Friday Links
July 10, 2026
Angels collecting the most precious blood of Christ, Detail from an icon of Andreas Pavias
A Year of Sonnets in the Key of Kees
On Discovering a New Weldon Kees Sonnet
No Country for Nihilism
Leo’s Augustinian Encyclical
A Year of Sonnets in the Key of Kees
Bookmark this, subscribe, do whatever you’ve got to do to keep on top of these upcoming sonnets and essay from The Sonneteer.
On Discovering a New Weldon Kees Sonnet
Number one in the Kees pieces is Dana Gioia on discovering “Night in July”:
One of the most interesting things in the UNL collection: Kees’s pocket diaries. These are small calendar appointment books, once sold at stationery stores. Thanks to them, we now know what Kees did every hour of the day for most of the last 15 years of his life—the period in which he lived in New York and San Francisco. The pocket diaries stopped only in the last two years when his life had begun to fall apart. These well-worn, little books with their daily appointments. reminders, and observations gave me a tangible sense of the poet.
No Country for Nihilism
Michael Brendan Dougherty on “What critics get wrong about Cormac McCarthy’s classic novel and its film adaptation.”
These are all misreadings. No Country for Old Men is bleak in the way that many of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories are bleak; they fearlessly and realistically confront evil. But McCarthy (and the Coen brothers’ faithfulness to his novel) does not let evil have the last word; instead he allows an intrusion of grace into this world, a Christian subversion of the bleak scene.
Leo’s Augustinian Encyclical
Peter Keepman on how “The pope’s thoughts on AI are guided by the bishop of Hippo and John Henry Newman.”
