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A Poem is a Walk
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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Monasteries of the Heart
Monastic communities have traditionally encouraged lay associates: people drawn not to join the monastery but to absorb themselves in its spirituality and adapt as much of its practice as possible while living “in the world.” Creatively taking this concept of lay associates into the internet age, the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania, have launched “Monasteries of the Heart,” online....
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Poems for the Season
Sometimes with my Christmas cards I include a favorite seasonal poem. So consider this post a greeting card for the season. First, I can’t resist sharing the poem that has been my meditation this Advent. I always treasure Advent’s special spirit of hushed longing. This year I’ve found it expressed in a poem not written specifically for Advent: Robert Bly’s “The Roof Nail,” in his new collection Talking into the Ear of a Donkey....
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Judging Donald Hall
“When you like a woman, / you talk and talk. / One night you kiss. / Another night you fuck.” “After their tumult, as they quieted, / She breathed into his ear / The tunes she loved to sing.” “When love empties itself out, / it fills our bodies full. / For an hour we lie twining / pulse and skin together....” These lines are from three poems in the new collection by Donald Hall, one of America’s most revered poets....
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A Yarn to Share
At my local yarn shop, we were sitting on the couches talking about what knitting means in our lives. As the conversation revved up, with everyone tossing out comments about how knitting can be at once meditative, creative, solitary, and communal, one knitter threw in, “It’s like we all have a yarn to share.” As we all laughed at the pun, someone else added wryly: “Yarns are stories knitters tell each other around the fire.” I steal this anecdote from....
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Current Issue
Issue 71
Fiction by Larry Woiwode, interview with Joe Henry, art by Fabian Debora, essay by Barry Moser.
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