More on: Essays

The following is adapted from the plenary address given at Image’s Glen Workshop in Santa Fe in August, 2018, on the conference theme of “Telling Truths: Art, Honesty, and Community.” I HAVE WRITTEN THIS TALK as a partial alphabet: it starts with A (for art) and goes through T (for telling truths). For alphabetic languages,…

IN FALL OF 2016 I RETURNED TO THE CLASSROOM, filling in for a friend who was on sabbatical. The course was a seminar for art students, one that I had taught many times before I retired. My friend had used Chaim Potok’s My Name Is Asher Lev as one of the texts, just as I…

IMAGE HAS ALWAYS embraced the idea that art often speaks better than argument, and that seems especially true in times of grief. For this issue, we’ve chosen to print a poem rather than a traditional editorial. As the Image board and staff search for a new editor, we and our community are in a state…

YOU WERE HOLDING THE BEEF DIP you had brought to the vegetarian potluck when I met you. The potluck was the lunch hour of the day-long birthing class at our midwife’s cabin. Through the large window behind the kitchen sink I saw the snow falling heavy and wet on the woods behind her home. I…

WE WATCHED DAVID make his way slowly down the middle of the street, dragging his right leg, his right arm limp at his side. With his left hand, he reached forward with his cane and lurched after it. A plastic grocery bag hung from his left wrist. Step and drag, forward and pause, all effort…

BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN A STAPLE of the high school classroom, it is nearly impossible to approach The Scarlet Letter with the sort of wonder and respect it deserves. Somber and at times melodramatic, The Scarlet Letter is an altogether quieter book than, say, Moby Dick, which can make it feel tame by comparison. But…

ON THE MORNING OF AUGUST 20, 2016, I felt a subtle pinch in my upper torso, right side. My wife and I were at our remote cabin in Washington County, Maine, where, among other things, despite my seventy-three years, I’d been training for a local twelve-mile paddle race. I felt fitter than I had in…