Deep Down Things
Nicodemus, Doug Weaver
Pentecost 2012 issue.
To live more musically
“I found myself in a place quite familiar to all those who have been to Brideshead before — Julia at the fountain….Waugh had me crying uncontrollably and from the deep places. I don’t know why. My returning roommate heard me and opened the door with a questioning alarm. All I could say was “Julia…” And she replied quite softly, “At the fountain?” I nodded yes. She slowly closed the door. This was between Waugh and me.”
Friday Links
Tamara Nicholl-Smith, Trinity Forum & Makoto Fujimura and Dana Gioia, Terence Sweeney, Ben Myers reviews J.C. Scharl, Jessica Hooton Wilson in Church Life Journal
Longing for Home
“As I read Wendell Berry’s novel Hannah Coulter last year, I felt that Hannah’s musings on place and community were deeply familiar because I saw them reflected in the people I know here; and I felt, too, how I do not have a place myself, and how I have grieved that lack without even having words for what I was missing.”
Friday Links
Seamus Heaney, W.B. Yeats read by Cillian Murphy, Collette Bryce, Scythian, In Their Thousands, Mick Flannery, The Dubliners and Jim McCann, Daniel McInerny, Haley Stewart, Phil, Jake & MBD on Manifesto! A Podcast, Roddy Doyle reads Maeve Brennan, Janille Stephens reviews Brian Doyle’s Mink River
In praise of queues
Life is full of waiting. Maybe that’s the point.
Friday Links
with Hannah Long in Plough, Mary Grace Mangano on Helen Pinkerton, Zina Hitz in Commonweal, Jane Greer on Josephine Jacobsen
The muse is not a trophy wife
Poets, professors, and philosophers should be part mad scientist, experimenting with the physical world, and part child gazing long at the unexplainable beauty around them, overjoyed that they have been invited to come out and play in it.
Tom Wolfe, American Social Critic?—and Me
When I met Tom Wolfe at a writers' conference at University of Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1977, I told him I was a great admirer of the kind of writing that he practiced and perhaps invented, which he called New Journalism.
Wolfe and I had a brief quiet conversation in the dining room. Wolfe was wearing one of the counter-cultural-straight-man painstakingly tailored pastel suits he always wore, even in the midst of the 70s, even when he was researching The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test with the tie-dyed, fringed, long-haired bell-bottom-jeans-wearing freaks on that psychedelic bus.
The night I met him, I was surprised that the wide-lapeled suit he wore was pale yellow. I fingered his lapel thoughtfully, to check the quality of the fabric, since I read where he’d written about how much he was into well-tailored fine fabrics, decided the material was linen, noticed his pocket handkerchief was made of silk, and then I told him I wanted to be a famous writer. And he said without a pause, You will be. For no apparent reason at all.
Friday Links
with The CUA Chamber Choir; James Matthew Wilson in Law & Liberty; Cynthia Lewis in The Hudson Review; Timothy Nerozzi in The Lamp, Aidan Hart and the Scala Foundation
Europe in these Times – Things Unfinished
Kevin Duffy contemplates Antonio Gaudí’s masterpiece and the nature of what it means to be a work in progress.
Friday Links
Check out our Friday Links with Eliot reading “Ash-Wednesday,” Three Mo’ Tenors singing “Were You There?” and more
Art is the best interpreter of art
Steven Knepper on the value of ekphrastic poetry
The Ways of Holiness
The Ways of Holiness
Friday Links
Gregory Luce, Sarah DeCorla-SouzaPaul Kingsnorth, First Things, Bernardo Aparicio García, Mary Ann Miller, Greg Wolfe, Jess Sweeney, Shemaiah Gonzales, Notre Dame Folk Choir, Christian Wiman, Harper’s
Let us reverently marvel
The Marvelous Works of Brian Doyle
Sacred Art’s Mysterious Call to the Heart
Beauty creates a longing for transcendent realities. As poet Dana Gioia wrote in the essay quoted in this post of mine at Dappled Things Deep Down things blog, "art is mysterious. It reaches us in ways we don’t fully understand.”
This ability of sacred art to call our hearts and prepare our minds to receive truth is something we need to bring into the discussion as the Church ponders how to help the appallingly large number of Catholics who either were never taught or never believed or lost belief—for whatever reason—in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
A step forward for Deep Down Things
We’re pleased to announce that we are now able to compensate contributors to the Deep Down Things blog.
Friday Links
Friday Links with Seth Wieck on Dana Gioia’s new collection of poetry; Ted Gioia on The State of the Culture (2023); Anthony Esolen on Marty; and Sally Read on God and the Poet
Slouching toward Calvary
Dwight Lindley on the crucible of a Sunday afternoon walk with one’s children.