One of a writer’s greatest challenges is to create a short piece that is in no other way “small.” In 14 brief lines, Hailey Leithauser has succeeded in writing a poem that is simultaneously compact and expansive. Prefacing it with Robert Bly’s line, “Some small bone in your foot is longing for heaven,” Leithauser’s poem skillfully evokes the experience Bly describes. Of the 43 words in the poem, 10 of them can be used in English as noun or... Read more
Fridays used to be pizza and a movie nights, growing up. My dad would bring home a ridiculously greasy pizza from a little place in the next town over called Pizza Stop. It was on one of these nights, as I recall, that we watched DeMille’s Ten Commandments. As good churchgoing Christians, we knew the story, and we soaked in the spectacle and horrors of the plagues, the magic of the parting of the Red Sea, and, notably, Moses’s fearsome... Read more
Thinking of the psalms as a way to cycle through the entire range of human experience, I recently brought them with me into juvenile detention. The kids there, on Sunday afternoons, shuffle through automated doors wearing orange jumpsuits and pink booties and take their seats shyly around bolted-down steel tables with me. These are boys and girls who have likely seen, and felt on their bodies, and heard, what no child should have to see or feel or hear. And... Read more
The first time my wife and I worshipped in an Episcopal church, we were members in The United Methodist Church, the denomination that baptized, confirmed, and eventually called me to ministry. On any given Sunday across the globe, you can find a United Methodist congregation worshipping. And at least in the North American churches, there is a distinct and particular flavor of worship common among them. From Charles Wesley hymns to grape juice and Hawaiian bread as communion elements—it was... Read more
Our son Eric was four years old. My husband George, after teaching all day at Tufts University, would walk over to Tufts Day Care Center, pick Eric up, and walk home with him, Eric riding in the carrier on George’s back. As soon as they’d get in the house, they’d both plop down in front of the TV and turn on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. It was exactly what they both needed—George as much as Eric—at the end of their intensely... Read more
I always privately hated the psalms. Most of them, anyway. As a teenager, I’d leaf through the Bible’s songbook quite often and feel it was full of self-pity and self-righteousness, often launching into bombastic praise of God and two lines later wishing curses on enemies. I didn’t understand why Christians still used the psalms, and so often. As I got older, it was the worst part of visiting a monastery for me: hearing monks or nuns fill up so much... Read more
Here is a poem about making a poem. The first stanza, a single sentence, stretches out through cosmic imagery: “light sift[ing] down,” “erasable darkness seep[ing] up,” “the crack to the radiant world closing in on itself.” The diction here is high, poetic. Then suddenly the next stanza plunks us down to earth with “One way of putting it.” What follows is in a sense another poem describing the same event in more mundane language: what’s happening is simply “twilight.” But... Read more
The sonnet, of course, is the gold standard of form, the first one most people identify. That’s why I decided to wait several months before working on sonnets during my Year of Forms. There’s just so much pressure surrounding The One. I mean, come on: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on... Read more
I spent elementary school in a Mexican neighborhood in Austin, Texas. I attended birthday parties with piñatas and ate in a school cafeteria that served home-style enchiladas, tamales, and beans made with lard. And because of my dark hair I truly didn’t realize a difference between the other students and me until fourth grade, when my Latino classmates nicknamed me the Holy Ghost on account of my fair complexion. I came home in tears, alarming my parents. But when they... Read more
My husband and I took a spring break trip to the central coast of California, and we included a stop at the Hearst Castle—William Randolph Hearst’s 90,000 square foot, 61-bathroom home on 127 acres at the top of a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Hearst was still expanding it when he died in 1951. It was never enough. We bought a tour called “Upper Rooms and Suites” (since the size of the building makes it viewable only in chunks) and... Read more
Good Letters
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