Saturday Good Reads

 London Waking Up

We’re skewing back in a British direction this today. Above, you can see “London Waking Up,” via Londontopia. Having taken a few while early-morning walks there when we were on vacations, I can say it’s just like that (Hat top: my wife, Janet Young). At the bottom, you’ll find “London Going to Sleep,” and that’s my wife’s godson singing in Spitalfields Market in London.

In between, you’ll find a video tribute to the poet Seamus Heaney (who was Irish, not British). And a lot of other good stuff, too.

Faith

Faith in the Wibbly-Wobbly Universe of Doctor Who – Sarah Bessey at Christianity Today.

“How is Your Spiritual Life?” is the Wrong Question to Ask – Hugh Whelchel at Faith, Work & Economics.

Miracles in the Middle East: is there hope in the chaos? – David Rupert at Red-Letter Believers.

Preserving a nation’s integrity requires diligence – Dr. Melvin Banks at Urban Faith.

Good Ol’ Words: Glory – Winn Collier.

The Sympathy of the Puritans – Bria Sandford at Fare Forward.

Twelve Syrian Martyrs – Rod Dreher at American Conservative.

Life and Culture

Debunking the Myth of Generational Gaps – Daniel Weinzveg at Thin Difference.

Why ancient Rome matters to the modern world – Mary Beard at The Guardian.

Weird Lessons from Macbeth – Travis LaCouter at Evangel.

Human Fallibility a Historical Constant – Rod Dreher at American Conservative. And the essay by Tish Harrison Warren in Christianity Today that he cites.

Poetry

Octoberal – Brendan MacOdrum at Oran’s Well.

The Pearl Poet – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

Screen Time (A Found Poem) – Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

The End of Fifty Two - Steven Marty Grant at Urbanality.

For Seamus (Heaney) – Elaine McMillian Sheldon and Kerrin Sheldon for The New York Times:

Writing

How to Break Your Writer’s Block – Tania Runyan at How to Read a Poem.

Face your shame – Mick Silva.

The Writing Life Podcast: How to Find and Generate Energy – Ann Kroeker.

Photography and Art

Spring Rainforests – Randall David Tipton at Painter’s Process.

Beautiful Poison – Tim Good at Photography by Tiwago.

Planned Parenthood

The repeated, misleading claim that Planned Parenthood ‘provides’ mammograms – Michelle Ye Hee Lee at The Washington Post.

London Going to Sleep

American Andrew Duhon sings “Too Late” at The Spitalfields Market in London as vendors are closing up their booths for the day.

Poets and Poems: Seamus Heaney

I’ve been reading Seamus Heaney’s Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996 (1999), and simultaneously reading Dennis O’Driscoll’s Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney (2010). This wasn’t actually planned, but both books had been sitting on my shelf and it seemed to make sense to read them together.

What is particularly helpful is that O’Driscoll has arranged the interviews to cover some introductory subjects and then each one of Heaney’s collections, and Heaney’s volume pulls selected poems from the volumes through 1996. So I can read the poems and then read the interview covering the volume the poem’s appeared in.

The interviews occurred over a period of years. Most were done by letter and email. Two were actually broadcast programs taped and later transcribed. All of them describe what influenced Heaney, how he put the collections together, and what all of this work came to mean over time.

To continue reading, please see my post today at TweetspeakPoetry.

Reading Seamus Heaney

I sit by the kitchen window

reading Seamus Heaney aloud

and I almost miss

the hummingbird sipping

the red and blue salvia,

clearly favoring the red,

but I see the movment

first and then look directly

at his fluttering wings keeping

his blue-green body,

a fine honed jewel in motion,

motionless, hovering like

a poem by Seamus Heaney.

I’m over at TweetSpeak Poetry today, with an article on Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Prize winner and master gem-cutter (poet). The article is a review of his Human Chain: Poems. Please visit TweetSpeak, and let me know what you think.

I’ll also be submitting this poem to Open Mike Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.