Friday Links
May 24, 2024
Saint Rita of Cascia
Scripture as Poetic Sacrament
Crushing the Creative Impulse
Taking the Road Less Traveled
Don't Take the Bait (Corrected!) from the Vesperisms Substack
Scripture as Poetic Sacrament
James Matthew Wilson reviews The Bible and Poetry by Michael Edwards (translated by Stephen E. Lewis, Jr.) for Public Discourse.
Crushing the Creative Impulse
You probably saw the “recent advertisement from Apple for the new iPad Pro” and were horrified. Apple has since tried to walk the add back, not sure I believe them. In this essay, Paul Pastor expresses perfectly why the add was so disturbing:
But what mark did they miss? More than missing just the tastes of their buyers, they missed the mark of reality—both of the creative process and of the goodness of the embodied nature that is essential to our humanity.
I see why Apple produced the ad. There is tremendous economic incentive for tech corporations to replace previous, more embodied experiences and tools. Apple Music will never scratch like the fragile grooves of a vinyl record (also, it contains most of the recorded music in the world). GarageBand can’t go out of tune (and its digital “instruments” can mimic the entire orchestra). One can “paint” all day on the iPad without needing to wash the brushes. In half the space taken up by a paperback, a little tablet can hold libraries.
Taking the Road Less Traveled
A.M. Juster reviews Dan Rattelle’s poetry collection, Painting Over the Growth Chart, which will be released on Tuesday. A few of the poems from the collection appear in the forthcoming Easter issue of DT. As Juster notes, “America’s literary establishment is working hard to root out poets like Dan Rattelle. Frustrate them and read his book.” Better yet, buy it, because that is the only way that small presses like Wiseblood Books can stay afloat—with your help and support.
Don't Take the Bait (Corrected!) from the Vesperisms Substack
An impassioned speech from Vesper Stamper about her concern that artists “seem to have lifted that one foot out of the outer realm, the border, the margin, and to have planted both feet squarely in the concerns of this world, and like a statue with feet made of bronze we have built an idol that has entrapped us.”
