Blessed Are Those Who Yearn
By Book Review Issue 78
Blessed Are Those Who Yearn New Poetry in Review The Glacier’s Wake by Katy Didden (Pleiades Press, 2013) God Loves You by Kathryn Maris (Seren Books UK, 2013) Incarnadine by Mary Szybist (Graywolf Press, 2013) AT THE END of Paradiso, Dante, after confessing his inability to describe the vision of Love he sees, nonetheless…
Read MoreShortnin’ Bread
By Poetry Issue 78
The lyrics were appalling. Three little children lying in bed, two were sick an’ the other most dead and how the song, written by James Whitcomb Riley in racist dialect, became a minstrel song. Yet the bread itself was wonderful: cornmeal, flour, hot water, eggs, baking powder, milk, a good deal of shortening. My mother…
Read MoreThe Feverfew
By Essay Issue 85
Reading from Two Books: Nature, Scripture, and Evolution In the Middle Ages, philosophers and theologians described nature as a book, a coherent work in which we could glimpse the mind of God. Like scripture, the book of nature bore the divine imprint—the Imago Dei—and the two books were seen as complementary. In the centuries…
Read MoreYou Couldn’t Believe as I Did
By Poetry Issue 84
What became of the nice pagan girl I married? you complained one morning after I’d found my way to the church down the street and kept walking back every Sabbath. Over dinner you’d quiz me on the sermon, argue with the absent preacher, and me if I defended his BS. Maybe you resented any other…
Read MoreThe Rage of Peter De Vries: Reckoning with a Brokenhearted Humorist
By Essay Issue 83
IT WAS AN ORDINARY autumn night in suburban Chicago when I received the most disturbing book I have ever read. I was seventeen, slouching in my bedroom making a half-hearted attempt at homework, my sweaty cross-country clothes festering on the floor. My father appeared at the doorway and handed me a yellowed paperback that looked…
Read MoreDeus ex Machina
By Poetry Issue 83
Many days into any kind of drought, whether lost faith or drying riverbed, god from machine seems the only way out. While the ospreys and quick kingfishers scout for their food in prayer, waiting to be led, many days into any kind of drought begins to weaken resolve and feed doubt, so that birds scoop…
Read MoreEx Nihilo, Then Us
By Poetry Issue 83
From nothing God made everything, they said. Nothing plus God is nothing we said. But with something to work with, look what we’ve done. God said, you’d better and you’d better not, they said. And sometimes it looks like you have when you shouldn’t. Eyewash, we said, it’s just how we are, honeyed self-interest in…
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