Deep Down Things
Nicodemus, Doug Weaver
Pentecost 2012 issue.
How Motherhood Transformed My Vocation as an Artist
Beauty and children both call for sacrifice. If we lay the sacrifices of time, money, and pride before God, he will return these sacrifices to us and to our spouses in the form of gifts.
Jen Fulwiler - People told me I wouldn’t be able to do this
Jen Fulwiler explains how she was discouraged from public speaking and practicing the art of comedy because she’s a mother. In fact, her children were far more valuable to the creative process than she ever would have predicted.
Motherhood and Creativity - A Symposium
Our symposium contributors practice a diversity of arts. They are poets, essayists, actresses, visual artists, comedy writers, fictionists. Several speak openly of how their art and their maternity nurture one another. Where there is tension, it typically grows from popular misperception or from pressures common to all artists, not from any intrinsic opposition. The relation between the two aspects of character is, to use the phrase from poet Laura Reece Hogan that I’ve chosen as a title in the print edition, “more organic than it may appear.”
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.
Creativity and Obedience
A book review of Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick's new book Arise, O God: The Gospel of Christ's Defeat of Demons, Sin, and Death.
The Action of Grace in Territory Largely Held by Physicists
“This is what it means to live out your faith in Christ,” I told them. “It’s hard, it’s violent,” I said, gesturing toward the statues lining the church walls’ entire length from choir loft to sanctuary: each of the twelve Apostles, holding the instruments of their martyrdom. I meant it both of the Apostles and Flannery O’Connor’s writing.
Ripheus Saved
The Chosen, Social Media, and Dante
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.
What Lasts Recalls What’s Lost
Hazo’s poems are evidence that wisdom and delight are not enemies, but rather twin leaves off the same vine, the one balancing and beautifying the other.
Review: “Studying with Miss Bishop: Memoirs from A Young Writer’s Life” by Dana Gioia
The Music of Heaven and Tennessee: An Interview With the Hillbilly Thomists
The 2022 J. F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction is Open!
Friday Links, October 1, 2021
+ “Return to Beauty” Chicago in-person conference with Sorab Ahmari, Liz Lev, and Cameron O’Hearn.
+ Trevor Merrill reviews Portrait of a Mirror: A Novel.
+ Not too late to eavesdrop on a conversation that Mike Aquilina and Fr. Colum Power had last summer about fallen Catholic writers, Jack Kerouac and James Joyce.
Singing Ave Maria for an Audience of One
They are tired of hearing it. I am tired of hearing it. So, I shut up. And I decide to truly listen, with my God-given ears—as much instruments of music as my mouth and throat. I close my eyes and listen, not just to Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” but to Liszt and Tchaikovsky, Bach and Brahms, Sibelius and Williams. The holy and the profane. Piano concertos, cello, violin, flute. My heart soars, and I thank God I’m witness to such breath and beauty, even if I can’t replicate it.
Seeking (Fictional) Converts at the End of the World
Spark, Waugh, and Greene all limped their way to Catholicism as the visible world failed them in ways relational, intellectual, and spiritual. Although I see enough glimpses of myself in them and in their characters to want to keep reading, I have wandered along on my own long enough to begin to have more questions.
Friday Links, September 24, 2021
+ Catholic Literary Arts Fall Series of workshops and lectures.
+ Katy Carl’s new novel, reviews, comments, & first day sales.
+ Duncan Stroik interviewed about positive trends in sacred architecture.
Europe in These Times: Mundiata, Munich, Me
Saint Mundiata’s full skeleton reclines on its side, skull propped up on a pillow-stand, kneecaps drawn toward the rib cage, jewel-eyes staring, jewel-studded arm bones leading down to the hands that grip, respectively, a chalice and a quill, bejeweled dressing gown hanging loosely over the clavicles down to the ankles. The display’s decadence evidences the devotion that must have led to its creation, just as its unflinching exposure of elemental human structure evidences an unwillingness to turn away from suffering and death, a testament to the commonalities—the high and the low, the elaborately-decorated and the stripped-of-all-flesh—that connect the faithful across centuries.
Let Us Be Lost Always
“Sometimes the desire to be lost again,” Mary Oliver writes, “comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took time to reject them.”
Friday Links, September 17, 2021
+ Now visible: a Cupid formerly overpainted on a well-known Vermeer.
+ Online seminar on Sigrid Undset’s Vows, with Katy Carl, starts Oct. 4.
+ Three ways Dante’s 700th death anniversary was observed this week.
+ Recent publications by Dappled Things editors and a contributor.
+ A retreat for artists and art lovers, with Dana Gioia and Kevin Turley, Sept 29.
Kanye Is Still Fresh
My son told me, “You will like it. It is for his mom, Donda. Listen to the first track.” My initial thought was, “Kanye had a mother?”