Sacred Ascents

7/3/2024

Poetry and religion get batted about together quite often and for reasons that are at once easy to explain but hard to explain away. In this month's update, I explore these intertwined realities, one a humble art form, the other the fundamental meaning of everything, in a number ways. Too many ways, in fact; I've been remiss in updating my Latest News page and now I find I have six published items to share along with a new podcast on Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds, and this leaves out several other things I would otherwise have brought to the reader's attention.

Click below to read a new poem, "A Crystal Wine Glass," which appears in the first issue of a new magazine. Click on to have a look at three review essays that discuss new books by Michael Edwards, Micheal O'Siadhail, and Charles Taylor. Writing these three helped me crawl closer to understanding on that most profound and extended intertwining of poetry and religion, so much so that I at long last may be ready simply to say something on the subject rather than respond to the theses of others. One last note, the O'Siadhail piece also includes another short poem of mine, one I never thought to publish until recently as it was originally a gift to my wife, but I thought it might be of interest to others. Both of these pieces are available online exclusively here or in the print journal, Presence. I encourage you to subscribe to that annual review of Catholic poetry.

In Catholic World Report I have a long essay, "The Spiritual Terrain of David Middleton," a review of the career of one of Louisiana's greatest poets. This essay was long in coming. I first conceived of writing it more than a decade ago, and Middleton has published two new books since then. The time was ripe.

You will see that in addition to my review in Public Discourse that magazine has also published a public conversation I had with my friend and colleague, Mark Shiffman. "What Is Ideology?" discusses his new little book on that subject and gives us a chance to explore that perennial question, what's wrong with the world?

Reviews are beginning to appear for my latest book of poems, Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds, and the response to it has so far been uniformly positive. Next update, I'll include a batch of reviews, but this time around I'd like to invite you to listen to a recent interview I did on the book with Thomas Mirus of CatholicCulture.org. This is, I think, the fourth podcast interview I've done on the book; if you enjoy it, you might check out further conversations I had with Deal Hudson, Mike Rippy, and Joe Grabowski, all of which are available on Youtube.
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