Poets and Poems: Catherine Lawton and “Where All Things Meet, Mirror & Mingle”

Faith poetry has a long history, extending back at least to the Psalms of the Old Testament of the Bible and likely even earlier. What’s almost curious, but understandable, is how contemporary poetry has separated, largely if not entirely, into secular and religious streams. It’s a mirror of the culture at large, but not everyone mimics that mirror. 

But not every poet has followed that divergence. Some take a more holistic approach, integrating all of life in their poetry. One of those poets is Catherine Lawton. 

 

Lawton is an author, essayist, and a poet. She’s published numerous books, including fiction, memoirs, non-fiction works like Write and Publish Organically, and poetry collections such as Glimpses of Glory. Her newest poetry collection, Where All Things Meet, Mirror & Mingle, reinforce her recurring poetic theme of life and faith as a collective whole

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

At the typewriter – poem by Amelia Friedline at Innocence Abroad.

 

“The Scholars,” poem by William Butler Yeats – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Hair on Fire at the Church Lady’s Brunch – Renee Emerson at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Ars Poetica – poem by Megan Willome at Every Day Poems.

Some Monday Readings - April 20, 2026

 

Reading is magic – Sam Kriss at Numb at the Lodge. 

Tales from the road: The dead of Falling Waters, a forgotten Gettysburg Campaign battle – John Banls’ Civil War Blog.

 

No, Books Are Note Remotely Too Expensive – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

A New Wild West in Jackson, Louisiana – James Taylor Foreman at The Dispatch.

 

A Week of Tears. A Week of Storms – Katie Andraskie at Katie’s Ground.

 

Publishing has an AI problem – Alexander Larman at The Critic Magazine.

 

Learn the Hard Way – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

How Big Pharma (Successfully) Targeted Women – Matt Bivens at Racket News.

 

A Christian Philosophy of Education – Howard Merken at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Photograph: The Falling Waters historical marker.

Listen and do

After James 1:22-25 

It is a process:

the word is designed

to be heard, planted

in your hearts,

sanctifying you

over time. You

can tell if it takes

root by what you

do. Faith is not

only what you say;

faith is also what

you do. It is both

hearing and doing.

It is both believing

and doing. Neither

believing nor doing

takes priority; both

must be done. That

brings the blessing.

Listen and do.

Do and listen.

 

Photograph by Anastasiya Badun via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Paradox of the Brightening Path – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition.

 

The Day Death Tried to Swallow Life – Clinton Manley at Desiring God.

Saturday Good Reads - April 18, 2026

We’re seeing the beginning of a flood of articles, posts, reports, and television programs about the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The flood is going to continue rising until July 4, but it is, I think, a good thing. We can understand where we came from as a nation. Two examples: Kelt Holt at Just Enough History writes some wonderful articles about the revolution; this week she looks at what were the final steps to independence: Dunmore’s Proclamation, the Olive Branch Petition, and Common Sense. 

If you’re so inclined, you can actually follow in the footsteps of the founders and have a drink where they plotted the revolution over a few beers. 

 

And in the category of you can’t know too much about those who don’t particularly like you or your beliefs, Bradley Green at Crossway has penned “10 Things You Should Know About Critical Theory,” which is sometimes known as cultural Marxism and explains a lot about the crazy things we see in contemporary life in the West.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The American Revolution at 250 – review by Kevin Diestelow at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Men Who Bankrolled America – James Grant at The Free Press.

 

Britain in 1776 – Madsen Pirie at The Critic Magazine.

 

John Adams’s Rage Bait – Jonathan Horn at The Free Press.

 

Poetry

 

The Artist’s Pen Bodying Forth the Poet’s Imagination – Steven Searcy at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

“On the Death of Dr. Benjamin Franklin,” poem by Philip Freneau – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Perils of Writing in an Age of Distraction – Adam Smith at Front Porch Republic.

 

Life and Culture

 

Why Avocations Matter – Brianna Lambert at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Defying decline – James Pierson at The New Criterion on What Really Matters: Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom, and Family by Timothy Goeglein. 

 

Faith

 

4 Things We Added to the Bible – Christ at Homeward Bound.

 

The Watchmaker’s Wager – Joshua Budimlic at Iotas in Eternity.

 

Free Ex Q&A: Ryan Burge – Mary Julia Koch at The Wall Street Journal (story unlocked).

 

American Stuff

 

The Face of Rural America in 1976 – Yuri Bezmenov at How to Subvert Subversion.

 

Let It Be Jesus – We the Kingdom

 Painting: Old Fessli Reading a Newspaper, oil on canvas (1900) by Albert Anker (1831-1910).

Put it away

After James 1:19-21 

Put away 

filthiness,

all of it. 

Do the same

with wickedness, 

rampant as it is. 

Instead, receive

the word implanted

in you, and more 

than that, receive it

in meekness,

because that word 

can save your souls. 

Receive it as it’s 

intended to be

received: 

teaching you,

sanctifying you, 

edifying you, 

encouraging you,

transforming you.

 

Photograph by Ruchindra Gunasekara via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“From Canzoniere 264,” poem by Petrarch – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Crumbs – poem by Seth Lewis.

 

Here I Raise My Ebenezer – Maribeth Barber Albritton at Letters from Crickhollow.

 

Poets and Poems: Emily Bright and “This Ground Beneath Our Feet”

As I read Emily Bright’s new collection of poetry, it was the word “ground” in the title that kept coming to mind. “Ground” has a double meaning. It can be the physical ground we stand and walk upon and that our homes occupy, and it can be the historical, genealogical, emotional, psychological, and social realities that gives shape to and hold our lives in place. While This Ground Beneath Our Feet includes both, it is the second kind that Bright really focuses on.  

The collection, appropriately enough, uses the metaphor of a growing tree to organize the poems into four sections. The poems of “Roots” draw from her family history – colonists traveling to a new land, the ocean passage itself, and clearing the land in their new homes. The poems of “Ground” move to both the physical landscape as well what the land produces. These are not confined solely to space; one poem describes interplanetary space travel but still manages to be about ground. The poems of “Branches” move closer to her own contemporary life, and “Seeds” describes not only scenes of childhood but also cultural seeds, like reading poetry in a prison environment.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Puzzle of Minor Poetry – Robert Shaw at Portico Quarterly.

 

“Telling the Bees,” poem by Lizette Woodwoth Reese – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Spring-tine, night-time, rabbits and raccoons – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

“The King Wavers,” from Shakespeare’s Hamlet – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Clerihews,” poem by E.C. Bentley – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Happy Birthday Every Day Poems – Celebrating 15 Years! – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

“Brookhaven” and the Battle of Shiloh

For a very long time, no one in my father’s family – father, aunts, uncles, grandmother, or cousins – knew why the family Bible contained a death notice. The name was Jarvis Seale; the only thing the listing had was the date of his death. Who was this person? Why was he considered so important that my great-grandfather, who’d penned every entry in the records, had included him. My father guessed Jarvis might have been a distant cousin, or a close friend. 

It was only in the years I’d been doing reading and research for my historical novel Brookhaven that I discovered the answer, and then it was simply by happenstance. The key was the date of his death.

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

Some Wednesday Readings

 

What Pullman gets wrong about Narnia – Caleb Woodbridge at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Liberalism of George Smiley – Jake Meador at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Chesterton’s Radical Sanity – Rachel Lu at Law & Liberty.

Poets and Poems: Tobi Alfier and “Goodbye Kisses”

Navigating relationships can be difficult. Marriage relationships. Parent-child relationships. Relationships between siblings or friends. They can break, again for all kinds of reasons. And it’s the aftermath of these breaks, and people traveling through modern life, that poet Tobi Alfier explores in Goodbye Kisses: Poems.  

In Alfier’s poems, the people involved wander afterward in a desolate landscape. It doesn’t matter who might have been right and who was wrong. Enough desolation exists for everyone. Some try to move on quickly. Others linger, immobilized. They walk beaches. They visit bars. They trace their hands over old carved initials in a tree. Some sit in old motel rooms, alcohol in a paper cup. Some sit at kitchen tables and stare.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

What rhyme does – Padraig O Tuama at Poetry Unbound.

 

Letters to a poet on the moon – Amelia Friedline at Innocence Abroad.

 

Morning Tea French Poem + A 100-Year-Old Tea House – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Think Small – poem by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer at Every Day Poems.

 

The Meaning for This Hebrew Word Is Uncertain – poem by Anna Friedrich at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“All the Flowers,” poem by John Webster – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Some Monday Readings - April 13, 2026

Joe the Hero – Mark Oppenheimer at The Dispatch. 

A Wonder Is What It Is – Nick Offerman at WNYC reads ‘A Warning to My Readers’ by Wendell Berry.

 

The Man Who Read Everything: Letters of Harold Bloom and six poets – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

The BBC needs competition – James Hodgkinson at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Easter Rising – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Redundancy in action – poem by Franco Amati at Garbage Notes.

 

Two Critical Author Actions – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

St. Mary’s and the Putney Debates of 1647 – A London Inheritance.

 

Cockney Ding Dong – Spitalfields Life.

 

Photograph: Critic Harold Bloom.

Life instructions

After James 1:19-21 

Simple, really,

these instructions

for life, simple,

that is, to hear

but devilishly

difficult to do.

First, be quick

to hear.

Next, be slow

to speak.

Finally, be slow

to anger.

Your anger is not

God’s anger; it

doesn’t produce

God’s righteousness.

 

Photograph by Javier Allegue Barros via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Vice, Virtue, and Platforms – Elijah Blalock at The London Lyceum.

 

The Canon of the New Testament – Bradley Birzer.

Saturday Good Reads - April 11, 2026

I’d read Charles Dickens in high school (David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities), but it was only when I was working as a speechwriter for a CEO that it became serious. He read Dickens, a lot of Dickens, and I was expected to read what he read. And to quote Dickens. So, I did. And I discovered how much I enjoyed his works. I’ve visited the Dickens Museum in London five times and joined the Dickens Fellowship. I read Pickwick Papers back in the 1990s, bit I was reminded of it this week when I saw Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern post and discuss a poem Dickens included in that work – “Ode to an Expiring Frog.” 

It was called a miracle, and it may have saved the American Revolution. The British had occupied Boston, and in very short order, cannons were transported in almost impossible conditions from Fort Ticonderoga on the New York-Vermont border to the hills overlooking Boston. The ensuing bombardment forced the British to their ships in Boston Harbor. In nearby Quincy, Abigal Adams watched the bombardment and sent her observations to her husband John. The transfer of the cannons was a hugely successful operation, and it even had some involvement by none other than Benedict Arnold.

 

As many times as we’ve visited London, I can remember using the iconic red telephone box only once. It was 1983, my wife was recovering from a prescription reaction at our hotel, and I called her at 3 p.m. as the bells of St. Paul’s rang out the hour. More than 40 years later, phone boxes are generally used for one reason – for tourists to take photographs. (There’s one near Parliament Square that always has a long line of people wanted to snap a photo of a phone box with Big Ben and the houses of Parliament in the background.) Spitalfields life posted some pictures of phone boxes this week, and yes, they’re still there.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

Major General Richard Montgomery: The Making of an American Hero – review by Sam Short at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

A Fleet Against One: The Continental Navy’s Embarrassing Clash Off Block Island, April 6, 1776 – Bjorn Bruckshaw at Emerging Revolutionary War Era. 

 

The Spirited Revolutionary Who Led the Fight for Independence in Corsica Also Inspired America’s Colonial Rabble-Rousers – Anna Richards at Smithsonian Magazine.

 

Colonel William Hill: Hero or Disgrace? – Robert Ford at Journal of the American Revolution. 

 

Faith

 

Christian astronaut pilots first moon mission in 53 years – Bobby Ross Jr. at The Christian Chronicle.

 

Art

 

The Silent Traveler – Spitalfields Life.

 

Poetry

 

Old Fred’s Night Music – Steve Knepper at Front Porch Republic.

 

The Point of Poetry? Slow Down – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

“Knowledge,” poem by Louise Bogan – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Accidentally – Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

British Stuff

 

King Charles Is Failing to Defend the Faith – Garrett Exner at Providence Magazine.

 

Man on the Marquee – Andrew Duhon

Painting: Reading Woman, oil on canvas (ca. 1900) by Jacques-Emile Blanche (1861-1942), Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

He is there

After James 1:12-18 

In all the trials

of our life, he is

there. In all

the temptations

of our life, he is

there. In all

the evil we

encounter and

the sin we 

commit, he is

there. If we 

remain steadfast,

he is there. If

we fail, he is

there. He is

immutable; he

doesn’t change. 

 

Photograph by Greg Rakozy via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“Crown Him with Many Crowns,” hymn by Matthew Bridges – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

My God, In Whom I Trust – Sarah Ivill at Alliance for Confessing Evangelicals.

 

“The Strife is O’er,” Latin hymn, 1695 – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

The Genius of Dirt – Seth Lewis.

 

The Voice of ‘A Great Awakening’ – Greg Morse at Desiring God.

Poets and Poems: Nikki Grimes and “Twice Blessed”

Welcome to Miss Vy’s Twice Blessed Secondhand Store, with both its in-store merchandise and its hosted yard sales. You will find clothes, Turkish rugs, clay pots, musical instruments, jars of old buttons, jewelry, baby furniture, coins, figurines, cups and saucers, and just about everything else you would expect to find.

You will also find stories, stories about the original owners and stories about people who purchased them from Miss Vy. And the stories are told in poetry.

 

Twice Blessed: Yard Sale Stories by writer and poet Nikki Grimes is one of the most fascinating, entertaining, and thoughtful uses of poetry I’ve read. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

Guzzle – poem by Alex Mouw at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Art Talk – poem by Maureen Doallas.

 

“April,” poem by Sara Teasdale – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Black crown bird – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Poet Laura: Not the Cruelest Month – Donna Hilbert at Tweetspeak Poetry.

“The Jewish Policeman” by Jonathan Dunsky

Before Adam Lapid had been a private detective living in early 1950s Tel Aviv, he’d been a police detective in Budapest, Hungary. Then the Germans came in 1944; Adolph Eichmann himself supervised the deportation of 440,000 people directly to Auschwitz. Among them were Adam, his wife, his two young daughters, and his mother. Adam was the only survivor. 

After the defeat of the Nazis, Adam made his way to Munich. He’s living in a Jewish displacement camp, self-governing but overseen by the American Army (Munich was in the American zone after the war). Adam is not simply existing; he’s looking for former Nazis who think they’ve escaped justice. And he finds one, who soon finds himself strangled in the cellar of a ruined building.

 

Adam also unexpectedly finds himself employed. The camp director asks Adam to investigate a murder, not to take over the police function, but to look into a single death. A resident had been stabbed to death in the camp’s radio room. Because only camp residents had access to the camp, that the killer would be Jewish. And that made it worse; too many Jews had already died during the war, and it seemed an obscenity that another Jew would die at the hands of one of his own.

 

Adam investigates; virtually no clues exist. He travels down blind alleys, spends countless hours investigating, and keeps dodging the man who was appointed the official policeman who resents what Adam has been asked to do. 

 

Jonathan Dunsky

The Jewish Policeman is the ninth Adam Lapid mystery by Jonathan Dunsky. All of these mysteries are thought-provoking; this one is even more than its predecessors. Dunsky more than  touches upon the unsettling idea that people who experience horrific persecution and murder can sometimes become like their persecutors and murderers. 

 

Dunsky is best known for his Adam Lapid mystery stories, with nine published: Ten Years Gone, The Dead Sister, The Auschwitz Violinist, A Debt of Death, A Deadly Act, The Auschwitz Detective, A Death in Jerusalem, In That Sleep of Death, and now The Jewish Policeman. He’s also published The Favor: A Tale of Friendship and Murder; Family Ties; Tommy’s Touch: A Fantasy Love Story; the short story “The Unlucky Woman,” and other works. He was born in Israel, served four years in the Israeli Army, lived in Europe for several years, and currently lives in Israel with his family. He has worked in various high-tech firms and operated his own search optimization business.

 

The Jewish Policeman is every bit as good as the earlier Adam Lapid mysteries. Dunsky captures the chaos and desperation of post-war Germany (Hershey Bars and American cigarettes are like currency), and he tells a good story of conflicted motives, illegal justice, and settling old scores.

 

Related:

My review of Ten Years Gone by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of The Unlucky Woman by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of The Dead Sister by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of The Auschwitz Violinist by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of A Debt of Death by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of A Deadly Act by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of Grandma Rachel’s Ghosts by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of The Auschwitz Detective by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of A Death in Jerusalem by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of In That Sleep of Death by Jonathan Dunsky.

 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Lucky to Be Grateful and A Passage Through the Dark– Elizabeth Lasch-Quinn and Katy Carl at Mere Orthodoxy review Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story by Wendell Berry.

 

Why Cormac McCarthy Stands Alone Among Novelists – Will Hoyt at Front Porch Republic.

 

Writing a Novel at Burger King – Lana McAra at In the Writer’s Chair (via LinkedIn). 

Poets and Poems: Alexander Voloshin and “Sidetracked”

Alexander Voloshin (1884-1960) was born in the Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. He had a career in theater, but World War I intervened and he became part of the Imperial Army. Then the Russian Revolution happened, and he found himself involved in the White-Red Civil War. When the Communists triumphed, Voloshin remained briefly in the Crimea. That was followed by a travel odyssey to Berlin, Brazil, and then Ellis Island. After a time in New York City, he made his way to Los Angeles and Hollywood, like thousands of other émigré Russians.  

In Hollywood, he worked as a waiter and as an extra in movies. He was an actor in some 12 movies, the best known of which was “The World and the Flesh” (1932), starring Miriam Hopkins. The movie, set during the Russian Revolution, is about a rather nasty Communist revolutionary (Hollywood was big on Russian Revolution movies at the time). After his last role in 1937 (“Daughter of Shanghai,” starring Anna May Wong), Voloshin tried founding a theater magazine and writing for other publications. 

 

Voloshin was also a poet. He published one work, a saga of the Russian émigré experience from the revolution to his contemporary day. The work disappeared, until poet and translator Boris Dralyuk found a copy. Dralyuk has a deep interest in the Russian émigré experience; last year, he published his own poetry collection entitled My Hollywood.

 

Dralyuk translated and published Voloshin’s poem under its original title, Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Up on the Hill’s Back – poem by David Whyte.

 

Poetry Prompt: Meet Your Muse Euterpe – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

The Chronicles of Never – poem by Baruch November at Every Day Poems.

 

“The Day of Judgment,” poem by Isaac Watts – Josph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

A Review of Petrarch’s Canzoniere, translated by A.M. Juster – Richard Wakefield at New Verse Review.