Articles

How I would like to believe in tenderness— —Sylvia Plath, “The Moon and the Yew Tree”   HOLY SEPULCHRE Mausoleum and Cemetery sits in a fenced green block on Ridgeland and 111th Street, five minutes south of my apartment. I pass that corner at least once a week, and when I pass it, I pass…

In 1907, at forty-three years of age, Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo published his first book of poetry, titled simply Poesías (Poems). Already well known in Spain as a prominent intellectual and the rector of the University of Salamanca, by this time Unamuno had produced novels, essays, and works of philosophy. Yet in the verse…

In 1907, at forty-three years of age, Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo published his first book of poetry, titled simply Poesías (Poems). Already well known in Spain as a prominent intellectual and the rector of the University of Salamanca, by this time Unamuno had produced novels, essays, and works of philosophy. Yet in the verse…

SHE HAD A CHOICE: she could have flown to Boston to make a proper farewell. Gene was sure of it. “He’s in a very loving state these days, Melanie. Very weak, very thin, very loving. You’d hardly recognize him. I know it would mean a lot if you came.” But she couldn’t. They were fifteen…

When I was wounded whether by God, the devil, or myself —I don’t know yet which— it was seeing the sparrows again and clumps of clover, after three days, that told me I hadn’t died. When I was young, all it took were those sparrows, those lush little leaves, for me to sing praises, dedicate…

Eyes set into the ridgepole, the house peers down at the man. Now and then the ears tremble, Such sensitive, discerning walls: love one minute, invective the next, then fist-pounding panic. God is touched by the house the man has made, God whose eyes peer down from the ridgepole of the world. The house begs…

Farther away the closer it gets, time outwits science. This fossil is how many millions of years old? The same age as my pain. Love laughs at swagger, men sleepless over their calculators. The invisible enemy decks himself out to keep me from saying what makes me eternal: O world! I’ve loved you ever since…

Kathy Hettinga has received many awards and honors for her artwork, including an Indiana Arts Fellowship, a Research Fellowship at The Institute of Sacred Music, Worship, and the Arts at Yale University, and the very first Scholar Chair from Messiah University. Her work is in the permanent collections of UCLA, the Armand Hammer Museum, the…

IN THE FIRST DAYS of May, 1610, the renowned Confucian scholar Li Madou lay dying in his home in Beijing. Hundreds of the leading citizens of the Chinese capital came to pay their respects to the man whose books on ethics, mathematics, friendship, and the mysteries of life and death had been read and circulated…

Something has descended    like feathered prophecy.          Someone has offered the world    a bowl of frozen tears, has traced the veins and edges    of leaves with furred ink.          The staff is stiff as the strings    of a lute. And, day by day, the tiny windows   …