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Alleluia, Alleluia!
2008-03-23 17:28:00
Alleluia, alleluia! Hearts to heaven and voices raise:Sing to God a hymn of gladness, sing to God a hymn of praise.He, who on the cross a Victim, for the world's salvation bled,Jesus Christ, in holiness and glory, now is risen from the dead.Christ is risen, Christ, the first fruits of the holy harvest field,Which will all its full abundance at Christ's second coming yield:Then the golden ears of harvest will their heads before Christ wave,Ripened by Christ's glorious sunshine from the furrows of the grave.Christ is risen, we are risen! Shed upon us heavenly grace,Rain and dew and gleams of glory from the brightness of God's face;That we, with our hearts in heaven, here on earth may fruitful be,And by angel hands be gathered, and be ever, God, with you.Alleluia, alleluia! Glory be to God on high;Alleluia! to the Savior who has gained the victory;Alleluia! to the Spirit, fount of love and sanctity:Alleluia, alleluia! to the Triune Majesty.Words: Christopher Wordsworth (19thC)Music...
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Thousand Kites Launches National Criminal Justice Project
2008-03-20 10:13:00
Thousand Kites is a community-based multimedia project that advocates reforms to the US criminal justice system, using live performances, film screenings, radio broadcasts and the Internet. This month they hope to arrange a hundred screenings of the documentary "Up the Ridge", a film about one community's experience using prisons as economic development and the resulting human rights violations. "Up the Ridge" takes you inside the super-maximum-security Wallens Ridge prison in Virginia, and looks at the personal devastation and racial conflicts that resulted when hundreds of thousands of inner-city minority prisoners were transferred to this rural facility, far from their families and neighborhoods. Click here to order the film, which comes with a guide to setting up a community screening, and other bonus tracks. This outreach effort supports the American Friends Service Committee's STOPMAX Campaign to abolish torture and solitary confinement in US prisons. Read prisoner...
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Uncertainty and Christian Writing
2008-03-18 17:21:00
The new literary journal Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression continues a trend begun by Image and Rock & Sling, providing a home for creative writing that takes Christian faith seriously without sacrificing literary and moral complexity. My novel excerpt "Bride of Christ", about a young woman torn between loyalty to her gay brother and her evangelical family, will be published in Relief later this year. In this interview on their website, guest editor Jill Noel Kandel shares some perceptive advice about what separates Christian literature from doctrinal or inspirational writing: Relief: A number of our nonfiction submissions are more like articles or even sermons and not what we at Relief think of as creative nonfiction. How can writers be sure their work is appropriate for Relief before they submit?Jill: Christian writing has many avenues. Doctrinal, devotional, and magazine article writing seem to be prominent. I would say that Relief wants to publish fiction, n...
More About: Site News , Writing

Holy Week in the Blogosphere
2008-03-17 18:51:00
Yesterday was Palm Sunday, and this weekend, unbelievable as it seems to us in the Northeast who still see snow instead of crocuses on our lawns, will be Easter. Lent is my favorite season of the Christian year, a time when I can get serious about some spiritual problem or slackness of will. Since it's only forty days (and it seemed shorter this year, somehow), I'm not daunted by the prospect of an open-ended vow, the promise to "never do that again" which undermines itself from the start by its very implausibility. It's like Anne Lamott's cure for writer's block: rather than sit down to the monumental task of "writing your novel", she suggests that you resolve every day to write as much as will fit within a one-inch picture frame. Well, I didn't do that, but I did more or less keep my Lenten resolution to stop talking to my novel characters instead of Jesus. What I discovered, when I no longer had my imaginary friend telling me "Girl, you look fabulous, and I love y...
More About: Bible , Blogosphere , Week , Episcopal , Holy

Jendi Reiter's Chapbook "Hound of Heaven" Forthcoming from Southern Hum Pre
2008-03-08 20:49:00
My poetry chapbook Hound of Heaven was a runner-up for the inaugural Women of Words Award from Southern Hum Press and will be published this fall. Thanks, Southern Hum! I'll include a purchasing link on this site when the book is out. Below, a sample:Hound of Heaven       ;      for FranIt had been raining days when the voiceasked me to pull over by the river.Not a voice to be heard but simply a must:the arm moves with the thought, no word says Move.The branches cocked like muskets, spearing the sky,were soaked black, clouds wind-whipped dogscringing like cavemen placatingthe weather of doom they thought was God.Is that all I am, that bared animal neck?I had let the pearls roll from my hands like water,thinking anything precious could save itself.I was silently wed to the clever,dazzled by small explanations.Still I turned the car, slowed, stood under the fallof cold silver needles like a sick child prayingbe good and i...
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Sara Miles on the Idolatry of the Family
2008-03-07 17:08:00
Poet and journalist Sara Miles , whose conversion memoir Take This Bread has just been released in paperback, preached this sermon last summer at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church (San Francisco) about an all-too-common misunderstanding of Christian "family values". Just as in Jesus' day, "family" is not merely a sentimental tableau; it is a circle of power that defines who possesses status and purity, and who does not. Jesus says, I?ve come to bring fire to the earth and destroy your family. Do you think I?ve come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. What?s burning up here isn?t just money, as it was in the Gospel last week. It isn?t just religion, as it was two weeks ago when poor Peter tried to make a shrine to the ancestors to protect him from the blazing fire of the transfiguration. What Jesus is burning up in this reading is the past, and the future of the world as we see it in human terms. He?s replacing it with the fire of the perpetual pres...
More About: Family , Bible

Jesus the Oyster-Man
2008-03-03 11:57:00
Today in the Anglican cycle of prayer we commemorate the brothers John and Charles Wesley, whose revival movement within the Anglican Church gave rise to the Methodist denomination. James Kiefer at The Daily Office tells this story of one Wesleyan preacher's creative misreading of the Bible : [A]lthough Wesley found it natural to approach the Gospel with habits of thought formed by a classical education, he was quick to recognize the value of other approaches. The early Methodist meetings were often led by lay preachers with very limited education. On one occasion, such a preacher took as his text Luke 19:21, "Lord, I feared thee, because thou art an austere man." Not knowing the word "austere," he thought that the text spoke of "an oyster man." He spoke about the work of those who retrieve oysters from the sea-bed. The diver plunges down from the surface, cut off from his natural environment, into bone-chilling water. He gropes in the dark, cutting his hands on the sharp ...
More About: Jesus , Episcopal

Poet Steve Fellner on the Joys of Insignificance; Pat Strachan on When Not
2008-02-28 17:54:00
Poet Kate Greenstreet blogs at Every Other Day, where she's compiled an archive of over 100 interviews with contemporary poets about the road to first-book publication and how it changed their life (or not). I especially treasure these tongue-in-cheek words of wisdom from Steve Fellner, whose book Blind Date with Cavafy won the 2006 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize: I had been sending my book out for many years, and I was crazy determined to get a book of poetry published. I got an MFA and PhD in creative writing. During all this time, I was sending out various incarnations of the book. No one wanted it. It was (and still is) an uneven book, but there were a lot of worse books out there, and I liked sending things out in the mail. Even when you get a rejection in the mail (and I got a zillion of them), it's always fun to have opened the envelope. It's like watching the Oscars. Even if the actor you love loses, you at least enjoy the spectacle.I knew my book would never be accep...
More About: Book Reviews , Poet

Poem: "The Common Question"
2008-02-27 12:12:00
My poem "The Common Question " appears in Issue #11 of The Other Journal, an online review of Christianity and culture. The Other Journal features scholarly essays, creative writing, and artwork; themes change with each issue. Currently they are accepting submissions on Education.Also worth noting in Issue #11, "The Atheism Issue," are Randal Rauser's essay on the proper roles of apologetics and personal testimony in making Christianity seem plausible to a skeptical audience, and Somanjana C. Bhattacharya's article on how activists are pressuring Craigslist to stop running "erotic services" ads that sell trafficked women and children. The Common Question     "Wh at does Charlie want?" ? John Greenleaf Whittier Oh, the unfairness of being myself. There ought to be a rule. So many days as a little boy, so many days as a deer, a centipede, a Masai warrior, a wealthy old lady with too many rings, on an ocean liner. And as a blacksnake, a woma...
More About: Poems , Poem

George Herbert: "The Flower"
2008-02-27 12:00:00
Today in the Anglican calendar we commemorate George Herbert , one of the great 17th-century metaphysical poets (1593-1633). According to the thumbnail bio at The Daily Office, he spent most of his short life as an humble and well-loved parish priest in a village near Salisbury, England. His reputation rests on a single book of poems, The Temple, that was published after his death by his friend Nicholas Ferrar. Below, his poem "The Flower " testifies to the dizzying emotional highs and lows of the spiritual life and how God's constancy alone brings peace. I find it comforting that even a great Christian poet like Herbert had the same struggle for equanimity as the rest of us.The Flower    How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;     To which, besides their own demean, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasures bring.       ;  Grief melts away ...
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Charles Wesley: "Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown"
2008-02-26 14:52:00
An ongoing paradox of my spiritual life is the interplay of willpower and surrender. I am flung back most heavily upon God when I reach the limits of my moral or intellectual abilities to solve some problem. At such times I must learn to quit thrashing around and trust that God will reveal the way forward in His own good time. I have an aversion to inactivity, which always feels to me like edging close to the precipice of depression. Yet, as anyone who's practiced meditation can testify, rest is not the same as passivity or inaction. Stillness is hard work! That's where the willpower comes in. Not to batter my way bull-headedly through my problems on my own, but to cling with all my might to the promises of God, and refuse to be distracted by subtle doubts and speculations. "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." (1 Cor 2:2) Richard F. Lovelace recently sent me a link to this classic hymn by Charles Wesley , a presentat...
More About: Bible , Unknown

Painted Prayerbook Sketches Journey of Faith
2008-02-23 18:39:00
Artist Jan Richardson, whom I discovered through the Image Journal e-newsletter, blogs about faith and the creative process at The Painted Prayerbook. Her meditations on Bible readings from the Episcopal lectionary are accompanied by simple yet rich abstract paintings and collages that express her intuitive response to the text. Recent posts that resonated with me include The Red Circle, about setting aside the ego in order to discern when your work is complete; and Transfiguration Sunday: Mum's the Word (Maybe), where Richardson asks how the artist knows when, and in what medium, to tell a story that is important to her:...In the absence of being able to build physical dwellings, the disciples would have wanted, I suspect, to construct a story about their mountaintop experience: a container of words, at least, that would help them hold and convey what had happened to Jesus and to themselves. Perhaps anticipating this, Jesus enjoins them not to tell what has transpir...
More About: Faith , Journey , Sketches

New Poems from "Conway": "City Limits" and "Streets"
2008-02-21 17:21:00
My prison pen pal "Conway" returns with new poems that move deeper into surreal territory. I like how he's moved away from his reliance on Gothic-horror imagery to more subtle and original metaphors. I sent him poems by John Milton, Carl Phillips and Ariana Reines this month, so look for even stranger poems in the weeks ahead. We're currently seeking a publisher for a chapbook of his work. If you have a lead, please comment below. Meanwhile, some selections: City Limits Exploring her every nook & cranny:This neon-lit City of Angelscarefully, I pried opena glass eyed time-piecesand slithering arteries of Gritbecame avenues of dead starsmixed among flotsam and jetsam once againA globe-lit recalcitrant flameLamp-light of our dark-voided spacesucked into a whirlpoolsiphoned througha pocket-knife sliced Garden hoseFuel, for a stolen car's joyrideSo lonely for comfort; Yet so alive... ******** Streets Delay this intrepid LIFE (left behind)hand-washed away, by years of ...
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Support Soulforce "Right to Marry" Campaign in New York
2008-02-14 20:06:00
Roses fade and chocolates disappear (especially around my house), but certain Valentine's Day gifts can make a lasting impact. This month, young adult volunteers from the progressive interfaith organization Soulforce will return to New York State to ask business and community leaders to support full marriage equality for same-sex couples. Last year, Gov. Eliot Spitzer introduced a gay-marriage bill that was passed by the state Assembly in June, but the Republican-controlled Senate did not let it come to a vote. To donate to the Soulforce Right to Marry Campaign , click here. Also, because we love Hugo and chinchillas are cute, click here.
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Carl Phillips: "Parable"
2008-02-13 16:05:00
There was a saint once,he had but to ring acrosswater a small bell, allmanner of fishrose, as answer, he wasthat holy, persuasive,both, or the fishperhaps merelyhungry, their bodiesa-shimmer withthat hope especially thathunger brings, whateverthe reason, the fishcoming unassigned, inschools cominginto the saint's hand and,instead of getting,becoming food.I have thought, since, ofyour body ? as I first cameto know it, how it stillcan be, with mine,sometimes. I think onthat immediate and last gestureof the fish leaving waterfor flesh, for guaranteethey will die, and I cannotrest on what to call it.Not generosity, ora blindness, trust, brutestupidity. Not the souldistracted from its naturalprayer, which is attention,for in the story they arepaying attention. Theylose themselves eyes open.Read more poems from Phillips ' collection Pastoral (Graywolf Press, 2002) here.
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PEN Prison Writing Contest Winners Posted
2008-02-12 20:37:00
The PEN American Center, a writers' association that defends freedom of expression and other human rights, offers an extensive Prison Writing Program that mentors incarcerated writers and promotes their work through readings and publications. The winners of their 2007 writing contest are currently online. I was especially impressed with J.E. Wantz's first-prize essay "Feeling(s) Cheated". Part memoir, part political analysis, this piece describes the author's treatment with the antidepressant Paxil. Wantz asks tough questions about what the individual, and society, gains or loses by medicating the symptoms rather than addressing the causes of sorrow, anger, and shame. When does medication become a crutch, as well a cheaper alternative to rehabilitating the prisoner? What is the true self, and at what cost are we willing to experience its emotional highs and lows? Wantz recounts a traumatic encounter with a volunteer preacher who denounced antidepressants ...
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Jesus Won't Make Me a Supermodel
2008-02-10 18:46:00
As research for my novel (what a good excuse that is), I've begun watching the fashion-industry reality shows on Bravo. I'm sporadically following "Project Runway", since I haven't warmed up to this year's contestants, but my real addiction is the ultimate bitch-fest "Make Me a Supermodel ". I could do without the manufactured interpersonal drama, especially this week when they all ganged up on Katy because she was eating carbs. Honestly, I'm just interested in the clothes. (I was pulling for Holly a couple of weeks ago because her Christian principles made her uncomfortable doing a soft-core photo shoot, but since then, she's been just as catty as everyone else.) For maximum cognitive dissonance, I'm currently reading Gregory Boyd's Repenting of Religion: Turning from Judgment to the Love of God. Boyd argues that Christians should be characterized by nonjudgmental love, rather than by willingness to make moral pronouncements. Only an omniscient God c...
More About: Jesus , Book Reviews

Jill Alexander Essbaum: "Wednesday, Ash"
2008-02-06 19:37:00
Nothing of me will survive.This body that I wear will dieand my mouth--nevermind its loveliness--is set to shut itself into a sorrow the sizeof restlessness and lack.The lips go too. They slackat the corners crying no, no but still they go. They do not talk back.And then for every finger I have counted on--so many times--there is a going, and a gone.They leave to rest in pieces with once sad and    pretty hands of griefwaiting for an Easter dawn(which no one hears approaching when they're     buri ed underneath the ground).And my feet cannot quit thinking quickstep,    swing, the soundof toe taps or a waltz. Hush. No dancing for the dead. The ball is done. The slipper? Nowhere to be found. And my belly, full or no is quiet.Then it will feast as a ghost feasts--on nothing, a dietof sediment, sleep, a lily or two.I shall not fuss, I shall not make riotor rivalry any, any more. The eyes are vacant, tenantless,for they hav...
More About: Book Reviews , Jill , Alexander , Episcopal , Wednesday

Back from AWP: Preliminary Report
2008-02-04 22:23:00
My husband and I returned yesterday from three action-packed days at the AWP literary conference in New York City, the largest annual event for poetry publishers, literary journals and university presses. We handed out hundreds - maybe thousands! - of Winning Writers contest flyers, hung around with editors from our favorite magazines, and picked up numerous books that I'll be blogging about over the next few weeks. (Especially if I give up computer solitaire for Lent.) Some highlights: Rebecca Wolff from the experimental poetry publisher Fence Books plied us with fortune cookies containing fabulous prizes (I won a free subscription to their journal), but their handsomely designed books needed nothing to sweeten the deal.  After picking up Ariana Reines' The Cow, winner of their 2006 Alberta Prize, I went back to Rebecca the next day and said, "I just want to stand here and tell everyone to buy this book, it redefines what poetry should do!"...
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Mark Doty: "At the Gym"
2008-01-28 14:06:00
This salt-stain spotmarks the place where menlay down their heads,back to the bench,and hoist nothingthat need be liftedbut some burden they've chosenthis time: more reps,more weight, the upward shoveof it leaving, collectively,this sign of where we've been:shroud-stain, negativeflashed onto the vinylwhere we push somethingunyielding skyward,gaining some powerat least over flesh,which goads with desire,and terrifies with frailty.Who could say who'sadded his heat to the nimbusof our intent, here wherewe make ourselves:something difficultlifted, pressed or curled,Power over beauty,power over power!Though there's something moretender, beneath our vanity,our will to become objectsof desire: we sweat the markof our presence onto the cloth.Here is some halothe living made together.Read more poems and essays by prizewinning author Mark Doty on the Academy of American Poets website.

Book Notes: Get the Rollax Replicas You Watned, Vermin
2008-01-24 17:42:00
The uniquely contemporary art form known as "spam poetry" -- amusing, occasionally creepy "found poems" assembled from phrases in junk emails -- has spawned numerous fan sites such as the Spam Poetry Institute, Spam-Poetry.com, and the Anthology of Spam Poetry (notable for the fake bios of the poems' "authors"). I find this art form so fascinating because it captures the absurdity of the competing messages hurled at us by mass communication, a random data stream of tragedies and trivia in which all information has equal (and therefore no) significance. As someone who has tried in vain to appreciate some of today's more experimental poets, I also appreciate the questions spam poetry raises about language and meaning. Can a poem be enjoyable even if it has no "meaning", no narrative thread or logical connection leading from one phrase to another? If so, what characteristics distinguish interesting nonsense from inanity? Good spam poetry, ...
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Ding, Dong, [Your Name Here] Is Dead
2008-01-24 15:19:00
From the Springwise retail trends newsletter comes our latest Sign of the Apocalypse: Requiem for You, an Austrian company that will compose your personal requiem on demand, to the tune of 20,000 Euros and up: Just launched last year, Requiem for You offers services on three levels, the most basic of which is the composition of an individually tailored requiem. The firm represents a network of composers, librettists and musicians who will write an individual requiem in advance, capturing the client's unique personality and accommodating preferences for balance among vocal, instrumental and textual components. Styles available include baroque, classical, romantic, jazz or Broadway musical, with text in German, Latin or English. A personal laudatio is also available. In addition to composing the piece, Requiem for You can also produce an audio recording of it using a team of freelance artists, orchestras and recording studios, once again honouring the client's personal tastes i...
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MassEquality Unveils "Equality Agenda"
2008-01-23 17:03:00
If you've ever heard right-wing commentators denouncing the "gay agenda" and wondered "What's that? Why didn't I get the memo?", worry no more. MassEquality , the grass-roots activist group that helped secure equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians in Massachusetts, has just announced its "Equality Agenda ". These policy initiatives represent the next steps toward full equality for people of every sexual orientation and gender identity. Proposals include: Add gender identity and gender expression as protected categories under the state's nondiscrimination laws. Increase funding for "safe schools" (anti-bullying) programs. Pass the MassHealth Equality Bill, which would give married same-sex couples the same Medicaid benefits as straight married couples. Increase funding for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, and for domestic-violence prevention services that address the special needs of GLBT couples. In a separate initiative, MassEquality will...
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Kirk Lee Davis: "Jubilee at the Liberation of the Senses"
2008-01-23 16:37:00
Lookout Donkey?It?s a shining corporeal supernova!Mr. And Mrs. Political have got it together again!Je suis en retard, Mr. Circumflex?Let the poppy seeds eat their spongeycake!The Luftwaffe is happy to see me!Dance the whiteboy!Okay now, everybody: barrel-roll those hips?Simon says pin the quail on the pattycake man! And helloooooo, Misti Applepants!The Lord is willing and the flesh is Yahoo!All free! All free!What robot abdicator could forego?Get up, Chipdog! Lock the backdoor!The giant teeth! The torture wagons!The fun is here to stay. Reprinted by permission from DIAGRAM, Issue 7.6
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Open-Mindedness, Exclusion, and Religious Commitment
2008-01-22 20:19:00
Open-mindedness, like tolerance, is a paradoxical virtue for liberal-modernist thinkers. Using science as their ideal, they argue that the search for truth requires continual openness to revising your views, which is incompatible with a settled religious commitment to any particular doctrine. Of course, as Micah Tillman points out in a recent Relevant Magazine article, this way of thinking isn't really "open-minded" toward religion. He notes that our culture's main alternative is post-modernism, which touts dialogue among people with different belief systems, but doesn't see this dialogue ever resolving itself into a consensus on the truth. Tillman, who teaches philosophy at the Catholic University of America, suggests a third option: As a teacher of philosophy and a thinking Christian, I have struggled with the choice between modernism and post-modernism. Instead of finally choosing one or the other, however, I live with a philosophy in between. On ...
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Book Notes: Letters to a Skeptic
2008-01-21 19:44:00
Letters to a Skeptic : A Son Wrestles with His Father's Questions about Christianity is a solid little book of Christian apologetics by Dr. Gregory A. Boyd, an evangelical theologian, and his father, Edward K. Boyd. It reproduces their correspondence over a three-year period, during which the elder Boyd asked his son nearly all of the basic questions that potential believers face (e.g., why would a good God permit suffering? how do I know the Bible is true? how can Jesus' death atone for anyone's sins?). At the end of the process, his father became a Christian. Though lacking some of the personality of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, still the gold standard for popular apologetics in my opinion, Letters to a Skeptic covers an enormous amount of ground in less than 200 pages, and its conversational tone makes it a quick read. I would definitely give this book to anyone who is interested in following Christ but stymied by intellectual objections. The Boyds' dialogue starts wit...
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Southern Poverty Law Center Investigates "Ex-Gay" Movement
2008-01-20 22:30:00
The latest issue of Intelligence Report, the magazine of the Southern Poverty Law Center , includes an in-depth exposé of the "ex-gay" movement, a network of ministries that claim to cure homosexuality. These treatments, often performed by leaders who are not licensed therapists, range from the cultic (exorcisms and isolation from one's friends and family) to the merely absurd (beauty makeovers for lesbians). SPLC notes that these groups recently expanded their agenda to include political activism,&nbs p;opposing gay-rights initiatives on the grounds that sexual orientation is not an immutable trait like race and gender. The ministries' own statistics, however, tell a different story: To back up their claims that homosexuality is purely a deviant lifestyle choice, ex-gay leaders frequently cite the Thomas Project, a four-year study of ex-gay programs, paid for by Exodus, that recruited subjects exclusively from Exodus ministries. It was conduc...
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Satan Says "What's the Point?"
2008-01-14 20:27:00
I am afflicted with a sort of spiritual far-sightedness. I see the end of things more clearly than their present reality. My inner life is a constant battle between the hunger for joy and the awareness of its transience. This temperament kept me sober and chaste in adolescence, and probably will help me again during my midlife crisis, but it's not enough to build a life upon. Even asceticism, to avoid becoming a perverse form of self-gratification, has to treat renunciation as a means to an end, a clearing away of distractions in search of the greater pleasure of God's presence. The man in the parable sells the field in order to gain the pearl of great price, not because he's bored with the view.Kafka's story "A Hunger Artist" speaks to this dilemma. The title character made his living as a sideshow attraction, impressing and horrifying spectators with his willpower to abstain from food for weeks or months. Finally, fallen out of fashion, ...
More About: Satan , Book Reviews , Point , Episcopal

Prison Poems by "Conway": "Trapdoor" Revised and Others
2008-01-05 13:45:00
My pen pal "Conway", who is serving 25-to-life in California state prison for receiving stolen goods, returns this month with a revised version of "Trapdoor" and other new poems. I'm enjoying the surreal turn that his work has taken, as he feels a greater freedom to make associative leaps and use imagery rather than explanation to convey emotions.TrapdoorAll the eyes that have groped--    invoked, these melted sands,       ;  us trees in the snow, reaching outfor warm lights brightness    instead , suffocated by whiteness.The Sun only dissolved the black asphalt    melted its pain, in vain      & nbsp; reflecting on this concretecrumbling, like stale crackers.All these faces tied together on the same chain    vacantly staring out      &n bsp; of a teasing television's lensA world of opportunity...
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Poetry Roundup: Huntington, Luddy, Hecht
2007-12-31 19:13:00
Some poetry collections that have recently come across my desk:Cynthia Huntington 's The Radiant has been on my must-read list ever since a poem from this collection, "The Rapture", made the rounds on my poetry listserv. (It's reproduced on the website of Four Way Books, which awarded Huntington their Levis Poetry Prize in 2003.) The book is well-named because a sublime light pierces through her treatment of even the darkest subjects, as in "The Rapture", describing the seizure that heralded the onset of her multiple sclerosis: I remember standing in the kitchen, stirring bones for soup,and in that moment, I became another person.It was an early spring evening, the air California mild.Outside, the eucalyptus was bowing compulsivelyover the neighbor's motor home parked in the driveway.The street was quiet for once, and all the windows were open.Then my right arm tingled, a flutter started under the skin.Fire charged down the nerve of my leg; my scalp explodedin ...
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