Issue 73 | Spring 2012
Jim Hinch considers the future of religious art in America among migrant farm workers and mystery plays; Christian Wiman writes about the language of faith; and Gregory Wolfe considers the Chauvet Cave through Werner Herzog’s documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Plus, fiction by Erin McGraw and Diane Glancy; poems by Melissa Range, Paul Mariani, and Sydney Lea; a conversation with former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts Dana Gioia; and more.
Editorial Statement
Gregory Wolfe, Editorial Statement: The Cave and the Cathedral
Fiction
Erin McGraw, Step
Diane Glancy, The Weight of Fire
Poetry
John Terpstra, Magdalen
Topographies of Easter
Easter Pantoum
Melissa Range, Verdigris
Orpiment
Kermes Red
Minium
Betsy Sholl, The Harrowing
Paul Mariani, Putting Out into the Deep from Gloucester
Richard Spilman, Imperative
Leeks
Syndey Lea, Our Heads against the Walls
Brett Foster, Late Easter, Spring Come Lately
Philip Metres, Elegy for D.S.
Tania Runyan, Onesimus
Before All Things
Interview
Visual Arts
Donald J. Forsythe, A Celebration of Transient Beauty: The Photographic Art of Paul Kenny
Essays
Christian Wiman, Varieties of Quiet
Confessions
Nicole Sheets, Our Last Suppers
Theater
Book Review
Steven Guthrie on Bruno Forte's The Portal of Beauty, T.J. Gorringe's Earthly Visions,Malcolm Guite's Faith, Hope and Poetry, and Belden C. Lane's Ravished by Beauty
Donald J. Forsythe is an artist living in central Pennsylvania. His work in printmaking and collage has been exhibited widely since 1979. He met Paul Kenny at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in County Mayo, Ireland, where both artists are International Fellows. He is a Distinguished Professor of Art at Messiah College.
Brett Foster’s first book of poems, The Garbage Eater, was published in 2011 by Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press. A second, smaller collection, Fall Run Road, has been awarded Finishing Line Press’s chapbook prize, and is forthcoming. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Literary Imagination, Pleiades, Poetry Daily, Raritan, andShenandoah. He teaches Renaissance literature and creative writing at Wheaton College.
Diane Glancy is currently a professor at Azusa Pacific University. Her most recent books are the novels The Reason for Crows (SUNY) and Pushing the Bear (Oklahoma) and a collection of essays, The Dream of a Broken Field (Nebraska). “The Weight of Fire” is part of a nonfiction collection in progress, “The Catch,” on the Fort Marion prisoners and the history of native education.
Steven Guthrie received his doctorate from the University of Saint Andrews and is an associate professor of theology at Belmont University in Nashville, where he directs the Religion and Arts program. His most recent book is Creator Spirit: The Holy Spirit and the Art of Becoming Human (Baker).
Jim Hinch is a writer in San Jose, California, and a senior contributing editor for Guideposts Magazine. His work has appeared in DoubleTake, Gastronomica, Best American Food Writing, and Image.
Erika Koss served from 2005 to 2009 on the founding creative teams for the Big Read and Poetry Out Loud at the National Endowment for the Arts under Chairman Dana Gioia. She has taught literature and writing at several universities in California and Maryland, most recently at the US Naval Academy. She now works at Northeastern University as assistant dean in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Sydney Lea is poet laureate of Vermont. His poetry collections include Young of the Year(Four Way) and Six Sundays toward a Seventh (Wipf and Stock). Other works include a book of critical essays, A Hundred Himalayas (Michigan), and an essay collection, A North Country Life: Tales of Woodsmen, Waters and Wildlife (Skyhorse).
Paul Mariani is one of America’s leading poets and literary biographers, with volumes on Robert Lowell, Hart Crane, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Wallace Stevens (forthcoming next year). His books of poetry include The Great Wheel (Norton), Deaths & Transfigurations(Paraclete), and Epitaphs for the Journey (Cascade). He is the University Professor of English at Boston College and has taught in the low-residency MFA program at Seattle Pacific University.
Erin McGraw is the author of five books of fiction, most recently The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard (Houghton-Mifflin). Her stories and essays have appeared in Image, The Atlantic Monthly, Good Housekeeping, and many other journals and magazines. She and her husband, the poet Andrew Hudgins, teach at Ohio State University and divide their time between Ohio and Tennessee.
Philip Metres’s books include the poetry collection To See the Earth (Cleveland State) and the anthology Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront Since 1941 (Iowa). His work has appeared in Best American Poetry and Inclined to Speak: Contemporary Arab American Poetry and has garnered NEA and Watson fellowships. He teaches at John Carroll University.
Melissa Range’s first book of poems, Horse and Rider, won the 2010 Walt McDonald Prize in Poetry and was published by Texas Tech University Press. Her poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Hudson Review, New England Review, Paris Review, and others. Originally from East Tennessee, she is currently pursuing her PhD in English and creative writing at the University of Missouri.
Tania Runyan is the author of A Thousand Vessels (WordFarm), Simple Weight(FutureCycle), and Delicious Air (Finishing Line), which was the Conference on Christianity and Literature’s Book of the Year. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Atlanta Review, Indiana Review, Christian Century, Willow Springs, Nimrod, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, and the anthology A Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare (Iowa). She was awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2011.
Nicole Sheets teaches creative writing at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Western Humanities Review, Hotel Amerika, Mid- American Review, Tampa Review, and in the anthologies Permanent Vacation (Bona Fide) and Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical (Cascade).
Betsy Sholl’s most recent book is Rough Cradle (Alice James). Her awards include the AWP Prize for Poetry and the Felix Pollak Prize. She teaches in the MFA Program of Vermont College of Fine Arts and was poet laureate of Maine from 2006 to 2011.
Richard Spilman is the author of two books of poetry: In the Night Speaking (Sacramento Poetry Center) and Suspension, a chapbook from New American Press. He has also published two books of short fiction. His faith extends to baseball, where he is a fan of both the Royals and the Cubs.
John Terpstra has written eight books of poetry, one of which, Disarmament (Gaspereau), was short-listed for Canada’s Governor General’s Award. His latest work is the essay collection Skin Boat: Acts of Faith and Other Navigations (Gaspereau). The poem “Magdalen” first appeared in Poetry as Liturgy: An Anthology of Canadian Poets, edited by Margo Swiss (Saint Thomas Poetry Series).
Christian Wiman is the author of five books, most recently Every Riven Thing (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) and a translation of the selected poems of Osip Mandelstam, Stolen Air(Ecco). “Varieties of Quiet” is adapted from a chapter of My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), which will appear in 2013. A section on page 96 first appeared, in slightly different form, in his book Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet(Copper Canyon).