Arts & Letters
A selection of recent articles on this topic
Christmas Spectacles, Good and Bad
This year marks the Radio City Rockettes’ one hundredth anniversary, and the annual Christmas Spectacular at Radio…
Harvard Loses a Giant
Two weeks ago, Prof. James Hankins gave his last lecture at Harvard before his departure to University…
When Life Ends Mid-Sentence
It was Gerstäcker’s mother. She held out her trembling hand to K. and had him sit down…
In Praise of Translation
The circumstances of my life have been such that I have moved, since adolescence, in a borderland…
Artful Faith (ft. Stephen Auth)
In the latest installment of the ongoing interview series with contributing editor Mark Bauerlein, Stephen Auth joins…
Letters
As a Protestant, I began Valerie Stivers’s “How I Learned to Love Confession” (November 2025) mentally recalling…
Caravaggio and Us
Nicolas Poussin, the greatest French artist of the seventeenth century, once said that Caravaggio had come into…
Canticle of All Creatures
This poem was written by St. Francis of Assisi, and translated by Dana Gioia. Most high, all…
Address Book
The leather binding, torn and askew,is barely joined by brittle pieces of Scotch tape. And the names…
The Ruin
Remorseless sun stunts the dew Glistening towers of tainted glassignite and blister …
Shakespeare and the City
Recently I checked into a pleasant, fairly sterile Marriott in Shoreditch ahead of my London debut as…
Union with Christ, Medieval Horses, and Japanese Rain Words
I just came across a 3×5 card (yes, I still routinely use that primitive technology) on which…
What Does The Practice of the Presence of God Reveal About Leo?
In a recent in-flight interview, Pope Leo mentioned that Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of…
Books for Christmas—2025
Surveys indicate that reading books is dropping precipitously across all age groups. This is a tragedy in…
What We’ve Been Reading—Autumn 2025
First Things staff share their most recent autumn reading recommendations.
