Poets and Poems: Mary Brown and "Call It Mist"

To read Call It Mist; Poems by Mary E. Brown is to enter a world where words – razor-sharp words – reign supreme. Brown moves through landscapes, relationships, and ideas with a subtle precision and focus. There’s no ambiguity here; Brown’s poems suggest life is short, so let’s get right to the point. 

I’m not sure why these poems kept reminding me of surgeons working in an operating room. Perhaps the careful, anything-but-subtle language made me think of a scalpel.

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Poetry of Thomas Hardy: An Essay – Adam Sedia at The Society of Classical Poets.

 

The Act of Leaving – poem by David Whyte.

 

A Shopshire Lad, XL, poem by A.E. Housman – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

You Are – 4 poems by Andrew Calis at Rabbit Room Poetry.

“The Summer of ’63: Gettysburg” by Chris Mackowski and Dan Welch

My historical novel Brookhaven is set during the Civil War’s final two years and immediately after, and then in 1915, 50 years later. The moment that sets the story into motion happens in late April of 1863 – Grierson’s Raid, in which a troop of some 1700 Union cavalry made their way through Mississippi from the Tennessee border to (eventually) Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The soldiers came to Brookhaven, most notably burning the train station and tearing up railroad track.  

The raid had a specific point: divert attention from Gen. Grant’s army preparing to cross the river from Louisiana and end the siege of Vicksburg, the last Confederate position on the river. The fall of Vicksburg would been the Union controlled the entire length of the river and would split the Confederacy in two. 

 

The Vicksburg campaign was covered in a collection of articles edited by Chris Mackowski and Dan Welch, part of a series called “Summer of ’63.” Their Vicksburg & Tullahoma covered the events and milestones of that campaign, including a raid on Mississippi’s capital of Jackson, which eventually led to a Union victory.

 

Now Mackowski and Welch have done it again, this time turning to another major Union victory in 1863 – the Battle of Gettysburg.

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

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Bud on the Tracks – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

America 250 and the Civil War – David Hamon at Emerging Civil War.

Mercy Scollay’s Quest for Custody of Joseph Warren’s Children – Janet Uhlar at Journal of the American Revolution.

Blood Eagle – Myth or Fact? – Annie Whitehead at Casting Light upon the Shadow.

Francisco de Saavedra de Sagronis: A Spainard’s Pivotal Role in the Yorktown Triumph – Richard Werther at Journal of the American Revolution.

Our First Revolution – Michael Barone at Coolidge Review.

“Horace: Poet on a Volcano” by Peter Stothard

My introduction to the Roman poet Horace happened in Latin II class in high school. As a foreign language elective, Latin was down to two classes – introductory Latin I and Latin II. As I recall, the class did a group translation in class, which likely meant the Latin teacher did most of the heavy lifting. And then in college, in a class on Western civilization, we read a few of his odes.  

Other than that, I’ll confess to a general ignorance of the poet’s body of work.

 

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 B.C.), better known to us as Horace, lived through one of the most tumultuous periods of Western history. The son of an ex-slave, he came of age during the rapid decline of the Roman Republic, the assassination of Julius Caesar, the civil wars that followed as competing factions battled (literally) for power, and the final triumph by Octavian, soon called Augustus Caesar. 

 

When death from warfare, suicide, forced suicide, and murder was all too common, Horace was able to thread his way through the politics of power in Roman society. And he did something that few of peers accomplished – he died in his bed from natural causes. That by itself was an achievement, given the deadly nature of Roman politics, especially in the upper tier of society.

 

British journalist and author Peter Stothard tells Horace’s story in Horace: Poet on a Volcano. But he does do in an intriguing way – he uses Horace’s famed odes as the biographical reference. 

Some Tuesday Readings

 

A Video Reading of the Poem ‘The Loons of Colby Lake’ – Michael Pietrack at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Found in Translation: Gently May It Sing – L.L. Barkat at Twetspeak Poetry.

 

“Leda and the Swan,” poem by William Butler Yeats – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“Bones in the Blackout” by Emma Jameson

Dr. Benjamin Bones is a young, married physician who volunteers for active duty when Germany invades Poland in September 1939. He expects to be assigned to the medical crops. Instead, his occupation is deemed critical, and he’s sent to the small village of Birdswing in Cornwall. Coincidentally, it’s the same town his wife left some years before – and never returned. She’s also leaving behind in London the man she’d been having an affair with – and it looks like this assignment will be make-it-or-break-it for their marriage. 

Except events never proceed that far. As soon as they arrive in the town that first evening, when everything is blacked out because of the war, a hit-and-run lorry seemingly comes from nowhere and plows into the couple, jilling here and shattering the young doctor’s leg.  

 

It looked like an accident, but Ben has his doubts. As he recovers, he finds an anonymous note left on his pillow at the pub where’s staying. The writer is apologizing for Ben’s injury; the only target had been his wife.

 

Ben begins to look into his wife’s death and the death of another young woman, whose death also appeared to be an accident involving leaking gas in her home. He’s assisted by Lady Juliet, who lives in the local manor, who develops a crush on the young doctor without him realizing it. As he gets deeper into recent local history and the secrets lying buried, he finds that his dead wife had plenty of enemies in the village. And the danger may not be over.

 

Bones in the Blackout is the first of four Dr. Benjamin Bones mysteries by British mystery author Emma Jameson, who’s also written the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mystery series (all set in London and have something to do with the word “blue”). I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the “Blue” series, and I thought I’d try her other detective series. I’m glad I did – Jameson seems to catch the early years of World War II on the home front exactly right and Dr. Bones is just as engaging as her contemporary London police detectives.

 

Bones in the Blackout is a thoroughly enjoyable story, full of unexpected twists and turns and highlighted by a thriller of an ending. I’m looking forward to reading the next three in the series.

 

Related:

Ice Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Murder by Emma Jameson.

 

Something Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Black & Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Blooded by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Christmas by Emma Jameson.

 

Untrue Blue by Emma Jameson. 

 

London Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Don’t trust the BBC on America – Chris Bayliss at The Critic Magazine.

 

Liberalism Without Illusions – William Galston at Democracy.

 

When the Internet Was a Place – Raleigh Adams at Front Porch Republic.

 

An American Greatness: Willa Cather’s “O, Pioneers!” –Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

The Loyalist Who Gave Birth to His Nightmare – Richard Briles Moriarty at Journal of the American Revolution. 

The Bookshops of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

 

Long-Forgotten Rubens Found in Paris Mansion – Jo Lawson-Tancred at Artnet.

Spreading the news

After Like 24:1-12

 

Stunned. Overwhelmed.

The three women were

the first to hear the news.

Then they remembered

his words, but was he

really serious? He would

rise on the third day?

They hurried to tell

the others, the eleven and

the rest, with a not

entirely unexpected 

response: skepticism, 

doubts, perhaps a trace

of ridicule, surly this was

idle talk and speculative

rumor. A story, in other

words, a tale, and it was

somewhat cruel of them

to repeat it. But the one

called the rock listened;

something struck him

as true, and he raced

to the tomb, finding it

just as the women had

said. It was empty.

He was gone.

 

Photograph by Logan Weaver via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Some Sunday Readings

 

Reading as Rebellion – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition.

Christianity in China – Ndrew Wilson at Tabletalk.

Field of Bounty and of Grief – Steven Searcy at Mere Orthodoxy. Related: Four Poems from The Locust Years by Paul Pastor – Rabbit Room Poetry.

“On Shakespeare. 1630,” poem by John Milton – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

How Adam Zagajewski “Accidentally” Wrote the Definitive 9/11 Poem – Elaine Wang at Literary Hub.

How the West Lost Its Soul – Paul Kingsnorth at The Free Press.

Saturday Good Reads: In Memoriam Charlie Kirk

I had a whole set of links planned and ready for this edition of Saturday Good Reads, and then Wednesday happened. 

I didn’t know Charlie Kirk personally. I followed him on Instagram, in news reports, and on other social media. I was amazed at his steel-trap mind; he could talk with anyone, anywhere, on an any issue. He could be firm, but he never went in for ad hominem attacks; he attacked the argument, not the person making it. 

 

He also made no secret of his faith in Christ. So many of us wondered why we felt his death so deeply and personally. It’s because Charlie Kirk was a member of the Body of Christ.

 

As the news reports of his shooting poured in, and then the news of his death, where should my thoughts go but to Facebook.

 

I try to avoid politics as much as I can on Facebook and other social media. I post book reviews, faith-based poems, and photographs, usually of the flowers in my garden and the sky. Or historical things we’ve seen in England. Or the Missouri Botanical Gardens and Shaw’s Nature Reserve. 

 

I have a number of friends, Christian friends, who do not avoid politics. They rage about politics. Or, more precisely, they rage about Donald Trump. The rage is outsized, vicious, and all-consuming. I’m somewhat amazed that people who say they hate the man don’t see how much he’s come to dominate their thinking. Perhaps I should say they don’t see how much the image they’ve created of Donald Trump has come to dominate their thinking.

 

Lately, the rage has been extended to the people who support Donald Trump. It’s classic objectification – separating these “MAGA people” from the rest of humanity and ascribing to them various negative characteristics. President Biden did this when he was in the White House. Objectification is how Europe ended up with a Holocaust. 

 

And this is how we end up with the murder of people like Charlie Kirk. 

 

Language matters. Words matter. Before you repost something vicious and exaggerated from Occupy Democrats, some ignorant thread on Reddit or Blue Sky, and similar sources on Facebook, consider that you’re contributing to the normalization, and embrace, of violence. 

 

And this is far more widespread on the left than on the right. 

 

You need to keep it out of my news feeds. I’m done with tolerating it. Simply done.

 

American Stuff

 

Charlie Kirk believed in free speech. He died for it – Jacob Heilbrun at The Spectator.

 

The Charlie Kirk I Knew – Adam Rubenstein at The Free Press.

 

Charlie Kirk is dead. And I and sad (sad and angry) – Stephen McAlpine. 

 

The Assassination of Charlie Kirk – Rod Dreher. 

 

The Assassination of Charlie Kirk and the Fight for America’s Soul – Ben Shapiro at The Free Press.

 

Charlie Kirk saw himself as holding back revolution – Ben Domenech at The Spectator.

 

A La Carte: Charlie Kirk Special Edition – Tim Challies (links to various statements by theologians and religious figures)

 

Charlie Kirk Wasn’t Just Assassinated; He Was Martyred – Kylee Griswold at The Federalist.

 

‘Ugliest Moment I Ever Witnessed’: House Dems Object to Prayer for Charlie Kirk – Leif Le Mahieu at Daily Wire.

 

This Will Turn Us into Radicals – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

 

How Great the Chasm That Lay Between Us – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

Twitter Files: The Muzzling of Charlie Kirk – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

Statement by the Vice President – J.D. Vance on X.

 

Je Suis Charlie – editorial by The Free Press.

 

Photograph: Charlie Kirk at the 2025 Student Action Summit in Tampa, Florida. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and Wikipedia.

Two men, dazzling

After Luke 24:1-12 

The women stood

by the empty tomb,

perplexed that

the body was gone,

unsure what to do

next. Suddenly,

with no warning,

two men were

there, their clothes 

dazzling and blinding

in brilliance. Frightened,

the women gathered

together, bowing 

to the ground before

the men. The men speak:

do not seek the living

among the dead; remember

what he told you long

before, that he would be

betrayed, he would be

brought before sinful

men and judged, that

he would be condemned

and killed. But then 

there would be 

a third day.

This was

the third day.

This is 

the third day.

 

Photograph by Gavin Allenwood via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

The Power of Prayer Meetings – Paul Levy at Ligonier.

 

“Psalm 90,” poem by Mary Masters – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“Jesus, Name All Names Above,” hymn by St. Theoctistus – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Tender Feet – poem by Kimberly Beck at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

When Death Draws Near – Greg Morse at Desiring God.