who lived in the second or third century A.D., was the patron saint of travelers. He wasn’t Catholic, but he was quite fond of his medal, claiming it protected him when driving to and from college, about four hours one way.  And then he read that the church had dropped St. Christopher’s annual July 25 commemoration. A reorganization of the church calendar had been undertaken, and relatively recent commemorations were dropped. The one for St. Christopher had only begun in 1550. 

My roommate was mournful. “I’m still wearing my medal,” he’d say, “but I guess I have to call him Mr. Christopher now.”

 

That story of “Mr. Christopher” came to mind as I read Saints Of: Poems, the new collection by Lisa Marie Basile. She, too, has saints for whom there are no annual commemorations. These saints have no official days, and, in fact, don’t even have names. But they are titles for poems, and every title is something familiar.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Blessing for Sound – poem by David Whyte.

 

Gaze Out the Nearest Window – Luke Burgis at The Free Press.

 

Paradise Lost Sold for £10: John Milton’s Transformational Literary Sale – Jason Clark at This is the Day. 

 

Blackwing – poem by Donna Hilbert at Every Day Poems.

 

“Dream of an Old Fox,” a ballad by Seiji Hakui – Steve Knepper at New Verse Review.

"The Memory of Old Jack" by Wendell Berry

Old Jack is what we once called “a character.” You didn’t find characters in large cities; you found them in small towns. Everyone knew them; they might be funny or odd or irascible or curmudgeonly. But they were part of the fabric of the place, part of its history and memory.  

Old Jack is 92. Born in 1860, the year before the Civil War, he has lived in the Port William area for his entire life. He’s connected to other families by kinship and relationship. He farmed for as far back as he can remember, but his farming days are behind him. He lives in what passes for Port William’s hotel, really just a boarding house with other elderly residents. But none are as old as he; he can remember some of them as children.

 

Old Jack can feel the end of his long life approaching. He knows this as well as he knows anything. He finds himself moving almost effortlessly between what was and what is. He recalls his childhood, his courtship of Rose and their doomed marriage, the births and the deaths, his estrangement from his only surviving child, the cost he paid for taking on the farmer who didn’t revere the land like Jack did. He remembers of deaths of friends; but he can rouse himself to engage the present, like seeing young Andy Catlett off to college, knowing it’s the last time he’ll see the boy of whom he’s especially fond.

 

Wendell Berry

The Memory of Old Jack is the second-to-last of the Port William novels by Wendell Berry. Set in 1952, it is a requiem for the kind of small-town and farming life that slowly vanished after World Wat II. It’s about the land and the people who farmed it, and the lives they lived. It’s not a rose-colored-glasses look backward; not everything was wonderful and simple. But it’s a story that only Wendell Berry could write, I think.

 

Berry is a poet, novelist, essayist, environmentalist, and social critic. His fiction, both novels and stories, are centered in the area he calls Port William, Kentucky, on the Ohio River. He’s won a rather astounding number of awards, prizes, fellowships, and recognitions. He lives on a farm in Kentucky.

 

If such a thing as purpose to a novel exists, then the purpose of The Memory of Old Jack is to remind us that this way of life existed, it was important, and when it passed, we lost something worth keeping. This may be my favorite of all the Port William novels,

 

Related:

My review of Berry’s That Distant Land.

Wendell Berry and the Land.

My review of Berry’s Jayber Crow.

Wendell Berry and This Day: Poems at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Wendell Berry and Terrapin: Poems at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Wendell Berry’s Our Only World.

The Art of the Commonplace by Wendell Berry.

Nathan Coulter by Wendell Berry.

Andy Catlett: Early Travels by Wendell Berry.

A World Lost by Wendell Berry.

A Place on Earth by Wendell Berry.

Some Monday Readings

 

The Intellectual Virtues of the Small Magazine – Jeff Reimer at Comment Magazine.

 

The Darktown Strutters Ball – Debra Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Message from Pope Francis: Read a Novel – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

The Fantastic Imagination – George Macdonald at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

St. James’s Square and the Growth of Stuart London – A London Inheritance.

He’s Got Me Rereading My Own Books

Pastor Bill Grandi has three posts last week on his rereading of my Dancing Priest series. On Tuesday, Bill discussed the difficulty of reading the fourth book in the series, Dancing Prophet, because of what it was about. It was a difficult book to write, and it became somewhat prophetic, including when the Archbishop of Canterbury resigned for helping to cover up a scandal in the Church of England. 

On Wednesday, Bill discussed a conversation between Michael and Sarah Kent-Hughes in Dancing Prophet, in which Sarah observes how hard it is to be one of the workers sent in “to clean out the pipes.” And on Thursday, Bill writes about a scene in the fifth and last in the series, Dancing King, in which Michael’s two sons, Henry and Thomas (or Hank and Tommy, as they’re known by the other characters), are discussing “calling,” or being called by God as described in I Samuel 16:1-13, the rejection of Saul and the anointing of David.  Coincidentally, the pastor at my church used that passage as the text for his sermon this morning. 

 

Bill’s post led me to start rereading my own books. I’ve already finished the first two, Dancing Priest and A Light Shining. (Amazon has the Dancing Priest pages messed up; the Kindle version is here; the cheaper paperback price is here, but it’s still more than it’s supposed to be.)

 

Originally, I had planned on doing only those two books. They were written as one (huge) manuscript of about 150,000 words. But the publisher and I had a conversation about what might happened after Michael and Sarah returned to Britain, and it was in that conversation that I described what could be the plot lines for several more books, including what would become Dancing Prophet and its difficult subject. Two weeks later, the publisher sent me a short news clip; the difficult subject had become a horrific reality. That reality continues 13 years later, with the resignation last year of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

 

After rereading A Light Shining, it is my prayer that its subject – religious violence that nearly tears Britain apart – never becomes reality. 

The song

After Psalms 33:4-5 and 100 

I hear the earth

singing, I hear

the earth serving

with one voice,

I hear the earth

worshipping, I hear

the songs of thanksgiving,

the songs of praise.

I am singing.

I am serving.

I am worshipping.

I am serving.

Through the gates

I walk, singing.

In his courts,

I stand, singing.

I stand singing

with a voice

of thanksgiving

of his faithfulness.

He loves forever.

He is faithful,

forever.

 

Photograph by Keegan Henman via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Winds Blow Hardest Against the Tallest Trees – Tim Challies.

 

Every Pinch of Pain Has Purpose – John Piper at Desiring God.

 

Next Easter, Just Preach the Gospel – Robb Brunansky ay The Cripplegate.

 

Saturday Good Reads - April 26, 2025

Something strange is afoot – Gen Z is flocking to church. It’ not only happening in the United States (where the return appears to be led by young men) but also in Britain, where it’s being called “a very British revival.” 

The outcome of the American Revolution was a very near thing, and there were many times when all looked lost and the British would regain control. But things happened; in some cases, they were very small things. Sam Negus at Law & Liberty looks at the “Contingency in the American Revolution.”

 

For centuries, scholars have believed that William Shakespeare abandoned his family in Stratford while he went to seek fame and fortune in London. New evidence suggests that this isn’t really what happened, and that Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway had a much stronger and better marriage that previously believed. 

 

Faith

 

Bid Adieu. Machen was right – Nathan Eshelman at Gentle Reformation.

 

Amid the chaos and the night of man: From The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

What We Miss When We Skip the Prophets – Ryan Higginbottom at Knowable Word.

News Media

 

A new media order is emerging: Journalism isn’t dead. It’s on Substack – Hamish McKenzie at The Substack Pot.

 

Poetry

 

“The Listeners,” poem by Walter de la Mare – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

John Neihardt’s Epic ‘Cycle of the West’: Uncovering America’s Forgotten Poet, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 – Andrew Benson Brown at Classical Poets Live.

 

A Widower – Amit Majmudar at Literary Matters.

 

Veils – Tyler Rogness at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“Channel Firing,” poem by Thomas Hardy – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“Re-reading Katherine Mansfield’s Bliss and Other Stories,” poem by Douglas Dunn – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

American Stuff

 

Don Sickles Returns to Gettysburg for the Last Time – John L. Hopkins at Emerging Civil War.

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Art of Adventure Covers – Frank Theodat at Pulp, Pipe, & Poetry.

 

America 250

 

Stolen or Gone Missing? – Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Paul Revere Wasn’t the Only Midnight Rider Who Dashed in the Darkness to Warn the Patriots That the British Were Coming – Ellen Wexler at Smithsonian Magazine.

 

Community Life

 

Garden with Children – Reid Makowsky at Front Porch Republic.

 

Culture

 

Princeton’s War on Civil Rights – Christopher Rufo.

 

Desert Road – Casting Crowns

Painting: Man with Moustache Reading, oil on canvas (1930s) by Louise Alix (1888-1980). 

When renewal begins

After Romans 12:2 and Luke 6:43-45 

When renewal begins,

the old is gutted or

torn down, replaced 

by the new and lasting.

Renewal can be painful,

a tearing out, not unlike

removing a hurting,

diseased, rotting tooth,

extracted for our good,

replaced for our renewal. 

Renewal is a process,

not a transformation

overnight. Renewal is

lifelong, dismantling

the old to establish

the new. And sometimes

progress can only be

seen and understood

at the end. In the meantime,

all creation groans.

 

Photograph by Marek Studzinski via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Resurrection – poem by R.S. Thomas at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Why Does John Mention That He Outran Peter to Jesus’ Tomb? – A.W. Workman at Entrusted to the Dirt.

 

Jesus Lives! – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Easter Isn’t Over – Seth Lewis.

 

“A Cowboy’s Prayer,” poem by Badger Clark – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poets and Poems: Sandra Marchetti and "Diorama"

One of my most vivid memories of the toys of childhood, other than my official Davy Crockett coonskin hat, was the ViewMaster ™. I spent countless hours advancing the scenes of stories, foreign places, movies, science topics, and many other subjects, with those small windows on a circular cardboard reel. And, yes, the ViewMaster ™ is still around and available on Amazon and in toy stores.  

Officially, those scenes on the reels were “dioramas,” but I always believed dioramas were something else entirely – recreated scenes, usually historical or from nature, that you could see at museums like the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum in Shreveport. The museum as close to my grandmother’s house, and the two of us often went when I visited. It was my first view of agriculture up close.

 

As it turns out, the definition of diorama is broad enough to include both my childhood toy and the museum exhibits. Says the Merriam-Webster dictionary: “a scenic representation in which a partly translucent painting is seen through a distance through an opening; a scenic representation in which sculpted figures are displayed, usually in miniature.” A diorama can also be a life-size exhibit.

 

In Diorama: Poems, poet Sandra Marchetti doesn’t talk about childhood memories of toys or museum visits. But the aptly named poetry collection functions as its own diorama, allowing you to peer through a poem to view subjects displayed in scenic ways, or to allow you to walk through a life-size representation of a subject. And she does it by using profoundly vivid language.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

Offsite – poem by George Witte at The New Criterion.

 

Hatley St. George: a poem for St. George’s Day – Malcolm Guite.

 

Sonnets for Shakespeare’s Birthday – Margaret Coats at the Society of Classical Poets. 

 

“A Fairy Song,” poem by William Shakespeare – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Some Wednesday Readings

  

The Beauty Around Me – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

The Forgotten Battle of Menotomy – Michael Ruderman at American Heritage.

 

Freedom is still the Revolutionary War’s legacy – Michael Aulin at The Spectator.

 

John Adams and the Rubicon of Lexington / Concord – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

A Phone that Does Not Ring – David Bannon at Front Porch Republic.

 

250^th Anniversary: Benedict Arnold’s War Begins, April 22, 1775 – Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Agrippa Hull: A Revolutionary Story – Talya Leodari at The Journal of the American Revolution. 

Drama at the Old North Bridge - Rick Atkinson at American Heritage.

Painting: John Adams about 1775. 

 

Poets and Poems: Christina Cook and “Roaming the Labyrinth”

In 2005, Christina Cook was working on her MFA thesis. Her subject was the French poet Marie-Claire Bancquart (1932-2019), who’d been a professor at several French universities, including the Sorbonne. Cook was able to arrange an interview with Bancquart at her home in Paris, where she lived with her husband, composer Alain Bancquart (1934-2022). 

The interview extended to lunch and then further extended to spending a day with the Bancquarts as they showed her some of their favorite parts of Paris. The day became a friendship, one lasting until Marie-Claire’s death in 2019 and Alain’s in 2022. 

 

The story of that day and that friendship has become Roaming the Labyrinth, written by Cook as part memoir, part diary, part tribute, part Bancquart’s poems and Cook’s translations, and part Cook’s own poems. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The hard Frost – Brenda Wineapple at The New Criterion reviews Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry by Adam Plunkett.

 

“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now,” poem by A.E. Housman – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Married Pairs – poem by Sandra Marchetti at Every Day Poems. 

 

"London Blue" by Emma Jameson

Tony Hetheridge, retired Scotland Yard detective and aka Lord Anthony Hetheridge, is recovering from knee replacement surgery and watching over his infant son. His wife, Kate, is back at her job as a detective inspector, after her pregnancy leave. Both Hethridges will soon be awash in new crimes. 

Kate and her team are called to the home of a seemingly well-to-do woman, whose body has been discovered by the cleaning lady. The death appears to be of natural causes; the dead woman was in her 70s, there no sign of violence on the body, and the house itself shows no signs of a break-in or theft. But something doesn’t sit right with Kate, and the autopsy will show that it is murder.

 

Tony is visited by a friend who asks him to investigate a strange series of coincidences involving a three-woman singing group. One was kidnapped and murdered; another was attacked by what appeared to be a mugger; and one is convinced she’s being stalked. Plus their manager had been killed in an explosion on their tour bus. Tony takes on the case, even though he’s confined to home during his recovery and physical therapy.

 

The two cases will, inevitably, come together; it turns out that the connecting link is, of all things, a young woman’s finishing school. It may be the last of its kind, but it seems to be full of politics, intrigue, and now possibly even murder.

 

Emma Jameson

London Blue is the eighth installment of the Lord and Lady Hetheridge crime series by British author Emma Jameson, and it’s a welcome addition. It’s been three years since the last novel, Untrue Blue, giving rise to speculation that Jameson might have ended the series. That, fortunately, has turned out not to be the case, and she’s said in a mystery newsletter that she’s working on Hetheridge No. 9. It’s a solid series, with one of the key features being how Jameson plays off the upper-class Tony against the working class (London East End) Kate. And she includes a worrisome side story about Kate’s colleague and Tony’s former subordinate Paul Bhar, who has a new baby girl who might have developmental disabilities.

 

In addition to the Hetheridge series, Jameson has a second series of novels featuring the amateur detective Dr. Benjamin Bones. The series begins in Cornwall during World War II, and it has a companion series called “The Magic of Cornwall.” 

 

London Blue is a class Hetheridge story – cases that merge, suspects and witnesses who all seem to avoid telling the truth or omitting key details, and the ongoing clash of classes. And Jameson adds exactly the right amount of humor to relieve the tension.

 

Related:

Ice Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Murder by Emma Jameson.

 

Something Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Black & Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Blooded by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Christmas by Emma Jameson.

 

Untrue Blue by Emma Jameson. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

“Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob…” – Phill Greenwalt at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Felixstowe Martello Towers, Bawdsey Radar and Sutton Hoo – A London Inheritance.

 

A mission of guilt: On the West’s latest self-flagellation – The New Criterion.

Things Worth Remembering: One Easter Night in Europe - Rod Dreher at The Free Press.

The Patriot Martyrs of April 19, 1775 - Mark Maloy at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

The stone rolled away

After Mark 16:1-8 

They came to anoint

the body, unsure exactly

how to do what they

needed to do: get past 

the guards, then roll

away the stone sealing

the tomb. What were

they but three women?

The guards would laugh

to see three women

struggle to move

the stone, assuming they

would be allowed

to get that close. They

discover the work

has been done for them:

the guards are gone,

the stone rolled away,

and no body to anoint.

Christ has risen.

He has risen,

indeed. 

Photograph by Kelly Sikkema via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Rise My Soul, The Lord is Risen – Matt Papa, Matt Boswell, & Kristyn Getty

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Awkwardness of Easter – Aaron Garriott at Ligonier.

 

John Berryman’s Eleven Addresses to the Lord – Critical Readings. 

 

The day that changed the world – Matthew Roberts at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Most Radical Thing You Can Bring to Easter Dinner – Chris Castaldo at Crossway.

 

The Women at the Tomb: Clarifying the Marys and the First Witnesses of the Resurrection – Justin Taylor at The Gospel Coalition.

A Reader Continues to Reread the “Dancing Priest” Stories

Pastor Bill Grandi is continuing to reread the Dancing Priest stories. And he’s continuing to pull lessons. He’s finished reading the third book in the series, Dancing King, and he posted twice this week about what he’s reading. 

On April 14, Bill discussed the question of “Why?”. People and organizations can tell you what they do, he writes, but they have difficulty explaining why they do what they do. He cites the example of Michael Kent-Hughes’ brother Henry, who becomes a Christian largely because his Mchael accepts him for having intrinsic value – that his worth came not from money, or power or position, but from being created as a child of God. Henry had never experienced that before.

 

On April 15, Bill cites a conversation between Michael and Jay Lanham, the young man Michael’s interviewing to be his director of communications. Jay tells Michael that what struck him about his sermons was that Michael didn’t communicate at people as an audience, but instead he talked with them as people. Again, this reflects Michael’s belief that people have intrinsic value, that they worth talking with.

 

I’ve often read and hear people speak of “communication to the masses.” If there’s an expression I can’t stand, that’s it. It’s elitist, since the speaker or writer never considers themselves to be a member of the “the masses.” It’s Marxist. And it’s ultimately dehumanizing, objectifying individual people as some large bloc of humanity that has to be communicated at, with talking points at the ready. 

 

Read Bill’s posts. And follow his blog, Living in the Shadow. He always has something worthwhile to talk with you about.

 

 

Related:

 

Rereading the “Dancing Priest” Series.

Saturday Good Reads - April 19, 2025

Today marks the 250^th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which officially launched the American Revolution. William Anthony Hay at Real Clear History considers the battles and their impact. The scholarly / popular blog site Emerging Revolutionary War is celebrating all weekend. I had a post Thursday at Tweetspeak Poetry about how Longfellow turned Paul Revere’s ride into a national legend, and American Revolution scholar Phil Greenwalt has a review of a brand new book all about the ride, and what did and didn’t happen. An invoice in the Massachusetts State Archives tells not of one but many rides. And here's what Paul Revere himself said about the ride, 23 years later: the letter and the transcription.

Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa died Monday at 89. I was introduced to his work when I took a course in the Latin American Novel in the 1980s and coincidentally heard him speak on campus. Our class read his novel The Green House. On a business trip in Kansas City, I found The War of the End of the World, about a little-known messianic movement in Brazil in the 19^th century, and I read it almost non-stop. My class paper was on his Conversation in the Cathedral, a large, complex novel that seems too difficult to read until you figure out the structure, and then it becomes an incredibly enthralling story. Since then, I think I’ve read almost everything he’s written. Two obituaries published this week that I thought were especially good were by the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian. 

 

In 1951, British mystery writer Josephine Tey published one of the most remarkable detective novels ever. Her police detective, Alan Grant, is recovering from surgery in a hospital. He’s restless and bored, so he turns to solving a mystery that’s never been solved – did Richard III really murder the two young princes in the Tower of London? What’s unusual about Tey’s book is that Grant solves the crime from his hospital bed – and it’s an entirely credible solution. Sarah Weinman at CrimeReads considers The Daughter of Time as “a mystery like no other before.” (I read it 50 years ago, and it remains one of my favorite mystery stories.) If you’re interested, here’s the Richard III Society’s take on what happened to the princes, and here’s a clue to the mystery that was reported as recently as last December.

 

More Good Reads

 

Faith

 

Knights of the Round Temple – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

In Between on the Camino de Santiago – John Murdock at Front Porch Republic.

 

Ben-Hur (1926, silent film) – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Art

 

Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 at the National Gallery is a remarkable achievement – Martin LaMonica at The Conversation.

 

Writing and Literature

 

A response from Tyndale Publishing on cursing – Mark at Thoughts of a Sojourner.

 

Max Allan Collins on Continuing the Work of Dashiell Hammett – at Crime Reads.

 

Middlemarch is a novel about sympathizing with everyone – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Faith

 

Bible stolen from unsuspecting churchgoers – Stephen Steele at Gentle Reformation.

 

Is the Resurrection of Jesus Likely or Unlikely? – Michael J. Kruger at Canon Fodder.

 

Why poetry? – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Truth, Goodness, & Beauty – Chris Buckle at Providence Podcast.

 

Life and Culture

 

Why Progressives Increasingly Support Violence – Zack Dulberg and Max Horder at City Journal. 

 

Poetry

 

“Hawks in Holy Week,” poem by Sally Thomas – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Christ’s Last Words Were a Poem – Abram Van Engen at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Hold Him High – Citizens

 Painting: Lady Reading in an Interior, oil on canvas (circa 1795-1800) by Marguerite Gerard (1781-1837).