Poets and Poems: J.I. Kleinberg and “All of We”

Take a text, any text. It might be a paragraph from a novel, an excerpt of an essay, a newspaper article, a poem, words in advertisements, or your own journal. Then look for ideas, words that stand out, sentences or phrases that can be formed by extracting words. Highlight what you’ve selected, or black out the surrounding text. Assemble the selected words in a new text, or you can simply leave them as is. What you have is a found poem. 

It’s not as easy as it might sound. In fact, it can as much time, thought, and effort as writing an original poem. A found poem can both construct and deconstruct a text. 

 

Ezra Pound extracted words and phrases from historical letters and government documents to help create his Cantos. A poetry collection based on the press briefings of Donald Rumsfeld was published in 2003. Found pounds have been created from baseball calls by the announcer for the New York Yankees. Other sources of found poems have been the etiquette books of Emily Post, the trial testimony of Charles Manson, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, Wonder Woman comics books, and more. 

 

Poet J.I. Kleinberg collected examples of phrases and texts involved the word “we.” She explains that it is an inclusive word, implying all or at least a group. “We suggests the whole greater than the sum of its parts, the possibility of empathy, humanity, history, we inclusive of good and bad, familiar and surprising, guilty, optimistic, despairing…” She didn’t so much assemble the phrases as she designed the words into found poems (her master’s degree is in design). 

 

The result is All of We: Found Poems. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Homer’s Odyssey Book 1 – a Visualized Reading – Classical Poetry Live.

 

Poetry Prompt: Oh, My Word – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

What Is Metempsychosis? – poem by Tina Kelley at Every DayPoems.

 

“The Highwayman,” Poem by Alfred Noyes – Joseph Bottum at Poems and Ancient and Modern.

Three days

After Luke 2:41-52 

The travel group is large,

men and women, old

and young, children and

the elderly, parents and

grandparents, many

related, all known

to each other, all knowing

they’d watch out for each

other and the children.

They travel a day before

the couple realize their

son, their oldest, is not

with the group, Panic

seizes their hearts;

they hurry back to the city,

to Jerusalem. They look

everywhere, searching,

asking everyone if they’d

seen the boy, panic rising

in their hearts as they visit

and revisit every place

they’d seen and visited and 

rested. After three days, 

three days of imagining

the worst, three days 

of panic and anxiety, 

three days of growing

fear and despondency,

three days of looking

everywhere except,

perhaps, the least and

the most obvious,

the temple, the house 

of God. Three days, 

and the boy they feared

was dead, was found,

as if he’d risen again

in their hearts.

 

Photograph by Cole Keister via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Face We All Look For – Ami Wickiser at Gospel-Centered Discipleship.

 

Delicious Life – Elizabeth Stice at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

A Shepherd’s Heart: Honest Conversations when Members Leave Upset – Dan Reiland.

Saturday Good Reads - Sept. 12, 2026

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered beginning in 1947. A group of Bedouin shepherds discovered clay jars almost a thousand years old in desert caves. Jars kept being discovered into 1956. Selections from the scrolls are being exhibited this year at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. And Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative explains why the scrolls are so important to Western civilization. 

It happened back in the 1920s, a time of excess, prosperity, and broad disillusionment. America seemed to fall in love with vicious killers. And now, it seems to be happening again. Daniel Darling at The Daily Wire explains why America, or some subset of Americans, now worships its cold-blooded killers.

 

I have been bombarded by emails from people described as marketing experts, agents, editors, and book promoters, often with elaborate descriptions of my novels and how wonderful they are. Your heart might react a little, until you realize that all of these experts are likely derived from an AI application and the whole thing is a scam. Tim Challies explains how scammers are targeting Christian authors.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

The Poetry of American Independence – Steve Knepper and Brad Skow at New Verse Review.

 

Strange Bedfellows: Adams and Franklin – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

How Did the Nation Get Its Name? – Greg Daugherty at Smithsonian Magazine.

 

A Battle in Our Own Backyard – Molly McMurphy at Missouri Historical Society.

 

Washington’s Invalid Crops: Wounded Warriors Still Served the Revolutionary Cause – David Welker at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Crucifixion of Patrick Clancy – Bethel McGrew at Further Up.

 

Homeschooling Is More Normal Than You Think – Tessa Carman at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Faith

 

Why we need to be students of the past / church history – Michael A.G. Azad Haykin at Historia ecclesiastica.

 

A Catechism on Technology – Darryl Dash at Dashhouse.

 

Writing and Literature

 

What is literary criticism, if not close reading? Art, Magic, and Common Sense – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

American Stuff

 

The Enduring Tragedy of 9/11 – Michael Oren at Clarity.

 

25 years ago, two strangers met in the twin towers and escaped on 9/11. What happened next? – David Smith at The Guardian.

 

On Escaping This Horrible Era – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

The First Rough Draft of 9/11 History – Nicholas Clairmont at The Free Press. 

 

Poetry

 

“My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is,” poem by Sir. Edward Dyer – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“September 1913,” poem by Wiliam Butler Yeats – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

British Stuff

 

Tearing at the fabric – James Price at The Critic Magazine.

 

Shut Up and Dance – Movie Compilations

Painting: Hotel Room, oil on canvas (1931) by Edwad Hopper (1882-1967); Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

Annual visit

After Luke 2:41-52 

It was something they did

every year, a journey

from Nazareth to Jerusalem,

to celebrate the Passover,

the remembrance of God’s

salvation of the people,

deliverance from Egypt,

deliverance from slavery,

the passing over the houses

marked with the blood

of the lamb over the doorway,

protected from the angel

of death. Jerusalem was

crowded, as it always was

at Passover, people crowding

into the city, packed throngs

around the temple, noise and

chaos and the bleating of lambs

to be sacrificed, food vendors

shouting, confusing to those

who did it every year. This year,

the couple from Nazareth brought 

their oldest, a 12-year-old boy,

a boy coming to visit

his father’s house.

 

Photograph by Toa Heftiba via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“The Wish to Be Generous,” poem by Wendell Berry – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“Lord of A Hopefulness,” poem by Joyce Anstruther – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

The Illustration – poem by Seth Lewis.

Poets and Poems: Robert McDowell and “The Excellent Assembly”

If you’re older than 29 tor 30, you know precisely where you were on Sept. 11, 2001. My wife was at home, our oldest son was in college, and our youngest son was in school. I’d gone early to my small office in downtown Kirkwood, Mo.  

I turned on my small, portable television to watch the news. Instead, I saw a large passenger jet crash into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. Another jet had crashed into the North Tower 18 minutes earlier. A little more than 30 minutes later came the crash into the Pentagon. And then the crash into the field in Pennsylvania. 

 

Everything changed that day. Airline safety screening changed forever. A war started. The people who were the masterminds behind it were hunted down. But something deeper changed, something indefinable – the idea of the United States we carried in our heads.

 

Twenty-five years have passed. To remember that day, to remember the people on those planes and in those buildings, the policemen and firemen who gave their lives, and the families who lost loved ones, writer and poet Robert McDowell has written The Excellent Assembly. It’s a collection of 52 poems, not based on real people, but imagined to describe the types of people who died and were affected.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Weeping World: A reading of Shakespeare’s ninth sonnet – K.S. Bernstein at Apple Blossoms in a Mournful Wood.

 

“Song of the Chattahoochee,” poem by the Sidney Lanier – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

What Wendell Berry Saw – Jason Edwards at Front Porch Republic.

 

“Dear Friends,” poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“The Pobble Who Has No Toes,” poem by Edward Lear – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Reading Wendell Berry’s ‘III’ – Megan Willome at Poetry for Life.

 

Poet Laura: By Heart – Donna Hilbert at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and “The Wonderment”

Poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer starts this poetry collection with an explanation of what inspired it. I can’t say I’ve read or heard an explanation quite like it. Her father, on his deathbed, “his eyes open but unseeing,” said a phrase, an incomplete sentence: “From our birth…to our death…the wonderment.” 

In other words, all of it, all of life, is full of wonder. The great mountain vistas. The ocean sunsets. A baby’s laugh. But also, the unexpected death, the illness, the hard times, grief. All of it contains a sense of wonder. Visiting the place where her son died, which she wrote about in her previous collection, The Unfolding, and his grave. 

 

In The Wonderment: Poems, published today, Trommer writes about some of the things that fill her with wonder. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Wild Blackberries – poem by David Whyte.

 

“A Dirge,” poem by Christina Rossetti – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

When an East Cast Girl Sees Saguaros –poem by Aberdeen Livingstone at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Winners of Third Annual First Things Poetry Prize – First Things Magazine.

Salt and light

After Matthew 5:13-16 

You are both

salt and light,

salt to season

and enhance, 

and light

to shine so

others may

see. You are

salt to flavor

the message,

you are light

to illuminate

the truth.

You are salt

to preserve;

you are light

to dispel

the darkness.

 

Photograph by Tim Hufner via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

How Do I Live in God’s Presence Every Day? – Daniel Hyde at Reformation 21.

 

The Defining Mark of the Christian – Robb Brunansky at The Cripplegate.

 

Driving Through Cornfields: Past the End of the World – Timothy Willard at Rapt.

Saturday Good Reads - Sept. 5, 2026

Since his death on Monday, people have been writing about Wendell Berry (1934-2026). Including me at Tweetspeak Poetry. Below are quite a few links – memories, remembrances, assessments. I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s words, “Let us endeavor so to live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.” Wendell Berry was loved, and he left a deep mark. 

In late August, I wrote about how The Norton Anthology of English Literature shaped my understanding of poetry. It turns out I wasn’t the only one. Mark Bauerlein at Portico discusses his own Norton experience. 

 

The author of the blog Spitalfields Life took a walk along the Ridgeway, considered to be the oldest road in Britain. He wrote about the experience, and he took pictures, too. 

 

More Good Reads

 

Wendell Berry

 

Stewarding Land and Language – Jake Meador at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Love’s Shadowless Light – Jeffrey Bilbro at Front Porch Republic.

 

In Memory: Wendell Berry – Gracy Olmstead at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Wendell Berry’s Eternal Story – Paul Kingsnorth at First Things Magazine.

 

The Once and Future Wisdom of Wendell Berry – Rod Dreher at The Free Press.

 

Wendell Berry, writer and prophet, was extolled by many as a modern-day prophet – Yonat Shimron and Adelle Banks at Religio News Service.

 

Wendell Berry’s vision of a sacred world – Norman Wirzba at The Christian Century.

 

Why Wendell Berry mattered – Nate Hanrahan at The Spectator.

 

The Real Ideal – Paul Pastor at Front Porch Republic.

 

Remembering Wendell Berry – Gracy Olmstead at Granola.

 

A Voice for My Generation – Samuel Heard at Front Porch Republic.

 

Writing and Literature

 

We Still Need Fairy Tales – Ashley Hales at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Life and Culture

 

When Everything Is Forgotten – Joseph Orso at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Art

 

Riding the Waves of Stone Sea, St. Louis Art Museum’s Largest artwork – Emily Wasserman at St. Louis Art Museum blog. 

 

Movies

 

20 Years Later, ‘Amazing Grace’ Producer Says Wilberforce’s Story Still Resonates – Michael Foust at Crosswalk.

 

Poetry

 

“Last Supper,” poem by Elinor Wylie – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Derrick Porter, Hoxton Poet – Spitalfields Life.

 

Faith

 

How to Pray When You Fel Like You Pray the Same Thing Every Day – Courtney Reissig at Crossway.

 

Known by Heaven – Josh Groban and Lauren Daigle

 Photograph: Wendell Berry Reading by Ben Aguilar via The Berry Center.

Light

After Matthew 5:13-16 

Light shines,

light illumines,

dispelling darkness

allowing truth to be

seen. No one uses

light to hide it,

or bring it. Light

is used to shine

upon the truth.

 

Put your light

upon a stand,

elevated to shine

in the household,

in the village,

in the land,

in the world.

 

Let your light shine

for others to see,

to allow others

in darkness come

into the light.

 

Photograph by Dyu-Ha via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“The Beginning of Contemplation,” poem by Gail Fox – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“The Kingdom of God,” poem by Francis Thompason – Megan Willome at Poetry for life.

 

Eclipsing the Sun – Seth Lewis.

 

The Ministry of Saying Less – Peter Mead at Biblical Preaching.

A Non-Personal Memory of Wendell Berry

I first saw the news Monday about the death of Wendell Berry rather obliquely. Two Facebook friends independently posted poems by him. I stared, realizing the coincidence meant only one thing. He’d died, aged 92. 

Some news events shock you, upending what you understand about the world. An assassination. The fall of the Berlin Wall. A terrorist attack like 9/11. Others reduce you to a sense of profound quiet. It was that second kind I experienced on reading those two poems. Neither post mentioned his death. They didn’t have to. I knew.

 

I don’t have a personal story about Wendell Berry. I know people who’ve gone to his lectures, and people who’ve made pilgrimages to his home in Kentucky. People who’ve met him. But I don’t have a personal story. What I have is a one-off story, which probably tells you more about agriculture, biotech agriculture, and the wars that raged over genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, for three decades. The story also tells you more about Berry’s impact and influence than many obituaries.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

The 2026 Society of Classical Poets International Poetry Competition and the International High School Poetry Competition. 

 

“The Elixir,” poem by George Herbert – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

After the Storm, Still I Float – poem by Riyanka Paul.

 

“The Blind Man and the Elephant,” poem by John Godfrey Saxe – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient & Modern. 

Poets and Poems: Jen Karetnick and "Organ Language"

A grandmother’s jewelry. A heavy rainfall. The fruit in a pina colada. A soccer game. Accompanying a parent to a medical procedure. Waiting for biopsy results. A can opener. Grief. Riding in the car with your sister. Gardening. A frog. Cicadas. Arthritis. The neighbor who calls you by the wrong name. 

What all these disparate things have in common is that they’re familiar. common, everyday. They’re so familiar that we often forget them or overlook them. 

 

In the hands of poet Jen Karetnick, however, the familiar and the common become something else. She reaches into her own childhood. She considers the experiences of her own children. She looks at the life she’s living now. The subjects are largely what we know as experiences common to all of us, but Karetnick shows us how the familiar will also indicate something deeper, something more profound. That’s the heart and soul of her new collection, Organ Language.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Night jar – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Planted – poem by L.L. Barkat at Every Day Poems.

 

“You, Andrw Marvell,” poem by Archibald MacLeish – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poetry Club Tea Date: The Pershing Hotel – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Do You Hear Birds? – poem by Elizabeth Wickland at Rabbit Room Poetry.

Salt

After Matthew 5:13-16 

Use salt to enhance

the taste, just enough;

too little and it doesn’t

work; too much, and it

ruins the food. Leave

it on the shelf too long,

not using it, and it’s

good only to be thrown out.

 

You are salt,

salt of the earth,

used when the time

is right, when

the seasoning is

needed, to bring

the full flavor

of the food.

 

Photograph by Pavel Neznanov via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Some Sunday Readings

 

An Overlooked Argument for Christianity – Gavin Ortlund at The Gospel Coalition.

 

When Your Child Moves Out as an Unbeliever – Stephen Jones at Increase Our Faith.

 

The Church Is Not a Museum – poem by Theresa Burley at What Christians Want to Know.

Saturday Good Reads - August 29, 2026

This past Thursday was the 250^th anniversary of the Battle of Brooklyn. The army of George Washington lost the battle – and the American Revolution was nearly strangled right at the very beginning. What saved Washington’s army was a group of soldiers known as the Maryland 400.  

I own a Kindle, and I have a lot of books on it. I’ve also been paring back my library of physical books; some 400 have already made their way to a school library. But I do love holding a book in my hands while I read. Matthew Adams at Mining the Riches agrees, and he says some things are worth holding on to.

 

Have you ever wondered how people predicted the weather before we had Accu-Weather? Signs in the sky? Aching bones? Meteorology didn’t begin coming of age until the mid-nineteenth century, but people had been predicting the weather long before that. Becky Little at History takes a look at the various ways people used to figure out what was happening or going to happen with the weather.

 

Faith

 

The Best Argument for Christianity – Kelly Keller at Story Warren.

 

Christian Obedience in Two Words – Michael Kelley at Forward Progress.

 

Surprised by Silence – Matthew Rubenstein at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

America 250

 

The 21-Mile Circle: American Revolution Heritage Sites in the English Midlands – Steve Willis at Journal of the American Revolution. 

 

Negotiating American Independence and Thwarting the Newburgh Conspiracy – Keli Holt at Just Enough History.

 

Poetry

 

Forming the Affections of Our Children – Paul Kearney at Front Porch Republic.

 

Chaucer Announces His Desire to Retire – poem by Paul Freeman at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“Farewell to Juliet,” poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and “Don Juan,” (excerpt) by Lord Byron– Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Trap: A conspiracy theory – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Chesterton & the “Great Religious Genius” of Doctor Johnson – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

British Stuff

 

Relics at St. Paul’s From Before the Fire – Spitalfields Life.

 

The England I Knew Is Gone – Carl Trueman at First Things Magazine.

 

The Farmers’ Choir – Britain’s Got Talent

Painting: Woman Reading, oil on canvas by Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667).

The signal

After Isaiah 11:1-11 

The day of the reign

of the root, the branch,

is a signal for the peoples,

all the peoples, and

the nations come to ask,

to worship. 

 

The hand of the root,

the branch, extends

to the scattered

remnants, all

the remnants,

his chosen,

gathered together

from the east

and the west,

the north and

the south, a signal

of the reign,

a signal

to come home.

 

Photograph by Hugo Jehanne via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“Morning Person,” poem by Vassar Miller – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven,” hymn by Henry Francis Lyte and John Goss – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Why I’m a Calvinist – Kyle Borg at Gentle Reformation.