Thursday, February 6, 2025

Donald Hall and Andrew Motion Write Poetic Memoirs


I’m sure why I first started reading memoirs by major poetic figures, but I recently read two that struck me as particularly significant in the development and history of what we consider contemporary poetry. One was American; the other is a Brit who eventually landed in America. Both knew major figures in poetry in their respective countries and beyond. And both served as poet laureates of their respective countries. 

American Donald Hall (1928-2018) first published a memoir entitled Their Ancient Glittering Eyes in 1992. In 2022, four years after his death, a new updated version entitled Old Poets: Reminiscences & Opinions was produced. It’s not so much a chronological memoir as it is an account of his personal experiences with some of the major figures of 20thcentury poetry. 


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


Some Thursday Readings

 

“February,” poem by Helen Hunt Jackson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Masters of Pulp Fiction: The Lee Child Edition – Frank Theodat at Pulp, Pipe, & Poetry.

 

A Diner for David Lynch: Poems in Remembrance of a Master – Ethan McGuire at New Verse Review.

 

Poet Laura: A Concert in the General Store – Sandra Fox Murphy at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

How My Novel Originated in the Family Bible


When I was young child, I asked my father what the package was that sat on a shelf in his closet. It was wrapped in brown grocery bag paper and tied with twine. “That,” he said, “is the family Bible, and one day it will be yours.” 

That day came during a visit home to New Orleans about 25 years later. Apologizing for the sorry state it was in, my father thought I might find someone in St. Louis to restore it. Instead, I did the time-honored thing and put in on a closet shelf. I did find a conservation box to store it in, and I did handwrite a copy of the four pages of family records. But it sat on the shelf, just as it had sat before.

 

But as I studied the family records, I noticed that the entries for births, deaths, and marriages were all in the same hand, presumably that of my great-grandfather Samuel. He’d even signed his name on an inside cover page. Samuel was something of a family legend, a legend which my later research showed was almost entirely untrue. But he’d certainly written all of the entries.


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


Some Wednesday Readings

 

What Socrates Teaches Us About Love, Politics, and Death – Agnes Callard at The Free Press.

 

5 a.m. – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

The Terrorist Who Murdered My Cousin Now Walks Free – Gideon Black at The Free Press.

 

Matter Matters – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Blood, squalor, and a taste of things to come: 4 literary adventurers on Japan’s invasion of China – Jeffrey Meyers at The Critic Magazine.

 

AI Can Replace Work, But Not Worth – Cameron Fathauer at Digital Liberties.

 

Hugh A. Garland Jr. and the Old South – Joseph Ricci at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Our National Precipice – poem by Kenneth Horne at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Virgil and the Christian Imagination – Paul Krause at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The Lord’s Corner – poem by Tyree Daye at South Writ Large.

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Essays: Benjamin Myers on Place, Education, and Poetry


I’ve been trying to recall when, or how, I first ran across the poetry of Benjamin Myers. I read his Elegy for Trains: Poems in early 2014, and if I can clear the cobwebs away from my memory, it may have been through a recommendation of a friend I met at a writing retreat in Texas. However it happened, Elegy for Trains put me on the road to becoming a Ben Myers reader.  

I know why I enjoy his poetry so much: I can’t read it without being reminded of my own family – my grandmothers, my aunts and uncles, and cousins on both sides. Family is anchored in the idea of place, and I can’t think of family without thinking of my mother’s tribe of German and Cajuns in New Orleans and my father’s smaller but character-filled family in Shreveport. When I read Black Sunday: Poems by Myers, I found myself reading it two and three times simply because of my own family memories it evoked.

 

Myers, a professor of English and literature at Oklahoma Baptist University, doesn’t only write poetry; he also writes about poetry, about education, and the idea of place. He’s collected his essays and article in Ambiguity & Belonging: Essays on Place, Education & Poetry.


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


Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Sadbook Collections – Book 2 – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Dead Sea Scrolls Trilogy – poems by Brian Yapko at Society of Classical Poets.

 

A Sonnet for Candlemas – Malcolm Guite.

 

“Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries,” poem by A.E. Housman – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Monday, February 3, 2025

“Eleven Numbers” by Lee Child


Dr. Nathan Tyler is a mathematics professor who’s planning to attend a mathematics conference in Moscow. The State Department is warning Americans against traveling to Russia, but Tyler is still planning to go. And then a few days before he is to leave, he’s contacted and told (strongly asked) to meet first with a group. He’s met, driven, flown, and driven to a meeting at Ft. Meade, and he’s asked to undertake an assignment for the White House. 

Tyler is to introduce himself to a Russian mathematician who’s one of the leading practitioners in the world. He’s shown what’s wanted – the key to a complex series of numbers that will allow the United States to disable the entire nuclear weapon capability of Russia.

 

He agrees to undertake the assignment and several days later he lands in Moscow. Driving his rental car to the hotel, almost out of nowhere comes a police car with sirens screaming, t-boning Tyler’s car, knocking over a lamppost, and inuring the policeman driving the car. Not to mention the damage to both automobiles. He’s charged, the U.S. Embassy legal attaché advises him to plead guilty, and even though sentenced to some unknown number of years, the U.S, government will trade him for a prisoner the Russians want. At least, that’s the hope.

 

Tyler will soon learn that nothing is what it seems, and he might be able to trust anyone, including his U.S. friends.

 

Lee Child

Eleven Numbers
 is a short story by bestselling thriller writer Lee Child, and it’s a tale with so many twists and turns that the reader eventually stops trying to guess the outcome and just goes along for the ride. And it’s a riveting ride.

 

Lee Child, the pen name for James Dover Grant CBE, is a British thriller writer best known for his Jack Reacher movies (made into movies with Tom Cruise and a television series with Alan Richardson). He attended law school, did art-time work in theater, and then joined Granada Television for 18 years. His company made such series as Brideshead RevisitedThe Jewel in the CrownPrime Suspect, and Cracker. Fired after a corporate restructuring in 1995, he bought $6 worth of paper and sat down to write, drafting Killing Floor, the first of the Jack Reacher novels. And the rest, as they say, is thriller history.

 

I’ve watched the Jack Reacher television series with Alan Richardson, and if you find violence, gratuitous and otherwise, enjoyable, it may be the series (two seasons) for you. The series is two engrossing stories, but I found myself flinching repeatedly during each episode.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Murders for February – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

Turner’s genius for technology – Andrew Wilton at Engelsberg Ideas.

 

Trump’s New Deal: 100 days to reverse the legacy of FDR – Niall Ferguson at The Times of London.

 

How MAGA Won the ‘Sensitive Young Man’ – Mana Afsari at The Free Press.

 

What We Know and What We Don’t Know about January 6 – John Daniel Davidson at Hillsdale College / Imprimis.

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Oneness


After I Peter 3:8-12

We are one, we are

to be one, always,

in all circumstances,

one mind because

our thoughts are his;

one sympathy because

we all need it;

one brotherly love because

we die for each other;

one heart because

we share his heart;

and oneness in humility,

because he loves

each of us so much

that he gave his life,

that we would be saved.


Some Sunday Readings

 

How to Prevent the Next Generation’s Loss of Faith & Knowledge – Glenn Brooke at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

Sin Makes You Stupid – Kevin DeYoung at Clearly Reformed.

 

Evaluating Trump’s First Week of Executive Actions – Joe Carter at The Gospel Coalition.

 

A Song for Anna – poem by Andy Patton at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Choose Your Fighter – Spencer Klavan at Rejoice Evermore. 

 

The Shepherd God,” poem by Jane Schulert – Society of Classical Poets.

 

Light spills – poem by Joy Lenton at Poetry Joy.

 

 

Saturday, February 1, 2025

Saturday Good Reads - Feb. 1, 2025


I had lunch recently with a former work colleague who asked me what AI writing tools I was using. “I’m not,” I said. She was shocked. “But you were always the early adopter when it came to technology and online platforms.” And I was. But I’ve drawn a line for writing with AI. I can’t help running into it when I use Google; Apple wants to update my operating system for AI; and Microsoft is desperate for me to use CoPilot in my Word documents. But my attitude is thanks, but no thanks. Nadya Williams at Front Porch Republic has a similar resolution, but she’s discovering that it’s becoming harder to write because of the AI invasion

When I look at the news these days, I see schizophrenia at work. The confirmation hearings of President Trump’s appointees are an example. You look at reports from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Associated Press, and the Washington Post, and they read like one long unmitigated disaster for the new Administration. Then you see online reports with extended videos of the hearings, and it looks like the nominees are more than holding their own. If the legacy media didn’t sound like such an organized chorus, I might believe what they’re reporting. But if I’ve learned anything about the news media in the past decade, it’s that you need to verify everything they report. Ben Domenech at The Spectator argues that the legacy media have yet to understand the shift in credibility, and the recent election may have been their death knell.

 

Shane Rosenthal at The Humble Skeptic reports on an artifact close to my home. A cuneiform cylinder in the collection of the St. Louis Art Museum dates to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II. And it reads remarkably like the events recorded in the Biblical book of Daniel.

 

More Good Reads

 

Writing and Literature

 

Why Absolute Truth is Still Worth Pursuing in a Narrative-Driven World – Dwyer Murphy at CrimeReads. 

 

The Exorcism of Bilbo Baggins – Ryan Patrick Budd at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

How to Raise Readers, in Thirty-Five Steps – Brad East at Front Porch Republic.

 

News Media

 

The Tyranny of Now – Nicholas Carr at The New Atlantis.

 

Andreessen: Substack and Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover Broke the Social Media Censorship Dynamic – Tom Hains at Real Clear Politics.

 

Our Promise to You – Editorial at The Free Press.

 

Life and Culture

 

Things Worth Remembering: ‘We Fell Morally Ill’ – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

The Gulf and the Silence – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

A Future for the Family: A New Technology Agenda for the Right – First Things Magazine.

 

American Stuff

 

The Great American Debate Begins Again – Martin Gurri at The Free Press.

 

What Happened When DEI Came to the Military? – Madeleine Rowley at The Free Press. 

 

The California fires and the reckoning on liberal governance – editorial by The Spectator.

 

Poetry

 

Close and Slow – Andrew Roycroft at The Sounding Board on poet Michael Longley.

 

Fog,” poem by Robert Hillyer – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient & Modern.

 

“A Song for Simeon,” poem by T.S. Eliot – The Rabbit Room.

 

Faith

 

I Know God’s a Writer – Brianna Lambert at From Glory to Ordinary.

 

No One’s Born to Preach: The Myth of Pulpit ‘Gifting’ – David Mathis at Desiring God.

 

You Raise Me Up – Drakensberg Boys Choir



 Painting: Copenhagen Tram, oil on canvas by Paul Gustave Fisher (1860-1934)

Friday, January 31, 2025

Submit. What?


For Rev. Chris Baker

After I Peter 3:1-7

 

It’s that word, the one

that guarantees flashes

of anger and bile:

submission.

Worse still, it’s couched

in terms of what wives

are to do with husbands.

Submission! Bah, humbug!

It’s all humbug!

 

And yet, whatever you

think, or think you know,

submission is a picture

of what we do, what we’re

expected to do, what is

required of us to do, with

one another, with those

we love, with those

who love us.

 

If it works for wives,

it must work for husbands,

too. Giving honor

to each other lifts

our souls to heaven.

 

Photograph by Victoria Roman via Unsplash. Used with permission.


Some Friday Readings

 

Astonished by Prayer: Poetry to Combat Prayerlessness – Clinton Manley at Desiring God.

 

Remnants – poem by Richard Osler at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

The Middle of Somewhere – Andrea Sanborn at A View of the Lake.

 

“The Wise Men” & “A Song of Gifts to God,” poems by G.K. Chesterton – Dovy Ilardo at Power & Glory.

Thursday, January 30, 2025

Poets and Poems: Louis MacNeice and "Autumn Journal"


Belfast-born Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) tried his hand at all manners of writing. His novels were unsuccessful; his plays not well received. His poetry, however, was something else. It caught the eye of T.S. Eliot, MacNeice’s editor at Faber & Faber. He seemed to have held his own with W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender (a personal friend), and other poets who remain better known from the period. Even today, critics consider his poetry not quite successful (see the biographical listing at the Poetry Foundation). One area of writing where he excelled was in radio plays, and he was a scriptwriter for BBC from 1941 until his death from pneumonia in 1963. 

Autumn Journal, published in the spring of 1939, may well be MacNeice’s poetic high-water mark. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Settlers – poem by Matin Rizley at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Winter Walk – poem by Seth Lewis.

 

Romanticism and the Soul of Learning – Campbell Frank Scribner at Front Porch Republic.

 

Literary culture can’t just dismiss AI – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Here We Still Stand – Joseph Bottum and Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Research for a Novel Upended a Family Civil War Legend


In writing Brookhaven, one of the sources I relied upon for research, book referrals, and general information about the Civil War was a web site called Emerging Civil War. Its official description is “a public history-oriented platform for sharing original scholarship related to the American Civil War.”  

Because the site is aimed at the general reading public (people like me), the articles include historical research, memory studies, travelogues, book reviews, personal narratives, essays, and photography. The writers include professors, National Park rangers, teachers, historical authors, and even general writers (like me).

 

I can’t say enough about how helpful the site has been to my research and my general understanding of the war and the people who fought in it. And now I’m one of their guest authors, with “Research for a Novel Upended a Civil War Legend.” 

Photograph: My great-grandparents, Samuel and Octavia Young, about 1880. The photograph was rather clumsily repaired after suffering some damage.

Some Wednesday Readings


Why Literature Still Matters – Louis Markos at The Imaginative Conservative. 

Horrific Price: The Unlimited Courage of Apollo 1 – Jason Clark at This is the Day.

 

When art goes to war – James Panero at The New Criterion.

 

Spin – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Walking the Fault Line – Srikanth Ready at the Poetry Foundation.

 

Immigration – Kit Swartz at Gentle Reformation.

 

Book Interviews: Iron Harvest by Mick Jenkinson – Paul Brookes at The Wombwell Rainbow. 

 

On Courage – Adam Smith at Front Porch Republic. 

 

Going Medieval – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

“A Flower Given to My Daughter,” poem by James Joyce – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Biggest Policy Change of the Century – Christopher Caldwell at The Free Press. 

 

Photograph: James Joyce (1915) by Alex Ehrezweig.

 

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

“What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt”


Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) is perhaps best remembered today as the political scientist and philosopher who studied Hitler’s Germany and other totalitarian regimes and described “the banality of evil.” Born in Germany, she earned a Ph.D. degree from Marburg University but was forced to flee to Paris when the Nazis rose to power. She and her husband Heinrich Blucher were forced to flee Paris after the fall of France and eventually settled in New York City.  

She became the research director for the Council on Jewish Relations, editor of Schocken Books, and executive director of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, described by Britannica as created to “salvage Jewish writings dispersed by the Nazis.” Later, she taught at the University of Chicago and the New School of Social Research in New York.


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


Some Tuesday Readings

 

‘A prince of the English language’: Tributes as poet Michael Longley dies aged 85 – Adrian Rutherford at the Belfast Telegraph

 

To Break a Promise – poem by David Whyte.

 

50 States of Generosity: Montana – Sandra Heska King at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

English Breakfast – poem by Henrietta Lovell at Every Day Poems.

 

“A Winter Blue Jay,” poem by Sara Teasdale – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Monday, January 27, 2025

"Murder in the Parish" by Faith Martin


Retired DI Hillary Greene, now a civilian consultant to the Thames Valley Police on cold cases, has a new mystery to unravel with her team. And she has the mystery of her own health. 

Thirty years earlier, right before Christmas, a parish vicar was murdered in the doorway of the vicarage. The medical examiner suggested the means was something like a common garden shovel, but the weapon was never found. And many of the people interviewed at the time have died or moved away. Yet two of the potential suspects start receiving blackmail notes, and it appears that the cold case crime is now getting bound up with a wholly new crime.

 

But who would want to kill a vicar, reportedly liked by everyone, some to the point of having major crushes on the man? For Greene and her team, this looks like a personal crime, but there’s nothing in the vicar’s background that offers a clue.

 

At the same time, Hillary’s nagging cough, though to be a chest or lung infection, is turning into something else entirely. And now she has to have tests run, the results of which she may not be ready for.

 

Murder in the Parish is the twentieth DI Hillary Greene novel by British writer Faith Martin, and it’s unusual in the series in that the cold case involved is really, really cold and offers virtually no clues as to a possible solution. The reader gets hints that the investigating team doesn’t get, with some of those involved in or affected by the original crime having conversations or doing things the police are unaware of. But it’s an engaging, riveting story, not the least reason being what is happening to Hillary herself.

 

In addition to the DI Hillary Greene novels, Martin (a pen name for Jacquie Walton) has also published the Ryder and Loveday novels as well as the Jenny Sterling mysteries. Under the name Joyce Cato, she has published several non-series detective stories. Both Cato and Martin are also pen names for Walton. (Walton has another pen name as well – Maxine Barry, under which she wrote 14 romance novels.) A native of Oxford, she lives in a village in Oxfordshire.

 

Related:

 

Murder on the Oxford Canal by Faith Martin.

 

Murder at the University by Faith Martin

 

Murder of the Bride by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in the Village by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in the Family by Faith Martin.

 

Murder at Home by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in the Meadow by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in the Mansion by Faith Martin.

 

Murder by Fire by Faith Martin.

 

Murder at Work by Faith Martin.

 

Murder Never Retires by Faith Martin.

 

Murder of a Lover by Faith Martin.

 

Murder Never Misses by Faith Martin.

 

Murder by Candlelight by Faith Martin.

 

Murder in Mind by Faith Martin.

 

Hillary’s Final Case by Faith Martin

 

Hillary’s Back! by Faith Martin.

 

Murder Now and Then by Faith Martin.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Agatha Christie, Below the Equator – Naomi Kaye at CrimeReads.

 

Saving Classical Music: A Return to Tradition – Andrew Balio at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Gulf of Mexico / Gulf of America : Highlighting Civil War Era Location Literacy – Neil Chatelain at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Last Boys at the Beginning of History – Mana Asfari at The Point Magazine.

 

Ethan Haim: ‘We Took On the Federal Leviathan and We Won’ – Emily Yoffe at The Free Press.

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Suffering sojourners


After 1 Peter 2:21-25

We are sojourners,

strangers in this world,

sheep called back

to the shepherd, sheep

so loved that the shepherd

suffered and died for them.

We return home, and

we hold fast to the shepherd,

sharing the suffering,

the wounds, the insults,

the hurts, the rejections,

the ridicule, the scourging,

suffering because he

first suffered for us.

We are sojourners,

called to serve,

called to suffering,

suffering servants

healed, suffering

sojourners filled

with joy.

 

Photograph by Fabian Albert via Unsplash. Used with permission.


Some Sunday Readings

 

Five Things You Can Control – Jill Noble. 

 

To the Parents of Wild Ones – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

 

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Saturday Good Reads - Jan. 25, 2025


You might think that because it’s history, all the basic facts of an era, an event, or a person have been written down, at least somewhere. That’s what I thought when I wrote my historical novel Brookhaven, trusting Dr. Google and Mr. DuckDuckGo at least to point me to the right sources or general directions. I discovered my assumptions were largely wrong. Sometimes, what should have been a no-brainer took hours (and, in one case, days) to track down. Erin Cotter at CrimeReads would likely commiserate, and she offers a basic primer with Historical Fiction 101

In the run-up to the November election, a flood of articles inundated newspaper op-ed pages, magazines, online publications, and the air waves about one topic: the Electoral College. In general, I’d say they were about 98 percent in one direction: the Electoral College should be abolished. I suspect the motivating idea was that one candidate might win the popular vote, and another the electoral vote, and that was deemed wrong. Then came the election, one candidate won both, and, suddenly, it was crickets. Chuck Chalberg at The Imaginative Conservative returns to the basic question: Does the Electoral College Still Work?

 

The grooming gang controversy rages on in Britain, and someone needs to tell the British government that you don’t address and calm a crisis by throwing gasoline and lit matches at it. Laurie Wastell at The Critic Magazine discusses what she calls Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s “political prisoners,” and then follows it up with a second round. Ben Sixsmith weighs in, saying Starmer’s scapegoating is downright silly. Douglas Murray at The Free Press says what the British government wouldn’t say, and the New Criterion delivers a rather pointed editorial: Don’t let’s be beastly.

 

On Jan. 22, 1938, one of the most iconic American plays ever made its debut in Princeton, New Jersey – Our Town by Thornton Wilder. I saw it first in high school when I was all of 16, way back in 1968, and even at that age I thought it was marvel. Jason Clark at This Is the Day recalls the play’s debut, and how it created magic, even without props.

 

More Good Reads

 

Poetry

 

My Daughter Asks about Some Bombs in Europe – Ben Myers at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Rattler,’ on Wyeth’s ‘Master Bedroom’ – Carl Kinsky at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Constellation of Genius: Milosz, Camus, Einstein, and Weil – Cynthia Haven at Church Life Journal. 

 

“Bellbirds,” poem by Henry Kendall – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Rediscovering the Golden Age Novels of Dostoevsky Translator David Magarshack – Martin Edwards at CrimeReads.

 

Unthorough Thoughts on Thackeray – Adam Roberts.

 

Ralph Wood on Flannery O’Connor and the Church – David Moore at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Faith

 

Hitting the Bullseye May Take Awhile – Judy Allen at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

God Doesn’t Work for Me – Seth Lewis.

 

The Theology of Music – Peter Leithart at First Things Magazine.

 

The Opposite of Politics – Spencer Klavan at The New Jerusalem.


Prison and the Progress of the Soul – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Never Alone – Belinda Carlisle & Nicholas Hamilton, from the movie “Brave the Dark”



Painting: Beatrice, oil on canvas (1895) by Marie Spartali Stillman (1844-1927)