More on: Book Reviews

Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother, Kate Hennessy (Scribner, 2017) My Utmost: A Devotional Memoir, Macy Halford (Knopf, 2017) Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, Valeria Luiselli. (Coffee House Press, 2017) ACTIVISTS, ARTISTS, RELIGIOUS FOLKS—those of us trying to love our neighbor…

Seiobo There Below by László Krasznahorkai, translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet (New Directions, 2013) Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue, translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer (Riverhead Books, 2016) A Story of America Goes Walking by Saara Myrene Raappana and Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton (Shechem Press, 2016) Peter Hujar: Lost Downtown by Vince Aletti and Stephen Koch…

Earth Science by Sarah Green (421 Atlanta Press, 2016) Everyone at This Party Has Two Names by Brad Aaron Modlin ——(Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2016) The End of Pink by Kathryn Buernberger (BOA Editions, 2016) I WAS STARTING A THIRD UNIVERSITY DEGREE related to poetry when I first began hearing the expression “life of…

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (Graywolf Press, 2015) A Body, Undone: Living on after Great Pain by Christina Crosby (New York University Press, 2016)   SON,” HE BEGINS. “LAST SUNDAY the host of a popular news show asked me what it meant to…

The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel (Spiegel & Grau, 2016) Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) Wilberforce by H.S. Cross (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2015)   STRONG NOVELS IMMERSE READERS in distinct worlds, with their own rules, cultures, and belief systems. The best novels refuse to supply pat answers or…

The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible by Aviya Kushner (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) The Art of Listening in the Early Church by Carol Harrison (Oxford, 2013)   God’s “I” remains the root word that sounds like a pedal note through all of revelation; it resists all attempts…

Three Poetry Collections Idiot Psalms by Scott Cairns (Paraclete Press, 2014) Seam by Tarfia Faizullah (Southern Illinois University Press, 2013) F by Franz Wright (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013)   IN THE LONG HISTORY of the poetry of religious devotion, one often encounters a guileless representation of the self in its attempts to relate to the divine. The…

Bible Road: Signs of Faith in the American Landscape by Sam Fentress (David and Charles, 2007) I GREW UP outside Portage, Ohio, on an acre with corn fields on three sides and the county highway on the fourth. On our disused barn was a painted advertisement: CHEW MAIL POUCH TOBACCO TREAT YOURSELF TO THE BEST. The enduring letters…

The New Testament by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon, 2014) Lighting the Shadow by Rachel Eliza Griffiths (Four Way, 2015) Boy with Thorn by Rickey Laurentiis (University of Pittsburgh, 2015) THE YOUTUBE VIDEO starts abruptly. Two Saint Louis symphony-goers stand at their seats, singing “Justice for Mike Brown is justice for us all” to the tune of…

Let’s Talk About Love by Carl Wilson (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014) Writing the Record by Devon Powers (University of Massachusetts Press, 2013) ( ) by Ethan Hayden (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014)   AROUND THE TIME I started getting paychecks for writing about music, I tried to read the dense and difficult Aesthetics of Rock by the rock-critic-cum-philosopher…