Friday Links
Penitent Magdelene by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Dappled Things is asking for you to testify!
How the Apostles Spoke of the Beauty of Christ by James Matthew Wilson
Ryan Ruby on The Poetry of A.E. Stallings
Benedict XVI Institute: “A New Song” by Sir James MacMillan
Mary Grace Mangano on Katherine Anne Porter’s Place in the Catholic Literary Tradition
Dappled Things is asking you to testify!
Do you want to help us reach new readers on social media? Video testimonials from subscribers are a great way to spread the word. No need to get fancy: just point your phone at yourself, and in 15 seconds or less, finish this sentence for us:
“I love Dappled Things because . . .”
Please go to our Submittable page to submit your testimonials (found in the “video testimonials” link). Thank you!
How the Apostles Spoke of the Beauty of Christ by James Matthew Wilson
This is from a few months ago, but well worth reading.
When we take them together, we see that the form of Christ fulfills the “form” of time, space, and our interior yearnings for wholeness. It’s as if there were a pattern with a part missing, whose shape we could discern, but now we see it fitted into place. They are all arguments for the truth. But they do not seek to convince their audience of the truth by proving a mere fact of is or is not, however. Rather, they show to the eye of the mind a more comprehensive order, an order we may eventually understand as truth, but which we at first see, and finally come to adore, as a revelation of beauty.
Ryan Ruby: Hic et Nunc: The Poetry of A.E. Stallings
Ryan Ruby’s review of A.E. Stallings new book of poetry, This Afterlife: Selected Poems is so good. Ruby looks closely at several poems in the collection and analyzes the formal elements at work, as well as the narrative, historical, and emotional aspects of the poems. This type of attention to the text helps readers to understand Stallings work holistically. For this reason, it is a good review to share with friends who think they don’t/can’t understand poetry (and are therefore afraid to read it) and those friends who think form doesn’t matter (or worse, is a constraint that kills art).
“In the poems collected in This Afterlife—especially the ones set in the here and now—Stallings demonstrates that in the right poet’s hands, the putative everydayness of the hic et nunc can be transformed into something every bit as rich and strange as even the most ancient myths.”
Benedict XVI Institute: “A New Song” by Sir James MacMillan
A few weeks ago, the Benedict XVI Institute hosted a concert of Sir James MacMillan’s work. Here the Choir of St. John’s College performs “A New Song,” conducted by Dr. Timothy McDonnell. Take a listen, it’s gorgeous.
Mary Grace Mangano on Katherine Anne Porter’s Place in the Catholic Literary Tradition
Mary Grace Mangano has a close reading of Katherine Anne Porter’s story, “Flowering Judas” in Church Life Journal:
“Porter’s rendering of these characters and their unique struggles with sin presents a mirror to the reader. The mirror shows reality, and the reader’s own betrayals of love. In writing about the world she traveled—the world beyond Indian Creek, Texas—Porter identified the universal call to love, the need for love, the human hunger and thirst that can only be satisfied by Love, and the many ways that love can be betrayed. Her own art became the vehicle for her acceptance of the call to love and return to the faith.”
