Monday I’ve been reflecting upon a recent E.J. Dionne column about living in “an age of impunity.” Borrowing the phrase from International Rescue Committee head Dave Milland, Dionne looks at the horrors that arise when all moral inhibitions are swept away. Looking for an American author who depicts such a world, I settled upon Cormac […]
Monthly Archives: July 2019
License to Act with Impunity
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged age of impunity, atrocities, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy, Donald Trump Comments closed
Was the Moon Landing Poetic? A Debate
Friday As tomorrow will be the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing, I went looking for literature that marked the occasion. A useful New York Times article, written 20 years after the event, surveyed the field and alerted me to the two poems that I share today. Interestingly, not much was written, leading to the […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "World is too much with us", "Moon Landing", "Voyage to the Moon", Archibald MacLeish, lunar landing, Neil Armstrong, Of a Fire on the Moon, W. H. Auden, William Wordsworth Comments closed
Gothics Speak Truth to Denial
Thursday Thursday morning I delivered the following talk to Sewanee’s Rotary Club. I entitled it “America’s Obsession with Gothic Fantasy, from Poe to Game of Thrones. When you hear someone mention gothic fantasy or gothic horror, what American stories, movies or television shows come to mind? Before I let you answer that question, let me […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Black Cat, Edgar Allen Poe, Enlightenment, Flannery O'Connor, Game of Thrones, George Martin, Good Country People, gothic fiction, It, John Winthrop, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Stephen King, Tell-Tale Heart, Twilight Zone, Young Goodman Brown Comments closed
Achilles, Obama–Can Anyone Save Us?
Wednesday With Donald Trump’s racism becoming ever more overt (not that it was ever that hidden), Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty finds herself pleading to President Obama to speak out and lift us up again. In doing so, she has reminded Esquire’s smart and extremely well-read Charlie Pierce of Odysseus pleading with Achilles to save the […]
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Graham Greene on Real Christianity
Tuesday I applaud Washington Post’s conservative Michael Gerson, architect of George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism,” for a recent column using Graham Greene to critique Trump-supporting rightwing evangelicals. Applying Greene’s Power and Glory, Gerson essentially accuses these so-called Christians of opting for piety over love. Since Graham’s distinction may be unclear to many, I’ll let Gerson […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Christianity, Donald Trump, Graham Greene, Power and the Glory, rightwing evangelicals Comments closed
Poetry, a Road to the Spirit World
Monday I’m currently writing a review of Norman Finkelstein’s poetry collection From the Files of the Immanent Foundation. As I noted in a recent post, Finkelstein, my best friend in graduate school, is a “New Gnostic” who uses poetry to get in touch with the numinous, the world of spirit. Reviewing the work has proven […]
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Poetry, a Mystical Key to the Beyond
spiritual Sunday I’ve recently been reading Alex Owen’s The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern, which is helping me better understand how poetry aids us in our search for God—or if that sounds too institutional, for the numinous. Owen focuses on the spiritual exploration underway at the turn of the […]
