Spiritual Presences in the Literary World

The Catholic writer and television host, Michael Aquilina, has just published an essay on Catholicism and poetry in Angelus, the magazine of the archdiocese of Los Angeles.  There, he discusses my work in some very good company, as he tries to figure out whether there is such a thing as Catholic poetry. (click the cover to read the whole article.)

Elsewhere, my longtime publisher Joshua Hren has just given a lengthy interview on the reasoning behind his somewhat imprudent endeavor to start an informally Catholic literary press, Wiseblood Books, in an age of increasing illiteracy. He very kindly mentions a work of mine that, alas, has not received much critical attention, my The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry. (If you are among that surviving remnant of persons who can read, you may click the Imaginative Conservative logo to see what he has to say.)

If you are in search not merely of discussion of contemporary letters in the abstract, but an actual encounter with poems that have a certain spiritual or intellectual depth, then please allow me to recommend that you have a look in the pages of the spring issue of The Hudson Review or in the new edition of Presence, where you may find some sapphic stanzas by my hand.

The Hudson publishes my "Ambition," while Presence includes my "To Samuel Hazo."  Readers of this site will recall that I wrote a lengthy critical introduction to a new book by Hazo, which was published just last month. (Click the covers to be taken to the journals' web sites.)