Bruce Springsteen and the Long Walk Home
By Essay Issue 66
LATE AT NIGHT I walk the streets of my hometown, my hands stuffed deep in the pockets of my leather jacket to ward off the winter chill, and dream of superstardom. By this time I figured I’d have written the great American novel, worked on the Hollywood screenplay, and consulted with DeNiro and Streep on how…
Read MoreRadiance
By Poetry Issue 67
Bernadette walked from the kitchen singing “Hold On,” that song with a rising refrain. Her voice strong, she looked at each of us in turn: the woman with a bullet lodged in her head, one with a daughter dead a year, another whose unexplained anger flew loose daily. And me, the visitor trying to come…
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 MoreA Conversation with Joe Henry
By Interview Issue 71
Singer, songwriter, and Grammy-winning producer Joe Henry has been making records since 1986. He has released a dozen albums of his own songs, most recently Scar (2001), Tiny Voices (2005), Civilians (2007), Blood from Stars (2009), and Reverie (2011). Allmusic.com’s Thom Jurek writes that as a songwriter, Henry occupies “a space that only he and…
Read MorePortrait of the Psalmist as Ultra-Singer
By Poetry Issue 75
I sing for fear I’ll hear the still small voice and not like what it says. I croon to make my skull full as a squat hive and the honey is my cracked song, my sting in the throat. O I know a bee is not a melody but I must come to terms with…
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 MoreThe Key
By Poetry Issue 74
The thing about nature is it doesn’t need coaching. Fire flares true, first strike out of a match. Infant waterfalls sing like experts. Acorns squeeze out oaks, each leaf a born breather. Even Darwin’s mutations. Paragons. Every one a prima donna, a first fiddle. _____________So is it not strange— child of nature that I am—to…
Read MoreHow the Band Becomes One Body
By Poetry Issue 77
If it happens, it must be by chance, the one bum note the slight misstep that leads toward an “ageless wisdom that outlasts all things else,” by which Augustine means his god and his god only, and not the Peavey amps, the wires coiled into a snare in the practice room adjoining a neighbor’s summer…
Read MoreRepetition Compulsion
By Poetry Issue 78
This, then, is the complete game: disappearance and return. ——————————————————————Freud [In craps, the “point” is a dice-cast that must be rolled again before a seven to win the bet. Seven, though, is the most common cast, so the odds always disfavor any repetition of the point.] I came to all the senses that would come…
Read MoreLa Pulchra Nota
By Short Story Issue 78
Do not love the world or the things in the world…. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it;…
Read More