The prose poem is a challenging genre. After all, what distinguishes “plain prose” from “prose poetry”? Here, in Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “The Aging Maria,” I’d say it’s, first, the liberty with sentence structure. Take the opening sentence: in a prose work we’d say it’s too long, stretches in too many directions. But here, each phrase moves us further into the image and context of this garden statue of Mary: she forbears the elements, the tropical hurricanes; she has held her... Read more
I sat through the meeting distracted, nervous. I should have been at ease. After all, I was with friends—members of a Christian-Muslim interfaith group, people I’d worked with for many years, people I trusted. But I was coming down with an acute case of performance anxiety. I had asked Ismet Akcin, the Islamic Center of Rochester, New York’s newly installed Imam, if I might recite for him after the meeting, privately, the Qur’an’s “Throne Verse,” sura (or chapter) al-Baqara, verse... Read more
Rays of midmorning sun shone through the window and fell in molten pools across the white sheets of our bed. Lying back on my two feather pillows, I could hear and smell the burgeoning sounds of spring through my open windows—birds chirping, the scent of sweet olive, the soft susurration of car wheels on the street still wet from the early morning rain. It was 11:00 a.m. on Easter Sunday morning. I leaned over and touched the pillow beside me—my... Read more
By Matt Newcomb. My father held the wall to work his way from the bed to the couch, avoiding the ship’s bell protruding from the wall. He was sick—the kind of sick that meant out of work too. It was his adrenal system, or his pineal gland, or a hormonal imbalance, depending on the doctor. And it was definitely sleep apnea and diabetes on top of whatever else. During his illness, when I was in high school, he would play... Read more
“In what ways do you experience the presence of government—city, county, state, federal—in your life, your daily life, your professional life?” That’s how we began, with that question. Asking questions, that’s the practice, isn’t it, that leads to liberation? And that’s why we were there that night, wasn’t it, to recount an experience of liberation in the past and to take the first steps toward our own liberation—personal, communal, national, global—in this moment? A journey that would begin, as it... Read more
I was first drawn to this poem by Carol Ann Davis because of its long and curious title. Who is Jenya? How does imagination correspond to a dog’s bowl? The peculiarity of these details led me into a surprising poem of weighty questions and deep meditation. Davis asks, “My emptiness/loves yours. Can you hear it?” After a contemplative Lenten season, this poem challenges me to continue to make room for mindfulness and reflection in my life, each and every day.... Read more
The story goes that one day Filippo Brunelleschi, the goldsmith who would go on to become the most important architect in Europe and arguably the originator of the Renaissance, devises a practical joke he and his buddies play on their mutual friend, Manetto the woodworker. The gist of it is that they contrive to convince Manetto that he is not himself but another man named Matteo. The prank works by having everyone in Manetto’s social sphere suddenly refer to him... Read more
Just released by Oxford University Press, When Art Disrupts Religion: Aesthetic Experience and the Evangelical Mind has received praise from such leading scholars as David Morgan and Randall Balmer. Image editor Gregory Wolfe recently interviewed the author, Philip Salim Francis. Image: Your book has the provocative title When Art Disrupts Religion: Aesthetic Experience and the Evangelical Mind. In a few words, what’s the thesis of the book? Philip Salim Francis: I’m trying to make the case that the arts have... Read more
By Jason Bruner. Pastor David—strong, sincere, and confident in his pressed shirt and polished shoes—greets me in the doorway. “This place,” he pauses, looking me in the eye, “is an altar.” He seems genuinely glad to have an American in attendance, but I am in an entirely different sort of mood. I’m in Kampala attempting to conduct research on the history of Christianity and medicine, but a staff strike has closed the libraries and archives for most of my trip.... Read more
“It is easier to survive a category five hurricane than it is to get through an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.” That paraphrase of Walker Percy (from his essay, “Diagnosing the Modern Malaise”) was suggested to me by my friend Caroline Langston Jarboe. I was wondering out loud why I would give anything to have back a very difficult, but purpose-filled, time of my life in exchange for the quotidian restlessness of the exile that followed it. Percy’s point, which I found... Read more
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