Friday Links
Giovanni Odazzi - The Rest on the Flight into Egypt
January 23, 2025
A Novel Deeply Concerned with the Dignity of Life
In This House of Death: What Does Sanctity of Human Life Month Mean in 2026?
Karen Solie’s Wellwater wins T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize
On Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher”
Christian Poetry Around the Globe w/ Burl Horniachek
20 Years of Catholic Arts Revival—Dappled Things
A Novel Deeply Concerned with the Dignity of Life
Lindsay Schlegel reviews Sally Thomas’s novel Works of Mercy for WOF:
Sally Thomas’s 2022 novel Works of Mercy, published by Wiseblood Books, is not explicitly a pro-life novel. You won’t see any slogans in the back cover copy or a plea for protest in the author’s note. At its core, however, this novel is deeply concerned with the dignity of the human being—even when she considers herself to be past her prime, content in her narrow sphere, not yearning for anything more in this life.
Lindsay mentions the oft-quoted accusation that pro-lifers “focus[ing] too much on babies in the womb and neglect[ing] the other stages of life through natural death.” In my experience with Catholic pro-life organizations, care and support to women facing an unplanned pregnancy are offered both during pregnancy and after the baby is born. My niece recently graduated from college and is working with one such organization here in the Philadelphia area: Legacy of Life Foundation. In her role, she attends to women in the city and neighboring counties to make sure they and their children have the resources they need—that is, her role is essentially to help after the baby is born. The Catholic Medical Association is another organization that does great work training, supporting, and assisting physicians and healthcare workers to care for life “from the womb to the tomb.” January is a good month to consider supporting these, and organizations like them, by volunteering your time and donating your money.
In This House of Death: What Does Sanctity of Human Life Month Mean in 2026?
Nadya Williams reviews Abagail Favale’s novel, Our Lady of the Sign:
. . . in her novel, Favale approaches a related question: What does sanctity of human life mean in our present world, where abortion no longer means leaving your home, and pills can end the life of a child in utero at home, unseen by anyone other than God? As abortion in America today increasingly moves from the clinic into the home—from public space to private—it is time to confront this question more earnestly. In a world where the sanctity of the body is now regularly violated in myriad ways yet dubbed medicine—from gender reassignment surgery to physician assisted suicide to, of course, abortion—we have to remember that not all physicians see their task as that of saving lives. The numbers, in this case, speak volumes, and January is a good month to revisit them.
Karen Solie’s Wellwater wins T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize
Chair Michael Hofmann said: “In Karen Solie we have an outstanding winner. The poems of Wellwater come from the whole of an adventurously lived life. They hold the two sentiments, The world is a beautiful place / The world is a terrible place, in perfect equipoise. They offer no happy endings, no salvation in past or future, in epiphany or private happiness. And yet they are anything but grim, with an ironic humour that plays over our increasingly euphemism-hungry culture.”
On Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher”
The Imaginative Conservative offers us “Commentary on Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher,” from The House of Fiction, edited by Caroline Gordon and Allen Tate, republished recently by Cluny Media). Tate and Gordon are always worth reading and re-reading.
Christian Poetry Around the Globe w/ Burl Horniachek
Thomas Mirius talks with Burl Horniachek about his anthology of Christian poetry translated from non-English languages, from the first 18 centuries of the Faith, To Heaven’s Rim.
20 Years of Catholic Arts Revival—Dappled Things
While you listening to podcast, why not take a listen to this one with Bernardo and Rhonda talking about all things DT?
