Friday Links
Nick Ripatrazone on The Literary Lives of Mid-Century Nuns
A Forgotten Catholic Novelist: Stephen Schmalhofer at First Things
A Mystic for Moderns: Joshua P. Hochschild on Caryll Houselander and the art of suffering well
Why Do I Have This Yearning: Chris Beha, Ron Hansen, and Greg Wolfe at New York Encounter 2023
Form from Dust - An interview with Benjamin Myers
Nick Ripatrazone on The Literary Lives of Mid-Century Nuns
The always interesting Nick Ripatrazone on nun-poets: “I wrote my new book, The Habit of Poetry: The Literary Lives of Nuns in Mid-century America, because I kept on coming across poems by nuns in these magazine archives. Some of the poems were devotional and traditional. I say that without disdain; these women wrote with measured skill. Yet more often than not, the poems were stylistic, satirical, and subversive.” Read this fascinating essay and then buy his new book!
A Forgotten Catholic Novelist: Stephen Schmalhofer at First Things
Here’s another book for the summer reading list. Stephen Schmalhofer writes about the Catholic convert and Romantic novelist Francis Marion Crawford. “Crawford did not write twee novels of manners. Crawford’s characters fight the temptations of power, wealth, and pleasure. They are novels of the virtue of fortitude, which is a spiritual weapon, as Aquinas teaches, sharpened by endurance and aggression. Because of this, Crawford’s novels ought to be remembered.”
A Mystic for Moderns: Joshua P. Hochschild on Caryll Houselander and the art of suffering well
“So how, we might ask, did Houselander conceive of Christ?” asks Joshua Hochschild in this excellent essay on Caryll Houselander. “As the model of willing suffering, and of compassion. Not coincidentally, also as one who taught with plain, well-conceived language: as an artist of speech. “Christ was a poet, and all through His life the Child remains perfect in Him. It was the poet, the unworldly poet, who was King of the invisible kingdom; the priests and rulers could not understand that. The poets understand it, and they, too are kings of the invisible kingdom, vassal kings of the Lord of Love, and their crowns are crowns of thorns indeed.”
Why Do I Have This Yearning: Chris Beha, Ron Hansen, and Greg Wolfe at New York Encounter 2023
Please do watch this excellent video of a discussion between Ron Hansen, Chris Beha, and Greg Wolfe. You won’t regret it!
Form from Dust - An interview with Benjamin Myers
Enjoy this wonderful interview with Benjamin Myers and Casie Dodd. They talk about poetry and Oklahoma dust, among other things.
