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"The Lot Marked Out for Me is My Delight"--Or Is It?
Monday February 11, 2008
How does poetry speak for brokenness, for pained desire, for grief? A couple poems in the current issue of Image raise this question for me: B.H. Fairchild’s dramatic monologue, “Frieda Pushnik” and Robert Cording’s cycle “Four Prayers.”
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Carry Me
Sunday February 10, 2008
Of late, I’ve been reading some works at the intersection of theology and the impaired body. As a physician trying to live as a Christian, that’s where I spend much of my professional time. While I treasure idealized portrayals of the human figure in classical and Italian Renaissance art, I – like you, perhaps – am an imperfect body in a suffering world. In my life and work, I experience pain and suffering less as a brutal shattering of perfection than a familiar, often ironic companion.
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David Bazan, Could You Play This Week’s Offering Song?
Saturday February 9, 2008
David Bazan, ex-frontman for Pedro the Lion and current solo artist, has the distinction of being the only living songwriter whose cumulative discography charts, with frequent bleak hilarity, the slow and agonizing loss of faith in Jesus. Christians have never known what to make of Bazan, who has written lyrics ranging from “You know I want to be like Jesus” (“Lullaby”) to “What a Cruel God We’ve Got” (“Cold Beer and Cigarettes”).
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Keeping the Baby
Friday February 8, 2008
Hollywood often says that movies reflect the culture. That’s mostly a lie, I suspect. Rather, they reflect what will sell. Or more likely, what the producer’s think will sell. Or even more likely, what the producers want to sell. I mean, how many producers perform Margaret Mead field surveys of the “culture” under some soul-bound need to “reflect” it?
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Needing the Building
Thursday February 7, 2008
I can’t imagine anything potentially more tedious, in an election year that is already interminable, than for someone to start bringing up—yet again—September 11. (Joe Biden on Rudy Giuliani: “There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11.”) But a recent incident with our almost-four year old son served, in one bold stroke, to catalyze my thinking about the places where art and faith intersect, and what faith can mean for art.
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Current Issue
Issue 57
The sculpture of Richard Serra, Franz Wright on the Gospels, interview with Ron Hansen, fiction by Pinckney Benedict
Good Letters: The Image Blog
