The Raising of the Bells
By Poetry Issue 67
Not only were the largest of the church bells cast in pits, there, beneath the thrusting of the tower, at times the earthly founding of a bell came first, when walls rose above the mold, above the flower of bronze they sexed with a clapper, then block-and-tackled from the ground into some hymn or other,…
Read MoreHymn
By Poetry Issue 67
A child sees inside the stained-glass window the pride of the garden that came before the hand that raised this smoke, this corpse, this rose. His mother signals him to pray with those who come to kneel beneath the candle fire. The child sees inside their stained-glass window the petals of the wound that cannot…
Read MoreAn Interview with William Dyrness
By Interview Issue 67
William Dyrness is a professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. His latest book is Poetic Theology (Eerdmans). He was Image’s Artist of the Month in June 2001. Image issue 67 features his essay on the vision of Christ in the paintings of Georges Rouault. We asked Dyrness why he is so drawn…
Read MoreLament
By Essay Issue 67
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…
Read MoreThe Reading Wars
By Essay Issue 67
IT’S 103 DEGREES in Lincoln, Nebraska, and my mother is sitting at the kitchen table, twisting the elastic steel band of my father’s big watch around her wrist. She is paging through a book as massive as the New York telephone directory. It contains all of Shakespeare’s plays. The letters are the size of midges,…
Read MoreOn Brotherhood and Crucifixion
By Essay Issue 67
Black Cross, New Mexico, 1929 (Georgia O’Keeffe) Twin of the one in my mind, this cross is uneven—blooms like the trunk of a heavy woman, its underside bright as sunset, and under it, O’Keeffe’s hills—like looking at two miles of gray elephants, she said once—a sort of bed where no cross lies down. The…
Read MoreThe Exiles: Finding the Story
By Essay Issue 67
A HALF CENTURY AGO I was standing in a skid row bar wondering what role I was playing. The bar was called, almost mockingly, the Ritz, and we were making a film, but the role I pondered wasn’t an acting part, and it was more than a question of what function I had at the moment.…
Read MoreA Conversation with Patricia Hampl
By Interview Issue 67
Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Patricia Hampl first won recognition for A Romantic Education (Houghton Mifflin), a memoir about her Czech heritage which received a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, and then for Virgin Time (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a book about her Catholic upbringing and an inquiry into contemplative life. Called “the queen of memoir” by the…
Read MoreSeeing Through the Darkness: Georges Rouault’s Vision of Christ
By Essay Issue 67
A number of recent events suggest a revival of interest in the work of Georges Rouault is underway. Three in particular are worth noting: In 2008 a major exhibition, Mystic Masque, curated by Stephen Schloesser, was held at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College; a year later a joint exhibition of work by…
Read MoreA Conversation with Makoto Fujimura about Georges Rouault
By Interview Issue 67
In November and December of 2009, the Dillon Gallery in New York City mounted a show called Soliloquies which featured the work of two artists of faith: the twentieth-century French painter Georges Rouault and contemporary Nihonga painter Makoto Fujimura. The show not only provided a fascinating glimpse into artistic influence, but helped to introduce a…
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