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Shall We Overcome?
Wednesday February 8, 2012
Originally, I was going to title this post, “Something Funny Happened on the Way Home to Watch the Golden Globes.” And it was funny, to be sure; but in the context of the day in question, only to a point. Let me explain. Earlier that day, I had gone to church in Hollywood. I had just arrived in town for an extended winter gig, and a Google search for nearby churches brought me to St. James in the City on Wilshire Blvd....
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The Mystery of a Neighbor
Tuesday February 7, 2012
When I was little, I had a bad habit of hanging around neighbors’ houses. I would knock and knock at their doors, whether they had kids to play with or not; I would ask questions about the house, their day, what plants they were growing in the garden. And eventually, I was sent home with a warning: “When I say go, I mean go!” I’m not sure what it was that drew me—the mystery of a neighbor, the hope of a cookie....
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The Cannibal and the Eucharist
Monday February 6, 2012
When I first heard Michael Knott singing about a woman suspected of eating her husband, the Eucharist was the furthest thing from my mind. The chasm separating communion and cannibalism was wide, or so I assumed. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt something like a fist balling up in my belly. It was 1994, and I was 16, the son of a Baptist minister. Each item in my brain-box was neatly nestled in its....
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Of a Higher Degree
Friday February 3, 2012
When I was in eighth grade, my mother gave my grandfather a book called Grandfather Remembers to give to me as a Christmas present. It was formatted along the lines of your average baby book, with blank spaces for our family tree and stories about his ancestors as well as guided blank pages for recollections of his first car, his first job, his favorite meals and holidays, as well as his marriage and children....
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A Poem is a Walk
Thursday February 2, 2012
One of the students in my Glen Online course, "Poetry as a Spiritual Practice," emailed me to ask what exactly I meant by “strolling along with a poem.” In the lecture for the lesson she was working on, I’d said that “I sometimes read a poem as if I were taking a stroll through it or along with it. The stroll is leisurely, because poetry never rushes us. Poetry paces itself so that its rhythms, its sound-echoes....
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Current Issue
Issue 71
Fiction by Larry Woiwode, interview with Joe Henry, art by Fabian Debora, essay by Barry Moser.
Good Letters: The Image Blog
