Ars Proverbium
By Poetry Issue 68
Proverbs master the man. He longs to be simple who writes a proverb. A proverb well chosen for a tombstone is a life. He who does not understand a proverb is the hole in a wire hanger. The weakest proverb is great, though a great proverb is never weak. There is no weak proverb. A…
Read MoreWriting in Invisible Ink
By Book Review Issue 72
When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice by Terry Tempest Williams (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012) When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012) The Man within My Head by Pico Iyer (Knopf, 2012) My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner: A Family Memoir by Meir Shalev (Schocken, 2011) …
Read MoreWeb Exclusive: A Reader Interview with Linford Detweiler
By Interview Issue 75
A big thanks to one-half of Over the Rhine, the pianist, bassist, and songwriter Linford Detweiler, for participating in our reader interview–and to our Imagereaders for their thoughtful, funny, and off-the-wall questions. You can read the jumping-off point for this interview, Linford’s reflection on the word human from issue 75, here. What was your first thought when you sat down…
Read MoreWeb Exclusive: A Conversation with Larry Woiwode
By Interview Issue 71
Acclaimed novelist Larry Woiwode is the author of Beyond the Bedroom Wall; What I’m Going to Do, I Think; and Words Made Fresh. His short story “That Old Dog” appears in Image issue 70. Image: “That Old Dog” is about a famous novelist who hasn’t written a book in a long time. But over the…
Read MoreThe Invented Child
By Poetry Issue 71
I spring from the pages into your arms. Someone who once knew him said Walt Whitman sang before breakfast behind his bedroom door— broken arias, bits of patriotic tunes, the way my child sings this morning in early spring, the way the raucous mockingbirds fill the warming air with their own borrowed songs. The world…
Read MoreA Conversation with Luci Shaw
By Interview Issue 75
Luci Shaw is attentive to balance, cultivating both an active engagement with the arts in culture and the solitude necessary to listen and catch at language. Her twelve acclaimed collections of poetry include What the Light Was Like, Harvesting Fog, and the forthcoming Slow Pleasures. Her nonfiction includes Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination, and…
Read MoreFreedom
By Essay Issue 75
The Word-Soaked World Troubling the Lexicon of Art and Faith Since 1989, Image has hosted a conversation at the nexus of art and faith among writers and artists in all forms. As the conversation has evolved, certain words have cropped up again and again: Beauty. Mystery. Presence. For this issue, we invited a handful of…
Read MoreHuman
By Essay Issue 75
The Word-Soaked World Troubling the Lexicon of Art and Faith Since 1989, Image has hosted a conversation at the nexus of art and faith among writers and artists in all forms. As the conversation has evolved, certain words have cropped up again and again: Beauty. Mystery. Presence. For this issue, we invited a handful of…
Read MorePeter Howson and the Harrowing of Hell
By Essay Issue 76
AMID THE USUAL eclectic lower Manhattan gallery offerings of Swiss cow-decorated milk bottles, comic-book art of the Oism faith, and an installation of banners with bankrupt bank logos, the opening of the exhibition Redemption at Flowers in Chelsea last spring, featuring four huge oil paintings of Christ’s death and resurrection by Scottish artist Peter Howson, qualified as…
Read MoreWeb Exclusive: A Conversation with Steve Prince
By Interview Issue 78
The art of Steve Prince is explored in an essay by Beth McCoy in Image issue 78. Prince, a New Orleans native, works primarily in printmaking and drawing. His richly textured images are steeped in religious and visual culture; critic D. Eric Bookhardt characterizes their metaphorical power as “an ability to elucidate inexplicable worlds within…
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