T.S. Eliot, Agent of His Own Demise

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 5:30 pm By Morgan Meis

In my last post for Good Letters, I took minor issue with a point my friend and mentor Gregory Wolfe made about the relative prominence of Christian public intellectuals around the middle of the last century. Wolfe named, as examples of such prominence, Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, Allen Tate, T.S. Eliot, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich. It is, by any account, a damn impressive list of intellectual heavy-hitters. But I claimed that Wolfe’s nostalgia-tinged look at the days of past... Read more

Poetry Friday: “After” by Marjorie Stelmach

Last updated on: September 21, 2016 at 6:23 pm By Image

Grief is a state of being that almost defies articulation. When you’re in it, it consumes and seems present in everything. Marjorie Stelmach focuses the lens of this poem on small scenes from the natural world—frames at once ordinary and suffused with loss, as befits the claustrophobia of mourning. The speaker here admits to wanting out, to feeling done-in by sadness— “Today, the last thing I would wish / is another emblem of grit and continuance”—and yet each effort to... Read more

A Conversation with Claire Holley

Last updated on: September 21, 2016 at 5:33 pm By Guest Contributor

This post originally appeared as a web-exclusive interview accompanying Image journal issue 58. Mary Kenagy Mitchell for Image: You’ve written in our new issue about balancing songwriting with being a mother. What does your son think of your music? Does he come hear you play? Claire Holley: Well, his preferences seem to change a lot. When he was one or two years old, his gut reactions to songs were helpful to me: he might fall asleep, smile big, become animated, or... Read more

The Crazy Sex Lady at the Solitary Banquet

Last updated on: September 21, 2016 at 5:24 pm By Elizabeth Duffy

“The crazy sex ladies are coming to school today,” said my oldest. “We’re missing it.” “Good,” I said. I was driving the kids to the middle school an hour into their first period class. A glitch in the family routine over the past twenty-four hours prevented any of the three alarm clocks in the house from going off. We all overslept that morning, which must have been a mercy of God, because I’d been wondering what to do about the... Read more

Getting Close to You, God: A Meditation During the Month of Elul

Last updated on: September 21, 2016 at 5:02 pm By Richard Chess

“You are my light and my help / Whom should I fear?” Thus begins Norman Fischer’s Zen-inspired translation of Psalm 27. Right now, at this very moment, Shabbat morning, the 14th of Elul, 5776; Sept. 17, 2016, these verses don’t resonate with me. Fear: yes, I am afraid, afraid, at the moment, that I won’t finish this essay by the deadline, two days from now, for my next contribution to “Good Letters.” Whom do I fear? The “Good Letters” editor,... Read more

Looking for a Good Laugh

Last updated on: September 21, 2016 at 1:23 pm By Peggy Rosenthal

In his collection of delightfully reflective and paradoxical mini-stories, Espejos (Mirrors), Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano includes a sequence on jokes and laughter in various ancient cultures. In one of these reflections he refers to Jesus, “of whom the evangelists record not a single laugh.” Then soon Galeano takes the entire Bible to task, as “a book in which no one ever laughs at all.” This isn’t quite true. Sarah laughed when the angel told Abraham that in her old age... Read more

Poetry Friday: “Visitation Rights” by Jeffrey Harrison

Last updated on: September 21, 2016 at 6:05 pm By Image

I sometimes talk to friends who have died. Especially to friends who acted as spiritual guides for me during their lives here. I continue to ask their advice when I’m in distress or need guidance. I believe there’s a very thin and permeable line between mortal life and eternal life. This is why Jeffery Harrison’s “Visitation Rights” resonates with me. The poem melds the living and the dead, past and present, in ways deeply true to psychological and spiritual reality.... Read more

The Smell of Black Mold

Last updated on: September 21, 2016 at 12:07 pm By Guest Contributor

By John Bryant I write in order that the ornery old bastard and toothless schizophrenic might be more welcome in my life. The man who calls three times a day to give voice to his shattered mind. I met him at Advanced Autoparts. I’d bought a brake light, put the new one in, was about to step into my truck. Then I heard a kind of rustling sound just loud enough to make me wonder if someone was talking to... Read more

Lifescapes and the Lonely City

Last updated on: September 20, 2016 at 5:07 pm By Natalie Vestin

I have a friend who occasionally asks me when I’ll move to a real apartment, meaning a modern one that I can’t afford. Mine is in a 130-year-old former bakery I like to think is haunted by donut ghosts. The building was built on top of an aquifer, and the sump pump thrusts out massive amounts of water every several minutes. The outlets are in odd locations, but I love the apartment massively, because it’s old and weird, because it... Read more

Middle Earth and Sister Moon

Last updated on: September 19, 2016 at 5:20 pm By Christiana N. Peterson

The biggest moon I’ve ever seen was over the North Sea in Scotland. Many nights, I watched it from a bench overlooking the beach. The moon was absurdly large and luminous as it rose or perhaps sunk into the sea, so that I felt I was actually on its surface looking out into space at the earth dipping into the blackness of the universe. Over the course of four years, I had the opportunity to watch the waxing and waning... Read more