The Spiritual Frontiers of Film
By Essay Issue 93
An Introduction by Guest Editor Scott Teems The first issue of Image I read was Issue 31, in the summer of 2001; it was the first in a subscription gifted me by the Act One screenwriting program in Los Angeles, which I had just completed. Initially, I was intimidated by the journal’s focus on fine…
Read MorePerfume Poured Out
By Essay Issue 89
One of the real tests of writers is how well they write about smells. If they can’t describe the scent of sanctity in a church, can you trust them to describe the suburbs of the heart? _____________________________________ ___________ —Diane Ackerman For your love is more delightful than wine. Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;…
Read MoreUnapologetic Visibility
By Essay Issue 59
WHAT IS GOD LIKE? It’s safer to say what he’s not. After all, if someone succeeded in writing a novel in French without using the letter e, it must be possible to write a theological treatise without adjectives. Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must do something anyway. But do what? Point with our fingers?…
Read MoreMolest the Dead
By Poetry Issue 64
for A.M. Fine I Molest the dead. Take from them their buried honey. Envy them their past perfect tense, their had done and hurried gone. Harry them, for bars of iron cannot deter their passing. Hate, heat, hoar cannot injure their integument nor corrupt what worms have gowned and mastered with their ferried van lines…
Read MoreA Conversation with Gregory Orr
By Interview Issue 66
Gregory Orr is the author of ten books of poetry, most recently Concerning the Book that Is the Body of the Beloved and How Beautiful the Beloved (both from Copper Canyon). Long known for his condensed and crafted style, in his recent work, Orr demonstrates a shift toward the personal lyric at its most stripped-down,…
Read MoreOn Visiting Carthage
By Poetry Issue 75
In high-school Latin, I first read Augustine and wary could not, even threatened by grades, be made to care for his florid rhetoric or thieving of pears. Uphill I trudge from the Antonine baths Augustine must have known. The basement remains where puddles reflect fallen columns, their leafy capitals upside down. A corner maquette under…
Read MoreBefore All Things
By Poetry Issue 73
The day Christ died a record-long freight train barreled through the Rollins Road crossing. For seven minutes tankers and lumber flats vibrated through the spikes in his wrists. A fisherman dropped his pole by the retention pond and headed toward the hill. A girl at a bus stop clutched her side as the embryo implanted…
Read MoreImperative
By Poetry Issue 73
Go then into the spare light of dawn, Into the sparkling rime, from the long dream Of yes and no, stand still as the falcon passes Close behind and then in a rush of feathers Embraces the crooked pole and its power line; Go, believing in some destination, onto the shore Where destination founders, where…
Read MoreTranslation Back Into Native Tongues
By Poetry Issue 81
Sometimes, I miss the Aramaic of youth. Then, the personal flame came over us and we spoke to the numb nations— until the nations winnowed and muted us, but not breaking the spirit of our speech. Now, I live in the breeze’s murmur, the native tongues to which the soul responds, a language that comforts…
Read More