Poets and Poems: D.S. Martin and “The Role of the Moon”

Like many literary terms, “metaphysical poetry” was not something that the designated poets themselves invented. Instead, in the decades after they flourished, it was John Dryden (1631-1700) and Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) who popularized the description. They did not mean it as a compliment. Instead, they saw this group of 16^th century poets as writers who abandoned the rules of poetry and created something unnatural. It wasn’t until the 20^th century, led by figures like T.S. Eliot, that the metaphysical poets were seen as something important and creative in and of themselves. 

The five poets usually labeled as “metaphysical” were John Donne (1572-1631), Henry Vaughn (1621-1695), George Herbert (1593-1633), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), and Richard Crashaw (1613-1649). Sometimes a sixth is added, that of John Milton (1608-1674), but Milton doesn’t quite fit what the other five were about. One of Donne’s short poems has entered the collective consciousness, with its famous lines of “No man is an island” and “For whom the bell tolls.” 

 

Using conversational, everyday language, the metaphysical poets wrestled with big ideas. They often abandoned meter to delve deeper into what they were writing about. Three of them – Vaughn, Marvell, and Crashaw – lived and wrote through the tumultuous decades of the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, and the restoration of the Stuart monarchy. Crashaw was an exile who died in poverty. 

 

Poet, writer, and editor D.S. Martin finds the metaphysical poets to be inspirational and creative. And he’s published a poetry collection, The Role of the Moon, to pay tribute. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

It is a gift – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Butchering,” poem by Rhina Espaillat – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“Song of Myself,” poem by Walt Whitman – Every Day Poems.

 

Some Monday Readings - April 27, 2026

The Hunger for the Real – Christine Rosen at Commentary. 

Who is Blake Whiting? – Andrew Lawler at The American Scholar on the most productive historian in publishing.

 

The Secret of Shakespeare’s London House – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Review: The Wandering Army: The Campaigns That Transformed the British Way of War by Huw J. Davies – Ben Powers at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Agatha Christie & the metaphysics of murder – Theodore Dalrymple at The New Criterion.

 

The right-wing case for social media – Alex Yates at The Critic Magazine.

 

Create a System for Consistency – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

The American Way is Under Fire – The Editors at The Free Press.

Photograph: Agatha Christie at work.

We are the same

After James 2:1-13 

We are poor,

we are rich,

we are noble,

we are common,

we are black,

we are white,

we are the church.

 

We are educated,

we are illiterate,

we are titled,

we are born low,

we are uptown,

we are ghetto,

we are the church.

 

Within the church,

we are the same,

Within †he church,

we are equal.

Within the church,

we are equal before God.

We are the church.

 

Photograph by Sincerely Media via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Shooting Up by Jonathan Tepper – review by Tim Challies.

 

Surrender All, Not Some – Jessica B. at Desiring God.

 

Do I choose an old or a new church? – Murray Campbell at Murray’s Substack.

Saturday Good Reads – April 25, 2026

In the summer of 1776, Abigail Adams faced a hard tough decision for herself and her children. Years earlier, she’d watched her husband John make the same decision, and she had struggled with worry. Now it her turn, and the turn of her children. Her husband was in Philadelphia at the meeting that would lead to the Declaration of Independence. She finally made the decision for herself and the family – and got inoculated for smallpox.  

Some 37 letters written by the poet John Keats to his great love Fanny Brawne were owned by John Hay Whitney, a former U.S. ambassador to Britain. They were stolen in the 1980s. They had been in the possession of Brawne’s children after her death in 1865, and then they’d been sold at auction in 1885. At some point Whitney had purchased them. After the theft, they had disappeared for 40 years, until an unnamed individual tried to sell some rare books inherited from his grandfather. Included with the books were the Keats letters. And now they’re back with the family they were stolen from. 

 

My wife and I have a significant difference over reading William Faulkner. She had to read “The Bear” and “Barn Burning” in required English classes in college (I took English literature, so I missed Faulkner’s stories). She was not a fan. I came to Faulkner years later, via the authors of the Latin American Boom, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. They’d been heavily influenced by Faulkner, so I decided to read The Sound and the Fury. I was hooked, even with Faulkner’s tendency to often forget about punctuation. But One thing I never considered – some people find reading the author to be therapeutic.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

How Jefferson Crafted a Case Against Slavery – Cara Rogers Stevens at The Coolidge Review.

 

Paul Revere’s midnight ride unfolds in broad daylight – with a police escort – Michael Casey at Associated Press.

 

The French Connection – Jonathan Horn at The Free Press.

 

The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and the Battle for New York City – Keli Holt at Just Enough History.

 

The Capital has fallen! The Philadelphia Campaign from Brandywine to Valley Forge – Boom Goes the History via Spotify.

 

10 Books That Reframe the American Revolution – Sophia Hollander at History.

 

Faith

 

Why Did (almost) All of Christian Music Become Worship Music? – Andrew Osenga.

 

Why Religious Freedom Matters – Allen Hertzke at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

The Puritan Theology That Built America & the Church Abandoned – Virgil Walker at the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics.

 

Once and Future Saints – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Life and Culture

 

The timeless specter of Western decline – Victor Davis Hanson at The New Criterion.

 

Poetry

 

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

 

“Here,” poem by Rhina Espaillat – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Why Read Shakespeare? – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

He Arose – Tommee Profit and Phil Wickham

Painting: Woman Reading Newspaper, oil on canvas by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916).

Worthless religion

After James 1:26-29 

A definition

of religion:

to visit orphans

and widows

in affliction.

Beyond that:

keep unstained

from the world,

If you can’t

control your

tongue, you’re

deceiving yourself

about your faith;

it’s worthless. 

Your tongue 

speaks from

your heart, so

guard your heart

and bridle 

your tongue.

 

Photograph by the blowup via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“Dwelling,” poem by Nellie deVries – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

The Fundamentals of the Faith: Why Creeds & Catechisms Still Matter – Jonathan Shirk at Gentle Reformation.

 

Searching for a Sign – Seth Lewis.

 

A Mundane Life Is a Courageous Life – Alan Noble at The Gospel Coalition.

I Grew Up in "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

I was sitting in a graduate seminar called “The Nature of Story.” About 20 of us, all in a Master of Liberal Arts program, sat at tables gathered in a U-configuration. We were discussing the first reading assignment, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  

This was not your typical graduate seminar. The program was designed for people who’d been out of college for a while, and we ranged in age from 30s to 70s. I was 35 at the time – and the youngest in the class. Professors tended to love these classes, and the university had a waiting list of teachers wanting to have a course in the program. We were not the kind of students they were used to; we’d all had life experiences, work experiences, and we tended to challenge the professor (and each other) more than not. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

“Prophecy,” poem by Elinor Wylie – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Lost Federico Garcia Lorca verse discovered 93 years after it was written – Sam Jones at The Guardian.

 

Ten Years Later – poem by David Whyte.

 

“George, Who Played with a Dangerous Toy, and Suffered a Catastrophe of Considerable Dimensions,” poem by Hillaire Belloc – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

The Christmas Solo – my new story at Cultivating Oaks Press

I have a new story at Cultivating Oaks Press. Entitled “The Christmas Solo,” it’s a tale of a man floundering after a marriage disaster who finds his way back with a Christmas song.  

It’s inspired by a song that has a short but strange history on YouTube, of all places. Early last October, a suggested video showed up on my YouTube page. Because it used a photo of the singer Josh Groban, I thought it was a new song by him. It was called “Light of Heaven,” and after listening to it a couple of times, I realized it sounded like Groban singing but wasn’t. Then I ask myself, what is this? Something done with an AI program? Identity theft? But if it was on YouTube, shouldn’t it have been vetted or approved with a new channel?

 

There were a number of similar videos, most using Groban’s picture and the voice sounding like Groban’s, but not quite his. A few other videos used other well-known singers like Rihanna. 

 

But I liked “Light of Heaven.” I’d listen to it while I did my periodic walks. Slowly, as I listened, a story began to shape itself in my mind. A song about the Nativity could become a way of redemption for a broken man. 

 

That’s the story I wrote for Cultivating Oaks Press. 

 

I had continued to listen to “Light of Heaven” on YouTube until this past weekend. It was still available on Saturday. On Sunday, clicking on the link brought this message: “Video unavailable. This video has been removed due to a contractual obligation with a music licensor.” Not only had the video vanished, but its channel, along with all the other songs, was gone as well.

 

It’s a story based on a song that became a ghost. All that’s really left of the song is this story. 

 

Photograph by Tom Allport via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Wisdom through the awful grace of God – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

The Adams Book Club: An Introduction – Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Archaeologists stunned to find Homer’s Iliad inside ancient Egyptian mummy – Vishwam Sankaran at The Independent. 

 

Vagabondia – Spitalfields Life.

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.