When Dana Gioia’s essay “Can Poetry Matter?” appeared in The Atlantic in 1991, it galvanized a national conversation about the state of American literature and how creative writing was being taught, produced, and consumed by the reading public. Among other points, Gioia argued that poetry had become obscure, self-referential, and detached from common experience through the influence of university writing programs and trendy ideological nostrums. Gioia’s latest essay, “The Catholic Writer Today,” published in the December 2013 issue of First Things, bears a striking resemblance to his Atlantic essay on poetry . . . Continue Reading»
Here’s a conversation that you will have if you, at any point in your life, read a novel: You’ll dislike some aspect of it (let’s say the main character is flat and boring), you will voice this criticism of the novel (“the main character is flat and boring”), and then you will be told, no, that’s the point, he’s meant to be flat and boring, the book is an examination of the flat and boring. That brings us to Donna Tartt’s new book, The Goldfinch, which is made up of 771 lovely pages staring unblinking into the void. . . . Continue Reading»
Advent looks back to celebrate the coming of the Son of God in human flesh. As Advent lectionary readings show, God comes in many ways, and so Advent also looks ahead to God’s future interventions in history, and especially to his final advent at the last day… . Continue Reading»
Just in time for the Christmas Wars, the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies has published papers from a symposium on state-sponsored religious displays that the Center for Law and Religion co-sponsored with our our sister school, the Libera Universita Maria SS Assunta (LUMSA), in Rome . . . . Continue Reading »
Christians are facing more and more difficulties in Western society. Every day, especially in Europe, churches and cemeteries are desecrated; blasphemy pretends to be an art for the general public; activists like Femen attack symbols of religion, and the media rarely miss an opportunity to belittle Christians and the Catholic Church. It is this latent hostility towards Christianity which explains the indifference, or even the complaisance, of our society towards the desecration of its religious heritage and the persecution of Christians throughout the world… . Continue Reading»
I follow her story only in part, like a man looking from a lit room at dark hills, silhouetted against navy skies— his own staring face superimposed by a ghostly glare from the light of the room. At her story’s crux, Timkat lays down her broom and in an overflow of English says: You . . . . Continue Reading »
Part of this morning’s reading is Charles Krauthammer’s ” Moving from Left to Right ” about his political conversion, from his book, Things That Matter. Therein, he tells the story of how his mind changed from when he was young and part of the Democratic party and . . . . Continue Reading »
On Powerline, Steve Hayward mentions Postmodern Conservative as a “Blog to Log”. The other blogs to log are interesting and worth looking at. Hey, Carl! Hayward notes Acculturated.com , too. . . . . Continue Reading »
Someone recently told me that he was going to Detroit. I felt sorry for him, knowing that last trips to Detroit, driving form the Cleveland area, had been through areas that looked as devastated as anything seen in post WWII photos. I had not read of improvement, in fact of . . . . Continue Reading »
Coursera woos me to MOOC through my college email. I haven’t succumbed yet, but only because they haven’t offered anything interesting enough. I signed up for one course on logic, but backed out after clarification over the goal of the course which was to prove through logic . . . . Continue Reading »
