Deep Down Things
Nicodemus, Doug Weaver
Pentecost 2012 issue.
Gilbert and Me
In this tedious world of tweets, snap chat, memes, talking heads, and internet influencers we can open the pages of Chesterton and find someone who is willing to engage us about the things that matter, while ordering us a pint. He reminds us that what the modern world has proclaimed so tedious and commonplace is actually quite astounding and fascinating if we engage it.
Contemplative Realism: Event to Attend This Week, Book to Read, Manifesto to Sign
“The contemplative realist is keenly aware of the difference between the necessarily clinical gaze of the scientist and the mesmerized smittenness of the contemplative.”—Joshua Hren
Our 2022 J. F. Powers Prize Finalists
Friday Links, February 19, 2022
+ Presence: the Journal of Poetry, preview reading of Spring 2022 issue, February 20.
+ Scala Foundation Conference Spring 2022: “Art, the Sacred, and the Common Good,” April 30, and in addition, for writers 17-35:
+ Poetry Contest: winners announced at conference.
+ Poetry Masterclass with James Matthew Wilson May 1.
+ Summer Writers Institute of the MFA creative writing program at the University of St. Thomas, Houston.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The trailers for David Lowery's new film starring Dev Patel looked promising: stunning set pieces, rich in symbol, beautifully cast. The Green Knight is not only green-colored, he is growth itself. The King and Queen are haloed as Byzantine emperors of old. It's a film that shows a reverence and affection for the source material, even while misunderstanding it from the medieval Catholic perspective.
Tell your children their birth story
I have that story on hard days and happy days. On those inevitable days when I wonder what the point of me is after all. When dealing with insensitive boors, or sadness, or fear, or self doubt. When wondering if I am a good mom, or if I did everything right in the end. Whatever comes my way, I have that memory. I was gift.
Friday Links, February 11, 2022
+ A review of Claude McKay’s Harlem Nights, on its 100th anniversary.
+ Trevor Cribben Merrill on “lodestars of aesthetic judgement.”
+ Dana Gioia, “Finding Time to Write.”
Embracing Poetic Craft
Like the canonical crows in The Book of the Dun Cow, writing with meter “blesses” the poem by making it “familiar”, gives the lines “direction and meaning”, and gives it a “proper soul”.
A Death at Home
Maya Sinha describes the power of Catholic culture:
During the rite, which went on for several minutes, Francis’ mouth fell open as he gazed up at the priest. He appeared to be listening intently, as if straining to hear the words behind the words, a faint and distant music. His wife wiped away tears, and the trailer’s living room seemed suddenly filled with charged particles, transformed into a holy and mysterious place.
Friday Links, February 4, 2022
+ Joshua Hren announces the publication of his first novel and his writers’ manifesto.
+ Heather King interviews herself.
+ City Mother, is reviewed on the day before its release.
+ Catholic Writers Conference coming up February 11-13.
+ Ave Regina Caelorum, the Marian antiphon for this time of year.
+ A CLA class, Finding Faith on the Road, begins early March.
Kerouac and What Might Have Been
Unlike Augustine, Kerouac’s “not yet” never came. What happened in the years between his journal entry and his death is an open book. His alcohol and drug use and increasingly bizarre behavior seeking sex, security and recognition is well documented in biographies, recorded memories of those who knew him, and in his own journal and autobiographical novels.
Friday Links, January 28, 2022
+Hopkins’ poetry read by the actor who plays Jesus.
+ Dante poetry contest overwhelmed with submissions: good news for procratinators.
+ ‘Mary: The Paper Doll Project” & how Catholics and Protestants differ in their response.
An interview with Eleanor Bourg Nicholson
The following is a wide-ranging interview with Eleanor Bourg Nicholson and Jesse Russell
Laughing At Death
Ray Bradbury’s Niebuhrian Understanding of Sin in “Something Wicked This Way Comes”
O Sons and Daughters: Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus
Friday Links, January 21, 2022
+ Death of a prominent Catholic woman philosopher/writer/educator.
+ Writing Query Letters, there’s a CLA class for that.
+ On Simon Weil and the loss of value in art.
On Winter
In The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris asks, “If scarcity makes things more precious, what does it mean to choose the spare world over one in which we are sated with abundance…does living in [the spare world] bring with it certain responsibilities? Gratitude for example? The painful acceptance that underlies Psalm 16’s ‘happy indeed whatever heritage befalls me?’”
Lights
It is twenty-four days past Christmas. My husband walks into the living room, eyes the fake pine garland and tiny colored lights wrapped around the banister behind the piano and says,
"It's time we take these down.”
"I don't want to take them down."
I hear myself and think how much I sound like one of the five year olds I work with. But maybe that's because it's the gut-honest truth. I'd prefer not to take down the Christmas lights.
Friday Links, January 14, 2022
+ Seminar on Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus
+ Is habit a slave driver or a path to spiritual growth?
+ Dante poetry contest, submissions close 1/31
Losing My Ethnicity
These were the lessons I learned at our kitchen table, drinking coffee and listening to my grandmother tell stories of the family’s struggles during the Depression as she made struffoli and zeppoles by hand. There was honor in doing the right thing by those you loved. You’d be remembered for it after you died. And there was purpose in carrying from the past the things that mattered, not just the foods and traditions and the funny stories but the lessons learned, so you could teach them to the next generation.