Friday Links
A Gaillshion Storm by Jack B. Yeats
March 13, 2026
Micah Mattis, First Things, and Portico
Sofia Carozza: Mortal Flesh
How dissecting a cadaver taught her reverence for life and eternity:
Morrissey: Watchman of the West
Orange Blossom Ordinary: Interview with Seth Wieck, author of “Call Out Coyote”
Soul Fresh and Soul Clean: On Fanny Howe’s “Holy Smoke”
Micah Mattix, First Things, and Portico
This is truly exciting literary news! With the help of some patrons, Mattix has started a new literary journal. This first issue looks incredible with poems from so many great poets, including Brian Brodeur, Ryan Wilson, Christian Wiman, A. E Stallings; essays from the likes of Dominic Green and Robert Shaw; a fantastic short story from Mark Helprin. Deo gratias!
Sofia Carozza: Mortal Flesh
Halfway through our first dissection lab, we paused around the metal table where my lab group and I were hard at work.
We had just sawed through our donor’s ribcage and peeled back the protective membranes covering her heart and lungs. A sickly green fluid met us, which our instructor diagnosed as a chest infection that may have contributed to the donor’s premature death – though numerous nodules in her lungs argued that cancer had also played a role. Slowed but undeterred, we cleaned her organs and pressed on. I cradled a lung in my right hand as I sliced through her bronchi and pulmonary blood vessels with my left, doing my utmost to keep the tissue whole and intact. As whole and intact as a disease-riddled lung of a dead woman could be.
Morrissey: Watchman of the West
Andrew Petiprin writes about Morrissey, former front-man for The Smiths, and one of the few pop stars who refuses to be pinned down or pigeon-holed, bow to progressive cultural critics, or compromise:
We return to “Notre Dame,” a catchy, even mesmerizing song, co-written by and featuring the previously-mentioned Alain Whyte, who last collaborated with Morrissey almost two decades ago. Since 2023, Morrissey has been performing it on stage, but with one significantly different verse than what ended up on the album version. He originally sang, “Notre Dame, we will not be silent. Before investigations, they told us this is not terrorism.” On the record, he changed the line to a subtler “they said there’s nothing to see here.” In any case, the song is a shot across the bow of the modern globalist ship of fools who demonize our valid concerns with accusations of “conspiracy theories.”
Orange Blossom Ordinary: Interview with Seth Wieck, author of “Call Out Coyote”
Orange Blossom Ordinary interviews Seth about his new book, art, place, & more:
I guess an easy entry point may be the epigraph, from a lecture by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy: "Language is the victory over death." I don't know if that's true. The poems in this book seemed to be testing it out; to see if the phrase will hold water. I wrote and collected the poems over 20 years. In that time, I met and married my wife, increased our family by three kids, changed careers a number of times, navigated the raising of children, and watched an older generation of my community begin to die. I'm firmly in the middle of my life and feel the tension to pass on the memory of this place to my kids. To sustain a communal memory that only exists in our language, which isn't exactly a stable medium.
Soul Fresh and Soul Clean: On Fanny Howe’s “Holy Smoke”
Caroline Reagan writes for the Cleveland Review of Books about Fanny Howe and the re-release of her novella Holy Smoke:
Fanny Howe wrote to the end of her 84 years, leaving behind more than fifty books of poetry, prose, and essays, published across a half century. This staggering rate of production is perhaps attributable to the profound restlessness—both geographic and spiritual—that guided Howe’s life. As Howe remarked in her final interview, “If I could say I was assigned something at birth, it would be to keep the soul fresh and clean, and to not let anything bring it down.” To keep the soul fresh is to forgo the security that typically accompanies maturation, instead embracing solitude, transience, and above all else, uncertainty. Howe’s fragmented, digressive prose reflects these itinerant preoccupations, and her novels often feature protagonists who are compelled, or forced, to upend their lives and roam into the unknown. Hers are afflicted, searching characters, “lost souls” who challenge what it means to be found.
