Easter Sunday Sue Schmidt, occasional contributor to this blog and one of the most spiritual people I know, alerted me to this Jeanne Murray Walker poem about wrestling with doubt. Although it’s not explicitly an Easter poem, it describes God blazing up when everything seems empty—as God did on that Resurrection Sunday two millennia ago. […]
Monthly Archives: April 2019
Drawn Forth to Eat the History Feast
Saturday – Passover I asked my poet friend Norman Finkelstein for a good Passover poem and he alerted me to this one by Harvey Shapiro, found in Mountain, Fire, Thornbush (Swallow, 1961). The Passover seder, of course, revolves around remembering, and Shapiro’s poem points out that remembering was already part of the initial Exodus events. […]
Strike My Heart So the Tears Will Flow
Good Friday In her poem “Good Friday,” Christina Rossetti laments that she responds to Christ’s death like a stone, not a faithful sheep. Why can’t she be like the women who wept at the foot of the cross, or Peter who wept for his betrayal, or the sun and the moon that hid their faces? […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Altar", "Sonnet 14", Christina Rossetti, George Herbert, Good Friday, Holy Week, John Donne Comments closed
Notre Dame’s Meaning for Non-Believers
Wednesday Non-believers as well as believers may feel the urge to send up a prayer of thanks that Notre Dame’s basic structure appears to have survived the fire. The world-wide concern over the catastrophe indicates that the cathedral was not only meaningful to Christians. A friend alerted me to a Fleda Brown poem that helps […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Church Going", "Notre Dame", Christian orthodoxy, Fleda Brown, Philip Larkin Comments closed
Tiger Conquers His Demons
Wednesday In discussing how Tiger Woods has changed during the eight-year Majors drought between his U.S. Open win in 2011 and his extraordinary Master’s victory Sunday, golf commentators have noticed a new friendliness in the formerly aloof golfer. As Golf Channel analyst Rex Hoggard observes, “I’ve covered him his entire career. I started covering golf […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Golf, Legend of Bagger Vance, Masters Championship, Steven Pressfield, Tiger Woods Comments closed
How Notre Dame Was Saved by a Novel
Tuesday Notre Dame in flames is breaking my heart, along with hearts all over the world. For me, Notre Dame is the soul of Paris, and I remember counting the stairs and wandering around the demon statues when I was 11. My attachment was further cemented when I read Victor Hugo’s novel in French at […]
Will Odysseus Shape 2020 Election?
Monday I won’t take credit for this but Washington Post’s Molly Roberts recently penned a very Better-Living-with Beowulf type column where she contrasted two Democratic presidential candidates by examining which version of the Odysseus/Ulysses story they prefer. Her piece gives me an excuse to apply other versions of the story to various 2020 contenders. Roberts […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged 2020 election, Aeneid, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Beto O'Rourke, Donald Trump, Finnegans Wake, Homer, James Joyce, Joe Biden, Joseph Campbell, Odyssey, Pete Buttigieg, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, Virgil Comments closed
Caught Up in the Singing
Palm Sunday Anglican priest and poet Malcolm Guite is the author of many wondrous lyrics, including “Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year” found in Sounding the Season (Canterbury 2012). “Palm Sunday” captures something I’ve always noticed but never fully grasped—that days before the trauma of Good Friday, there’s a moment of euphoria that seems to […]
