Friday Links
July 5, 2025
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Saint Zoe of Rome
With a mingling of gratitude, grief, and joy
Ave atque Vale: Ryan Wilson Steps Down from Literary Matters
J. C. Scharl on Dorothy Sayers: A Self Entire
Cups on a String by Emily Leithauser
Fitzcarraldo Editions Makes Challenging Literature Chic
With a mingling of gratitude, grief, and joy
There are some changes coming to Dappled Things:
With a mingling of gratitude, grief, and joy, I write this to let you all know that SS. Peter & Paul 2024 is my final issue as editor in chief of Dappled Things magazine. After this issue, I will remain on the magazine’s board as editor emeritus—serving in an advisory capacity, but no longer involved in the journal’s day-to-day decision making and operations. But it is with great trust and relief that I hand this responsibility over to our incoming editor in chief, Rhonda Ortiz.
We are all grateful for Katy’s leadership and friendship, and pray for her as she begins her new role as Writer-in-Residence at the UST-MFA. And, we are looking forward to having Rhonda guide us. Her sense of humor and steadiness will make the transition seamless, I am sure.
Ave atque Vale: Ryan Wilson Steps Down from Literary Matters
Well, another wonderful editor is stepping down and going to UST’s MFA program. Ryan Wilson is leaving Literary Matters to head down to Houston and begin his role as Associate Professor of Poetry in the UST-MFA, which is not great news for LM, but fantastic news for the students that will have the opportunity to study with him.
J. C. Scharl on Dorothy Sayers: A Self Entire
No doubt it is inconvenient for the writer, but one of the best things that can happen for readers is when a great writer—a truly great writer—is required by circumstances to work in popular genres. These “marketable” books or stories, composed to put food on the table for a genius, often become little doorways for vast numbers of readers into a great mind’s private world, one they otherwise would not have entered. Think of Chesterton’s “Father Brown” series: compelled to write these stories or risk starvation, Chesterton imbued these widely read tales with his own grand ideas about the nature and existence of God, the reality of sin, and the romance of salvation. From here it is a natural next step for a reader to pick up Orthodoxy or The Everlasting Man and embark on a fantastic theological journey that will last a lifetime.
Cups on a String by Emily Leithauser
Hopefully, CUA will find a replacement for Ryan Wilson and keep this indispensable journal going. The archives are full of wonderful fiction, poetry, criticism, and interviews. This villanelle by Emily Leithauser, in the current issue, is haunting, as the best villanelle’s usually are. One of the keys to writing a good villanelle is choosing the right words to end-rhyme your repeating lines, words with enough rhyme pairs, of course, but also rhymes that won’t annoy the reader after two stanzas. Notice Leithauser’s choices: see, in the second line of the first stanza, is always a good choice because this rhyme needs to be repeated six more times (in the second line of each stanza) and there are lots of rhymes for see in English. In stanza one, you’ll notice that the first and third lines rhyme with telephone and alone. These two lines are repeated three more times in the poem. Additionally, this rhyme recurs in 13 of the poem’s 19 lines. Sounds can set a mood and the long -o in the rhymed words does just that; it is haunting and plaintive and works perfectly for this poem. Now, Leithauser’s repeating line of “Remember that old game of telephone?” seems inevitable. What other line could she have chosen? But nothing is inevitable in a poem, everything comes down to the poet’s choices. By starting with a question that calls on us to remember and pairing that question with the lamenting rhymes, we are ready for the increasing stakes she presents in this poem. Read this and all the other work in this issue of the great Literary Matters.
Fitzcarraldo Editions Makes Challenging Literature Chic
Rebecca Mead on the small press that’s had a big impact on publishing:
Testard and his editorial staff—he now has seven colleagues—like to talk about Fitzcarraldo authors and books as forming constellations, with one title leading a curious reader to another, with which it shares a kinship, and then to yet another.
