Articles

was what our nuns called it, the bread of angels, the Lord’s supper on the eve of his pure and holy sacrifice, their black habits hovering over us like threats, always the rosary dangling from a curveless hip, always chalk dust swirled on the cracked blackboard, above which the patron saints sat awaiting our prayers…

Ron Hansen’s novels are Desperadoes, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (both from Knopf), Mariette in Ecstasy, Atticus, Hitler’s Niece, and Isn’t It Romantic? (all from HarperCollins). Atticus was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Hansen is also the author of the story collection Nebraska…

The brush might absorb too much water. Not enough. His stroke could be too heavy or hesitant. The ink could blot. Refuse to spread. Spread in the wrong direction. The Japanese brush painter has trained for years to face this moment. On his knees, leaning back on his heels, today he pictures the heron, come…

Reel rolling from the spliced-together lot of my past, this time around: senior year of high school, singsong voiceover of girls bowing to whatever she said, Yes, Sister/ No, Sister as still shots are superimposed on our faces: lone crow on a fencepost, cow silhouetted against late afternoon. Byron, Keats, Shelley—lining up to wander line…

THE TASTE OF GRAPES was the taste south of his grandmother’s garage back home. Small as marbles, green and sour skinned—when you bit them, the skins spilt and squirted the globe of flesh into your mouth, smooth and soft; if there were any sweetness, this is where you would find it. He could not define…

I When my father meets God he says, Let me introduce myself…. When my father meets God he says, Am I too early? Too late? When my father meets God he says, Do you serve drinks here? When my father meets God he says, It was easier not to believe. When my father meets God…

RICHARD SERRA’S Torqued Ellipse I and Torqued Ellipse II (1996-97), now permanently installed at Dia:Beacon, remind me of Simone Weil’s axiom that “All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by the laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception” [see Plate 1]. These lines, from the opening of her book…

This is the season of dried rushes and sodden leaf-matter in parks, when the lightly furred animal bodies of the people break out in sores and a mild but insistent contagion blooms in the chilly dampness. The lowered sun does not yet warm them, despite cerulean skies. The meat-headed race trundles along in groups, God…

This is your infinite being. Well, then, I am screwed, since the lozenge-cool om of the yogi misfires: not launching me like a sweat bead to float midair, but jangling my shorted nerves, which despite practice remain fidgety and ridiculously hidebound. And I think, is this it? Is this all I will glimpse in this…

  My knights and my servants and my true children, which be come out of deadly life into spiritual life, I will now no longer hide me from you, but ye shall see now a part of my secrets and of my hid things. ———————————————————————–—Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D’Arthur THE AVIATOR HAD BEEN HEARING…