Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Poetry Becomes Theater: “The Last Days of Troy” by Simon Armitage


Britain’s poet laureate Simon Armitage has long been interested in myth and legend. He’s published retellings of Sir Gawain and the Green KnightThe Death of King ArthurThe Odyssey, and The Iliad, and he’s reached into the mists of medieval England to translate two famous poems, The Owl and the Nightingale and Pearl. What all of these works have in common is that they were originally created in poetry, the common language of myth.  

A few years ago, before he became poet laureate, his work with The Iliad led to the creation of a play, The Last Days of Troy. It was first performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester before moving to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. Other productions have followed.

 

It’s a gripping piece of theater. It’s a griping piece of writing in general. Armitage doesn’t “improve upon” Homer; it’s more that he illuminates the great Greek story for a contemporary audience. 


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


Some Tuesday Readings

 

Another Day – poem by Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

 

Poetry Prompt: I’m in Charge of Celebrations – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry. 

 

A forgotten writer of Pere Lachaise – Anthony Daniels at New Criterion on Enrique Gomez Carillo. 

 

“March,” poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Monday, March 18, 2024

"Lovers at the Museum" by Isabel Allende


A night watchman at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, makes a startling discovery – a young man and woman are asleep in one of the galleries. They’re discovered in front of a metal sculpture entitled “Rising Sea” by the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. The young man is naked; the young woman is wearing an elaborate bridal gown.  

Inspector Larramendi of the Bilbao police is one the case, except he’s not sure exactly what the case is about. No one knows how the lovers got through the locked doors; the couple say the door was open. They claim they were in the museum throughout the night and never saw a guard. The would-be bride had fled her wedding ceremony, sobbing. She found a young stranger, and the got exceedingly drunk. They both independently claim the museum had suddenly appeared in front of them, like a magician’s trick. 

 

They suspect the museum might be enchanted. Inspector Larramedi, the “Hound of Bilbao,” is inclined to agree. 

 

Isabel Allende

Lovers at the Museum
is a new short story by the acclaimed writer Isabel Allende, and the reader will be forgiven for thinking he or she has taken a step into magic realism. This might happen in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Macondo or the Lima of Mario Vargas Llosa (in fact, I was reminded of the telenovelas of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter). The Guggenheim in Bilbao is a real museum, whose architectural style might be called “anti-architecture” or “melted metal.” The sculpture cited in the story is a real metal sculpture, and the inspector can be forgiven for at first thinking it’s a large curtain. 

 

Allende has previously published The House of the Spirits and some 25 other books. Born in Peru, raised in Chile, and now living in California, she founded a charitable foundation after her daughter died in 1996. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014, and the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2018. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

What’s American Fiction Without the Short Story? – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

The Farm Woman Speaks – Gracy Olmstead at Plough Quarterly on the novels of George Eliot.

 

Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative? – Emma Green at The New Yorker.

 

The Prophets: D.A. Henderson – Joe Nocera at The Free Press on how not to fight pandemics.

 

Sunday, March 17, 2024

The hardening


After Hebrews 3: 1-19
 

The deceit, the lies,

the untruthfulness

harden as they

happen. They grow

within us, causing

us to turn our heads,

look away, avoid

all mirrors, fell

our hearts harden

and die. We are

expert at deceiving

ourselves; we are

professionals skilled

at hardening our hearts.

But remember that original

confidence, that assurance.

It softens; it lasts.

Hold on to it.

 

Photograph by Jan Canty via Unsplash. Used with permission.


Some Sunday Readings

 

Frost at Midnight” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

God Never Needs Updating – Sylvia Schroeder at When the House is Quiet.

 

Saint Patrick: A Sonnet – Malcolm Guite.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Saturday Good Reads - March 16, 2024


I worry as much as anyone about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party on America. I am not on TikTok. This week, the House of Representatives, by a lopsided bi-partisan majority, passed a bill that requires Byte Dance to divest TikTok in the United States, or be banned. But the devil is in the details (it’s always the fine print). The bill does what it says, but it also expands the power of the President and the security agencies to go after far more than TikTok. The left but not the right might be fine with that if the President is Biden. But what if the President is Trump? The legislation could slice and dice both ways. See Matt Taibbi at Racket News on “Why the TikTok Ban is So Dangerous.” 

You read it online (it’s difficult to find in the daily newspaper), and you think “all this anti-Semitism stuff is being exaggerated.” You might think that, and you would be wrong. Consider Ron Hassner, a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. Times have changed, and the professor is now sleeping in his office.

 

It's a perennial topic of concern among poets, anyway. The death of poetry has been proclaimed for a long time, its revival on Instagram, YouTube, and the above-mentioned TikTok notwithstanding. Poet and writer James Matthew Wilson takes a look at the “somewhat exaggerated death of poetry.”

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

Gods of the Quid Pro Quo – Greg Doles at Chasing Light.

 

Old Ireland Stirs – Mehmet Çiftçi at The Critic Magazine.

 

Israel / Gaza

 

The war in Gaza is just the beginning – Douglas Murray at The Spectator.

 

How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers – Abraham Wyner at Tablet Magazine.

 

The Holiday from History is Over – Bari Weiss at The Free Press.

 

Poetry

 

“For Once, Then Something” by Robert Frost – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Edge You Carry with You – David Whyte.

 

Faith

 

Revival in the Making: God’s Central Means for Spiritual Renewal – David Mathis at Desiring God.

 

Patrick Loved Ireland Before Ireland Loved Patrick – Seth Lewis.

 

How Do Our Kids Stay Christian? – Cameron Shaffer at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Latinos Are Flocking to Evangelical Christianity – Marie Arana at The Free Press.

 

American Stuff

 

Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson – reviewed by Nicole Penn at American Purpose. 

 

Writing and Literature

 

Carson McCuller’s lonely passion – review by Scott Bradfield at The Spectator.

 

Revisiting In the Fog, an American’s Ode to England’s Foul Weather – Leslie Klinger at CrimeReads. 

 

British Stuff

 

What are our cathedrals for? – Allan Breck at The Critic Magazine. 

 

Art

 

Story – Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Jerusalem (Live) – City Alight


 

Painting: The Reading Lesson, oil on canvas by Pierre Jean Edmond Castan (1817-1892).

Friday, March 15, 2024

The bodies fall


After Hebrews 3:16-19
 

Provoking wrath, they

wander forty years.

Abandoning faith, they

live in the wilderness,

forty years, depending

each day on food and

sustenance. They,

this generation, have

to be taught faith. As

they learn, as they

wander, their bodies

grow old, their bodies

fail, their bodies

fall in the wilderness.

 

Photograph by Claudio Schwarz via Unsplash. Used with permission.


Some Friday Readings

 

Samson, Tribe of Dan – poem by Alexander King Ream at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Villanelle of the Elect – Jesse Keith Butler at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

When My Rights Make Me Wrong – Rev. Dave Harvey.

 

The Receding Tides of New Atheism – Pip Witheridge at The Gospel Coalition.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

'Gone South" by Meg Moseley


Tish (short for Letitia) McComb lives in Michigan. She’s helps her mother move to Florida, and she decides to take a meandering way back through Noble, Alabama. She visited the town once with her father; the McComb family had strong ties there, with ancestors having lived there for a long time after the Civil War. 

During her visit, she encounters something unexpected – a rude reception from a few people. But she likes the town and discovers that the old McComb home is for sale. She makes an offer, it’s eventually accepted, and Tish finds herself moving.

 

What she encounters is hostility from most of the townspeople, and it’s because of her family’s history. The McComb legacy is one of people who came south after the Civil War as carpetbaggers, took advantage of people, and essentially pilfered and stole. Tish has old family letters that suggest a different story, but they don’t outright contradict the town’s memory and feelings. And the hostility is making it difficult for Tish to find a job.

 

Meg Moseley

So is her decision to offer a temporary home to Mel Hamilton a 20-year-old girl infamous for alleged theft from her own parents, getting in trouble generally, and essentially being homeless whenever she’s in town. A carpetbagger and a thief under the same roof! About the only person who’s friendly is George Zorbas, owner of an antique store, and he knows both the McComb legacy and Mel’s reputation.

 

Gone South by Meg Moseley is Tish McComb’s story. It’s officially classified as Christian fiction, but the faith-based element is downplayed. That said, it’s a clean story, without profanity or sexual situations. I enjoyed it, but feeling sympathy for the characters was a tough go until about halfway through the book. I also wanted to know more about both the old family letters and the McComb family history.

 

Moseley has previously published two novels, When Sparrows Fall and A Stillness of Chimes. She’s also contributed to several novella and story collections by different authors. A native Californian, she lives with her family near Atlanta. 

 

Some Thursday Readings

 

This – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Genre Communicates a Contract with the Reader – Micaiah Johnson at CrimeReads.

 

Catholicism and Slavery: Setting the Record Straight – Samuel Gregg at Acton Institute.

 

“The Woman of Three Cows” by James Clarence Mangan – Justin Blessinger at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Union Lawyers Call Jewish Colleagues ‘Deranged’ and ‘Fascist’ – Francesca Block and Eli Lake at The Free Press. 

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

“Resolve: The Church That Endures Onward” by Luke Herron Davis


Over the past two years, Luke H. Davis has been publishing a series of books on church history, written for young people. First came Redemption: The Church in Ancient Times. It was followed by Reign: The Church in the Middle AgesReform: The Church at the Birth of Protestantism; and Renewal: The Church That Expands Outward.  

The final volume, covering the period from 1890 to 2023, is Resolve: The Church That Endures Onward. It’s written in the same easily readable and accessible style as its predecessors. Davis explains history by telling stories, imagined (or re-imagined) conversations and events in the lives of key figures in the church over the modern period. While many might lament the state of in the 20th and 21st centuries, Davis has a very different story to tell. 

 

This history includes chapters with familiar names – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie ten Boom, Billy Graham, C.S. Lewis, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, and J.I. Packer. And it includes chapters with names well-known in their time but lesser known today, like Sammy Morris, B.B. Warfield, J.C. Ryle, Francis Grimke, Elisabeth Eliot, Eta Linnemann, and Benjamin Kwashi. Davis selects a key event in the lives of this Christians, dramatizing them to tell his stories. It’s a very effective way to introduce the subject (and people) to younger readers.

 

Luke H. Davis

He also includes chapters entitled "Fact Files" that highlight other well-known figures, like the great preachers and orators, persecuted Christians, and popular apologists.

 

Aimed as it is at younger readers, from beginning to end it also reminded me of the people and writers who have played a major or minor role in my own Christian faith, including, Billy Graham, C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and J.I. Packer.

 

Resolve is a fitting conclusion to the church history series and a solid read as a standalone volume. Davis has poured some major effort into assembling these volumes, and we – young and old alike – are the beneficiaries.  

 

Davis teaches at Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis and chairs the Bible Department there. He’s also taught at schools in Louisiana, Florida, and Virginia. He describes himself as “Presbyterian body, Lutheran heart, Anglican blood, Orthodox spirit,” all of which have served him well in writing the Cameron Ballack mysteries. He has published three Ballack mysteries, Litany of Secrets (2013), The Broken Cross (2015), and A Shattered Peace (2017), and the first book of a new series, Joel: The Merivalkan Chronicles Book 1 (2017). He blogs at For Grace and Kingdom.

 

Related

 

Redemption: The Church in Ancient Times by Luke H. Davis.

 

Reign: The Church in the Middle Ages by Luke H. Davis.

 

Reform: The Church at the Birth of Protestantism by Luke H. Davis.

 

Renewal: The Church That Expands Outward by Luke H. Davis.


Reading a Novel that Stars Your Hometown
.

 

My review of Litany of Secrets.

 

My review of The Broken Cross.

 

My review of A Shattered Peace.

 

My review of Tough Issues, True Hope by Luke Davis.


Some Wednesday Readings

 

‘My kid’s name resonated in that body’: Steve Nikoui’s interview after State of the Union outburst – Matthew Foldi at The Spectator.

 

Booknotes: Campaigns of a Non-Combatant by George Townsend – Civil War Books and Authors. 

 

People Hate Daylight Savings. Science Tells Us Why – Teresa Carr at Real Clear Science.

 

The Bull Pen at Bentonville – Bert Dunkerly at Emerging Civil War.