Guest Post By Angela Doll Carlson W.H. Auden has said, “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” Nowhere is this more evident than in the work of Scott Cairns. Whether they are the words from his poem, “Loves”: I have kissed his feet. I have looked long into the trouble of his face Or those he’s translated and adapted from the writings of the early saints in Endless Life: The soul that... Read more
To celebrate Image’s twenty-fifth anniversary, we are posting a series of essays from people who have encountered our programs over the years. Today’s post is the first. I had been living a double life. Two nights a week, I attended a large evangelical church, where I prayed, sang, and gave my money and time. I led a small group where we spoke fiercely of our spiritual struggles, relationships, careers, and painful pasts. At the same time, while riding the train downtown... Read more
A friend mentioned a line from Hannah and Her Sisters the other day: “But in the morning, I forgot that I was happy.” That might not be the exact quote; it might not even be the right movie; but the line goes something to that effect. At any rate, we both laughed; the wit needs little explanation, which is the definition of that device. The quality of poignancy lies in a thing’s ability to be absorbed; poignancy can be understood... Read more
If you asked me about the Shroud of Turin, I could speak for hours. Before I saw it in Italy one Easter, I read several books on it. So I could tell you the Shroud is a linen cloth, three feet wide and fourteen long, that’s marked with faint front and back images—like those of a sepia photo—of a man in burial pose. Beginning at one end of the fabric and panning lengthwise towards the other, you can see the... Read more
I used to find “nature poetry” boring. Descriptions of wind through the trees, hilltop vistas, butterflies alighting on flowers all left me unmoved. Then I started reading Todd Davis’s poems. Choosing to live in the Pennsylvania mountains, Davis has immersed himself in the natural world—as a painter immerses himself in color, as a composer immerses herself in sound. Nature is Davis’s language. The poems of his newest volume, In the Kingdom of the Ditch, speak not so much of nature... Read more
Recently my brother had a DNA test done to see what our nationality/ethnicity breakdown is. As it turned out, the DNA evidence totally refuted all the family stories we heard growing up, stories we told to ourselves and to others over the years. As he has been interested in genealogical research for years, my brother participates on websites devoted to it. When he announced the results of his DNA test, and what that means for the conflicting story the records... Read more
Guest post by Gareth Higgins “You have to be a stranger to the landscape to regard it as a view.” — Geoff Dyer “I wish I had your passion, Ray, misdirected as it may be. But it is still a passion.” — Terrence Mann to Ray Kinsella, in Field of Dreams Author’s note: I’m delighted to be participating in the Glen Workshop this coming June, and would love you to join me to explore the personal (and American) dream narratives... Read more
Continued from yesterday. For most of the fall after we moved to Northern Michigan, I was sick with a bad respiratory infection that turned out to be bacterial bronchitis. The doctor sent me home with an antibiotic and a prescription for an SSRI—an antidepressant. She said she was concerned about the coming dark months and the cold of my first northern winter and my compromised immune system. The stress of the move, she said, could be why I can’t seem... Read more
It’s probably not okay to call it the insane asylum. It’s officially the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, a mixed-use development with a brick-oven bakery, a coffee roaster, farm-to-table restaurants, a nature school and a place to buy ethically sourced yoga pants. But there’s something satisfyingly shocking about calling it the insane asylum. It seems right to acknowledge why this place of luxury goods and services looks like the setting for A Series of Unfortunate Events, why it’s so beautiful... Read more
Sunday at the Oscars, Spike Jonze deservedly won Best Original Screenplay for Her, his dystopian love story for the cybernetic age. In an alternative world, the kind that Jonze likes us to inhabit in his films—strange but relatable, infinitely ironic—I’m pretty sure that he also took home the award for Best Parable. Or, in keeping with Jonze’s boyish persona that seems to shrug at his own brilliance, perhaps it was Best Parable In Spite of Itself. Why in spite of... Read more
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