Molly McCully Brown, “Interstitial Seasons” | Editorial Statement (Page 3)

• McCully Brown describes several undistinguished landscapes that have come to strike her as beautiful. Can you think of a place to which your relationship has changed over time? What shaped that change?

• This essay describes Ordinary Time as a season that invites “a posture of transition, of becoming, attuned to the mysterious precision of the world.” How do you see this expressed in the work of this issue?

Jennifer Atkinson, “Unnumbered Psalms,” and Allison Seay, “Divine Nature of Things” and “Moon Loop” | Poetry

• These poems all reference the moon. What role does it play in each one?

• Both poets use precise words and unusual word pairs. What words and phrases stand out to you, and what draws your attention?

• A loop or circular motion appears in the “Unnumbered Psalms” and “Moon Loop.” What techniques and images do the authors use to create the sense of a loop? How does that motif contribute to the meaning of each poem?

KC McGinnis, “Lookers” | Photography

• This essay contends with how—or whether—art can depict reality. For McGinnis, foregrounding the artist’s inability to be objective paradoxically brings the art closer to reality. Do you agree?

• Trustworthiness, McGinnis affirms, is a “more noble and realistic aspiration” for journalists than objectivity. Should the same be true for artists?

• McGinnis writes that “a good artist is unalarmed by the pointlessness of life” and notes Iris Murdoch’s atheism when highlighting her claim that good art reveals “the minute and absolutely random detail of the world.” How might pointlessness, randomness, and realism relate to religious faith?

Lia Purpura, “An Object Arrived” | Nonfiction

• Though the object seems to be a literal, physical one, we never find out what it is. Do you resent not knowing? What kind of object(s) do you picture?

• Purpura writes that being “released from having to know…reduces a form of irritation.” When have you been released from having to know something? Did that come hard or easy, and what made that release possible?

• Give yourself a writing assignment: Describe an object in your home as if you didn’t know what it was for. Then, let your description open up and take a philosophical turn, but stay with the object.