By the time this posts more than two weeks after the event, the Boston Marathon bombing will already have lost most of its impact upon those of us not affected first or secondhand. Even today, less than seventy-two hours later, a time for shock has mostly given way—generally speaking—to a time for shopping. And arguably for good reason, this being Mayor Giuliani’s mandate to his shell-shocked constituents, myself included, right after 9/11: get out and get shopping to show those... Read more
Confucius thought that social unrest could stem from dissociation between language and reality. A “rectification of names” was called for when words no longer related to their material referents. But how do you rectify emotions or conscience? How do you re-sensitize a world gone numb? Lately, I’ve come across a little interjection of indifference—“meh”—that tersely appraises the emotional lethargy of our age. There’s a certain economy to the remark, a complete confluence of sound, syllable, and even appearance that expresses... Read more
For Cathy Warner, Literary Editor of IMAGE Journal’s “Good Letters” Blog But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” —Luke 18:16 I remember three things about Doug. Number one: When we were in the same class in elementary school in Odessa, Missouri in the mid-1980s, Doug lost the battle of boy versus bladder in the hallway. “I... Read more
The world is not with us—enough. O taste and see. –Denise Levertov, “Taste and See” It may seem incongruous to speak about a poet by introducing the work of another poet—in this case, Luci Shaw via Denise Levertov. But many factors make this epigraph fitting of Luci’s work, vision, and character, the most immediate reason being that Luci is the recipient of the tenth annual Denise Levertov Award, an annual literary award given by Image Journal, Seattle Pacific University, and... Read more
The pale bits—twigs, fibers, pine needles—sun struck, fall through the lazy air as if yearning to be embodied in my knitting, like gold flecks woven into a ceremonial robe. How perfectly Luci, I thought, as I clipped the poem, “Knitting in the Wild,” from the March 6, 2013 issue of Christian Century. Would I have known this was one of her poems without seeing the poet’s name? I think so. The pinpoint-focused attention on natural phenomena bursting with life—even “yearning.”... Read more
“People caught in a homeland-trap,” writes the late Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai in “National Thoughts,” a poem from the mid-1960s. The homeland (Israel) is a trap? In the eyes of hundreds of thousands of refugees who, to escape persecution, fled there from Russia, Poland, Germany, Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia, and…? In the eyes of the many American Jews who made aliyah (rose up! immigrated to) first to the British Mandate of Palestine, later to the modern State of Israel? I’m watching... Read more
Well, somebody at Good Letters had to do it: Somebody had to go buy the incessantly-hyped volume Lean In by the stratospherically successful Facebook COO (and mother of two) Sheryl Sandberg, and figure out what’s behind the seemingly endless radio talk shows and online profiles—they have been following me, they have, filling up my car like clouds of incense and dinging on my phone with the book’s mantra-like subtitle, Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. I bought this part-memoir,... Read more
Not long ago, I had surgery. I suppose that in the vastness of creation, the precipitating problem wasn’t much; with age I’d lost peripheral vision due to drooping eyelids. For several years I’d lived in shadow, sight obscured by canopies of flesh. My ophthalmologist prescribed blepharoplasty coupled with an endoscopic brow lift. If I chose to have the surgery, he’d put me under general anesthesia, incise along my eyelids’ natural creases and in several places in my scalp. He’d remove... Read more
In his great work, Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess has the main character—Kenneth Toomey, a doddering, debauched, eighty year-old novelist—remark upon the insignificance of his life’s quest, the search for the “right” words: I was thinking like an author, not like a human, though senile, being. As though conquering language mattered. As if, in the end, there were anything more important than clichés. Toomey goes on to contemplate the word “faithful,” one of those old all-encompassing terms that celebrated writers have... Read more
Good Letters welcomes Shannon Huffman Polson to our blogging team. Her memoir North of Hope: A Daughter’s Arctic Journey was released last week. We sit in the back pew at church with intention; there’s an easy exit if our two-year-old’s patience has run out, or if ours has. Bible stories shine down on us hopefully from brightly colored stained glass windows on either side of the church. Earlier I made spelt French toast for breakfast and my son ate three... Read more
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