One of America’s most prophetic artistic voices has left us. I am speaking, of course, of the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison’s passing last week at the age of 88 years. She was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, living American writers. And she is the writer whose voice is…

Until a few months ago, I thought Aleppo, Syria was one word. I’d never seen it in print, only heard it, and just once, from the lips of my grandmother. “I was born in Aleppo, Syria,” she said, and since there was no pause between the “o” and the “s” I figured she was referring…

We knew in an instant everything about our lives had changed, but we did not know how much, or that everything would be different from what we had thought.

Multiple members of my family live with chronic pain, which is why I’m always arrested by writers who don’t let God off the hook for painful experiences, who question suffering more closely. Can we know who is ultimately responsible for suffering? Does suffering have a purpose (and if it does, why does it so often…

Two Poets Laureate On Grief, Detachment, and Finding New Ways to Live, Part 2 Continued from yesterday. Read Part 1 here.  Sarah Arthur: As Poet Laureate of Ohio, in what ways do you see the bardic role of the poet as “lamenter-in-chief” having changed over time? What role do you see a contemporary American poet…

Somewhere in the middle of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, the eponymous Jeanne eats a sandwich in her kitchen. We have, by that point in the film, seen quite a lot of Jeanne’s kitchen. We’ve watched Ms. Dielman cook in that kitchen, peel potatoes, wash dishes (shot from behind her back so…

Recently I ran across the following sentences in a status update and, in short, wanted to run over my tablet with the lawnmower: “Sin isn’t very chic to talk about these days. Words like: brokenness, psychological issues, maladjustment, and trauma are way more palatable. But woe to us if we completely ignore sin.” I copied…