Deep Down Things
Nicodemus, Doug Weaver
Pentecost 2012 issue.
Friday Links, March 25, 2025 Feast of the Annuciation
+ Joseph Pierce on the mystery of suffering inspired by a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
+ On the persistence of “Expansive Poetry’—with the history of the movement.
+ Interview with Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and playwright, about his plays.
Friday Links, March 18, 2021
+ What power does a poem have, and what work can it do?
+ Speaking of power, Elizabeth Lev shows how the power of art in Ukraine is cultural memory.
+ “The Future of the Catholic Literary Imagination” 2022 Catholic Imagination Conference. Are you going?
+ St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry is offering the chance to audit one summer course for free—including one on the nature of aesthetic experience, the relationship between truth, goodness, and beauty, and the role of beauty in liturgy.
Friday Links, March 11, 2022
+ Looking for a community of writers and artists? Check out Catholic Literary Arts.
+ The witness of Richard Wilbur to Christian virtue.
+ Who is taking up the mantle of Maritain, Hildebrand, and Gilson? Thomas Mirus asks James Matthew Wilson in a Catholic Culture podcast.
+ The joke’s on Satan: Jacob Riyeff writes about how the devil tricked his own self during Christ’s atoning Passion.
Friday Links, February 25, 2022
+ Review of a crowd-funded Vonnegut film, Unstuck in Time.
+ Review of two new books about creative types, one of which is Katy Carl’s novel, As Earth Without Water.
+ Thoughts on Amazon’s Tolkien in Rings of Power and on the Sin of Pride.
Contemplative Realism: Event to Attend This Week, Book to Read, Manifesto to Sign
“The contemplative realist is keenly aware of the difference between the necessarily clinical gaze of the scientist and the mesmerized smittenness of the contemplative.”—Joshua Hren
Friday Links, February 19, 2022
+ Presence: the Journal of Poetry, preview reading of Spring 2022 issue, February 20.
+ Scala Foundation Conference Spring 2022: “Art, the Sacred, and the Common Good,” April 30, and in addition, for writers 17-35:
+ Poetry Contest: winners announced at conference.
+ Poetry Masterclass with James Matthew Wilson May 1.
+ Summer Writers Institute of the MFA creative writing program at the University of St. Thomas, Houston.
Friday Links, February 11, 2022
+ A review of Claude McKay’s Harlem Nights, on its 100th anniversary.
+ Trevor Cribben Merrill on “lodestars of aesthetic judgement.”
+ Dana Gioia, “Finding Time to Write.”
Friday Links, February 4, 2022
+ Joshua Hren announces the publication of his first novel and his writers’ manifesto.
+ Heather King interviews herself.
+ City Mother, is reviewed on the day before its release.
+ Catholic Writers Conference coming up February 11-13.
+ Ave Regina Caelorum, the Marian antiphon for this time of year.
+ A CLA class, Finding Faith on the Road, begins early March.
Friday Links, January 21, 2022
+ Death of a prominent Catholic woman philosopher/writer/educator.
+ Writing Query Letters, there’s a CLA class for that.
+ On Simon Weil and the loss of value in art.
Friday Links, January 14, 2022
+ Seminar on Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus
+ Is habit a slave driver or a path to spiritual growth?
+ Dante poetry contest, submissions close 1/31
Friday Links, December 24, 2021
+ Read a reflection on the treasure of chant by a choir director (Diana Silva) and listen to an explanation of the readings of the first Mass of Christmas
+ See how a professional writer/editor/mother/child-wrangler (Rhonda Ortiz) manages an interview
+ Learn from a famous contemporary poet (Dana Gioia) how to balance writing with a full time job.
+ Watch a video of a musical setting of a Christmas poem (by James Matthew Wilson).
Friday Links, December 17, 2021
+ Katy Carl’s 12/13 interview about her new novel is on YouTube.
+ Another YouTube video shows a tiny hermitage with a beautiful chapel—constructed by a part-time hermit part-time trekker priest in the Italian alps.
+ Reveling in unfinished conversion journeys.
+ A Christmas novella of how daily life radically changed for Catholics after the Chinese Communist Revolution and how the faith survived in one old Catholic man’s heart
Friday Links, December 3, 2021
+ Dante again, this time he’s inspiring a poetry contest.
+ CUA students launch a literary (and arts) magazine.
+ Joshua Hren will speak at a Scala webinar 12/9 and he’s finally got a website.
+ James Matthew Wilson’s latest, a review.
+ Rhonda Ortiz and Eleanor Bourg Nicholson talk about werewolves, fainting damsels, and genre fiction.
+ Joseph Pearce is grateful for all we all do.
Friday Links, November 26, 2021
+ Angela Alaimo O’Donnell talks back to Dante
+ Anthony Domestico critiques the first-ever biography of Elizabeth Hardwick
+ Aarik Danielsen reviews a work of graphic nonfiction about American loneliness.
Friday Links, November 12, 2021
+ James Matthew Wilson announces the first annual Summer Writers Institute.
+ Natalie Merchant sings old poems to life.
+ Can signing your name to a graffiti-ed wall affirm your enrollment in the communion of saints?
+ What do you think? Is Sally Rooney this generation’s greatest Catholic novelist?
Friday Links, November 5, 2021
+ James Matthew Wilson podcast interview at Deep Down Things, the podcast (not us)
+ Kerry McCarthy, Early Music singer and biographer of Renaissance composers Byrd and Tallis, is interviewed about the traditional choir schools put down by the Reformation.
+ Word on Fire reminds us that “Momento Mori” is a Catholic thing.
+ In time for Christmas giving, a chance to order artwork by Daniel Mitsui and get a free Momento Mori giclée print you might keep for your own contemplation of the Four Last Things.
Friday Links, October 29, 2021
+ Dark stuff for Halloween
* An invitation to a ZOOM about vampires, werewolves & serial killers, O My!
* An essay with more about the blood-drinking undead at Catholic World Report
* An EWTN interview with K.V. Turley and Fiorella De Maria about their novel about Bela Lugosi
* An article by Turley about the real horrors lived by Lugosi
* Ghost stories collected by Gerard Manley Hopkins
* Thirst: A Novel: Death of a priest
* The first horror moving picture—in 1896 (it really was scary!)
+ A round-up of print and online essays in DT’s “Symposium on Motherhood and Art”
Friday Links, October 22, 2021
+ Workshop on how to make space for the muse.
+ Three poems by a DT associate editor
+ Maybe Catholic fiction is becoming important again?
Image: Caliope, the muse of poetry and eloquence, holding the Odyssey (c. 1634). By Simon Vouet and workshop. At the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. This work is in the public domain (wikimedia.org).
Friday Links, October 15, 2021
+ Poet Dana Gioia talks about the strange, dark life of poet Edwin Arlington Robinson.
+ Architect Duncan Stroik talks about how when we design and fund beautiful buildings for the poor, we do them for Christ.
+ Michael O’Brien writes an Open Letter to Fellow Writers and Artists.
+ Fr. Michael Rennier writes about five recent books he wants to read.
Friday Links, October 8, 2021
+ Ever wonder if Chaucer could save your life? Terence Sweeney tells you why not. And then tells why you should read him anyways.
+ Iconographer Raymond Vincent’s lectures cover the origins, the theology, and the growth of sacred art.
+ Michele McAloon interviews Katy Carl about her newly published first novel, As Earth Without Water.
+ Karen Ullo’s 2018 book, Jennifer the Damned, gets a glowing recommendation in a Tweet.
+ Ottowa’s Chaudiere Books asks resident writer Natalie Morrill six questions.
+ Prof. Timothy Bartel teaches how to read sonnets in a Catholic Literary Arts class.