Deep Down Things
Nicodemus, Doug Weaver
Pentecost 2012 issue.
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).
Advent Novena Meditation: Day 8
Reading for December 23.
Planning for a New Golden Age of Catholic Literature
Catholic literature was supposed to be dead. So it seemed in 2005 when Dappled Things launched its first issue. But our faith has a knack for resurrection, and now what seems dead is that narrative of decline.
Advent Novena Meditation: Day 6
Reading for December 21.
Are Miracles Outside the Boundary of Good Taste?
Shortly after beginning to read, I encountered this glorious piece of writing; "Canon Geoghegan said nothing, but went on picking at his fish, methodically, earnestly, as though he were disemboweling Emmanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason" This is when I was hooked. This Marshall fella writes.
Advent Novena Meditation: Day 5
Reading for December 20.
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
Will the Real Catholic Writers Please Stand Up?
My evangelical ancestors would be pleased to know that I’ve become obsessed with conversion; they would be less satisfied to learn that interest runs almost exclusively in a Catholic direction. As a fairly recent convert to Catholicism from the Southern Baptist tradition (through a long and painful process), I am constantly gathering more examples of other writers who made the leap as a way to shore up reinforcements against my own lingering insecurities. I’m always hopeful that the next one I find will convince me permanently that I am finally where I belong.
A Motley Crew
The surprising history of how Ronald Knox’s Mass In Slow Motion was written.
Friday Links, December 10, 2021
Wishing in the Darkness of Advent
The Surprising Depths of a Netflix Christmas Movie
Europe in These Times: Navidad, Las Islas
A lesson in unmet expectations - “Christmas Eve Mass at the Cathedral of Santa Ana in the islands’ co-capital of Las Palmas would be, I imagined, a dramatic joy, with crowd and choir, lights and palm trees, color and celebration.”
An Invitation From Dappled Things Editor-In-Chief Katy Carl
The short story, friends, is this: Please join me and Wiseblood Books editor-in-chief Joshua Hren for a literary reading and author-and-publisher conversation around my debut novel, As Earth Without Water, the evening of Monday, December 13. The event is cosponsored by Dappled Things Magazine and our partners in the Ars Vivendi Initiative through the Collegium Institute at Penn. I’m incredibly grateful and honored to be invited and, in turn, would like to invite you into what has developed into one of the longest and most fruitful ongoing conversations of my life.
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.
Is It Reactionary to Seek the Good Life?
Fellow reactionaries will love Michael Warren Davis’ most recent book.
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.
Jacopone da Todi - The Poet With a Cause
What makes the soul of a poet? Perhaps one of the translators of Jacopone’s poems Serge Hughes puts it best in his introductory remarks to the translated texts Poetry, he claims, combines, “music, images, and conviction” to create a new appreciation for what most of us take for granted.
Creativity Knows No Age
This young pastor, who teasingly called Ruth Grandmother, fed her soul and gave her hope that culture, beauty, and real FAITH were stronger than death. He honored her worth with conversation and songs and poetry. She responded in kind across generational lines that evaporated into thin air by the warmth of their deep and abiding love and respect.
Taking (and Making) Stock of Criticism Today
The slant and gravity of cultural criticism in our age of overproduction and overconsumption tugs irresistibly at individual works of criticism, urging them to conform to the spirit of the age. What this looks like, mostly, is criticism that ends up as uniform and bland as canned soup.
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?