Friday Links
Christina Angola Hsu Ireland
Peter Vertacnik wins the New Criterion Poetry Prize
Joshua Hren: This Sickness is Not Unto Death
Fare Forward Poetry Competition
Joseph Pearce: Our Lady in Literature: A Beacon of Light in the Gloom of the Death Culture
The Sermon of the Wolf by Eleanor Parker
Peter Vertacnik wins the New Criterion Poetry Prize
Congratulations to Peter Vertacnik on this great honor. Here’s a lovely poem of his that appeared last year in Literary Matters: False Elegy Beginning with the Moon. You can read more of his work at his website.
Joshua Hren: This Sickness is Not Unto Death
In an incredibly moving essay, Joshua Hren writes about his experiences with Lyme’s disease, suffering, and that “sickness unto death,” which can destroy us or, with grace, transform us.
What if this intemperate playing down of your own pain, this impatience with what you are, this harsh telescope redirecting the gaze “out there,” elsewhere—what if this is a counterfeit transcendence of the self, which amounts, in the end, to no self-transcendence at all?
Fare Forward Poetry Competition
Fare Forward: A Christian Review of Ideas is hosting their third poetry competition. The submission deadline is July 15, 2023 at 11:59 PM EST.
The Sermon of the Wolf by Eleanor Parker
Eleanor Parker’s work is endlessly interesting and this essay is no exception. Here, she writes about the “Sermo Lupi,” the Sermon of the Wolf, delivered by Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York (d. 1023). In the sermon, Wulfstan “speaks to a country in total moral collapse.” His tone is fierce, unrelenting, but also hopeful. Read the whole thing. It is very, very good.
Living in the shadow of the end of the world doesn’t involve giving up on life, but recommitting yourself to what is most precious about it. For Wulfstan, that means especially strengthening the bonds we share with other people – our families and communities, the vulnerable and the poor, those we trust, and those who need to be able to trust us.
Joseph Pearce: Our Lady in Literature: A Beacon of Light in the Gloom of the Death Culture
Joseph Pearce on two Marian poems— “The Ballad of Walsingham,” (most likely written by the English Martyr, St. Philip Howard) and “The Pilgrim Queen,” by St. John Henry Newman.
