Book review: “The Art of Biblical Narrative” by Robert Alter
The writers of the Hebrew Bible, when they’re telling a story, they’re like Homer with the Iliad — they’re omniscient. They know the story as if they’ve watched it unfold [...]
Book review: “The Power and the Glory” by Graham Greene
He is a priest who has been on the run for eight years in a state in Mexico where authorities have leveled all churches in an effort to root out [...]
Poem: “Four percent pantomime
Beethoven’s Symphony #7 In A, Opus 92, Allegretto, is dread and endurance, deepening in intensity with each new phrase. down into the core. And, for just a few beats, somewhere [...]
Poem: “Goddess boulder”
In Boston, at the MFA, the faith, love and hope of the Della Robbia family art, glazed terra cotta, one hundred and fifty years of saints and Madonnas with their [...]
Poem: “Standing before Turner’s ‘Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen’ in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts”
The pounding crush of the falling Rhine waters has no end unlike these tiny foreground figures who reach and stretch to accomplish their small tasks, muscles straining, reaching, stretching, yearning. [...]
Book review: “The City: A Vision in Woodcuts” by Frans Masereel
Frans Masereel, a Belgian-born artist who lived most of his life in France, published The City in 1925. It is a collection of 100 woodcuts that tell a story, and [...]
Book review: “Equal Rites” by Terry Pratchett
In Equal Rites, the third of his Discworld novels, Terry Pratchett thinks deep thoughts…and silly thoughts. Sometimes, at the same time. For instance, Esk is a girl of nearly nine [...]
Book review: “Catseye” by Andre Norton
Andre Norton’s 1961 novel Catseye is what’s often called a space opera. In other words, like the old Westerns — called horse operas — it’s an adventure story, set in [...]
Book review: “Cover Her Face” by P.D. James
It was in 1962 that P.D. James published Cover Her Face, her first murder mystery featuring Detective Chief-Inspector Adam Dalgleish of Scotland Yard. At the time, Agatha Christie was still [...]
Book review: “Native Son” by Richard Wright
For 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, life in Chicago in early 1939 is one of fear and anger. On this day, he has just beaten up his friend Gus for no apparent [...]