Necessary Images, Part 2

Last updated on: July 18, 2017 at 11:08 am By Guest Contributor

This post, continued from yesterday, appears as the Editorial Statement in Image issue #93 on the art of film guest edited by Gareth Higgins and Scott Teems. Kieślowski’s Blue is a master class in film form—everything there is to learn about editing and sound design can be found in its first ten minutes—but what lingers longest in the memory is the slow softening of Juliette Binoche’s face over the course of its exquisite hour and a half. Though time and tragedy have rendered her countenance... Read more

Necessary Images, Part 1

Last updated on: July 18, 2017 at 8:22 am By Image

This post appears as the Editorial Statement in Image issue #93 on the art of film guest edited by Gareth Higgins and Scott Teems. not beautiful photography, not beautiful images, but necessary images… —Robert Bresson For years I’ve wrestled with this seemingly straightforward declaration from the notebook of revered French film director Robert Bresson (a small book, but a bounty of inspiration). I’ve wanted to believe in his “necessary images” and therefore aspire to create them. To use simple, unadorned imagery to distill the... Read more

Poetry Friday: “The Human Share”

Last updated on: July 18, 2017 at 11:21 am By Image

Here’s a brilliantly crafted poem which I love, even though it makes me a bit sea-sick. Bruce Bond’s poem “The Human Share” begins on familiar ground, with a well-known phrase from John’s gospel. But then in line 2, Christ’s salvific work is prefaced by “as if”—and the ground we’re on becomes shaky. “As if” implies that what follows didn’t really happen, but is likened to whatever happened. And since this is a poem with slippery grammar, with no period till... Read more

The Beautiful Boy

Last updated on: July 13, 2017 at 10:20 am By Caroline Langston

It’s barely even summer and already, in our house it is the Summer of the Guys. Our son is thirteen now, and in the last few months, the world has opened to him: he and his two best neighborhood friends start planning the day almost as soon as it has started. Freed to stay at home alone while his younger sister is at camp, he can ride his bike to tennis clinic at the community pool, then pedal back to... Read more

Your Attention, Please

Last updated on: July 11, 2017 at 1:26 pm By Gregory Wolfe

Dear Friends: I received two emails recently from writers you likely know and admire. Like clockwork, I can expect an email from Annie Dillard a week after each new issue is published. Her response to issue #92 arrived right on schedule: “This is the best Image ever published. These writers stun me.” Then, the day after the brilliant essayist and cultural critic Richard Rodriguez returned home from delivering Image’s Denise Levertov Award in typically mesmerizing fashion, he sent a thank-you note... Read more

The Case For Charlie Gard

Last updated on: July 10, 2017 at 8:45 am By A. G. Harmon

Charlie Gard, the English child you see here, will likely die—indeed, by the time this is published, he may have already died. Charlie has Mitochondrial DNA Depletion Syndrome, which in short means that through some catastrophic chain of rare events, his bodily functions are failing him. No cure has been found for this disease. Still, Charlie’s parents want to expend every effort on their infant son. They and others have raised millions to do so through various fundraising sites. There... Read more

Rectifying 2017

Last updated on: July 10, 2017 at 8:53 am By Nick Olson

During its four seasons from 2013 to 2016, Rectify was no stranger to critical praise. Nearly a year after the series finale, I think it’s time to mention Ray McKinnon’s series alongside the usual exemplars of television’s “golden age”—shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and The Wire. As I watched the series in recent weeks, it occurred to me that Rectify completed its run at just the right moment: In 2017, when it’s so easy for our time... Read more

Poetry Friday: “The Field”

Last updated on: July 18, 2017 at 11:20 am By Image

I find solace in the natural world, in those precious moments alone, outside, away from the clutter and din of my material life. In “The Field” by poet, teacher and translator Jennifer Grotz we are invited to an open field “past the convenience store and the train tracks.” She tells us that as a girl, she would escape to this place to “sit on an oblong rock” and observe the crepuscular life and movement around her. Within this meditative poem,... Read more

How To Intuit a Book Title

Last updated on: July 10, 2017 at 9:02 am By Richard Chess

How do poets and writers choose their book titles? I didn’t have a good answer to the question, “Why did you choose the title Love Nailed to the Doorpost?” posed at a recent reading, though I knew that sooner or later that someone would ask. I did have a superficial answer, but I hadn’t thought through metaphorical or thematic meanings suggested by the title. Honestly, until I read what a few others had to say about my book, I wasn’t... Read more

The Mysteries of Revision

Last updated on: June 28, 2017 at 10:41 am By Bryan Bliss

When a former MFA professor asked me to come to her class and speak on revision, I immediately said yes. Not only was she a writer and an academic that I respected, there had been an ongoing, semi-inside, joke between me and some of my MFA cohort members about my desire to be acknowledged by this particular mentor. And then—naturally, no big deal, so whatever—we’d become friends. I sent those same guys an e-mail with the subject Friendship Update and... Read more