Meditation: The Poem of Pentecost
Picture this: Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit, tongues of fire and the followers of Jesus going out into the world to proclaim the good news. A large crowd [...]
Book review: “SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome” by Mary Beard
One night in Asculum in 91 BC, the crowd at the theater was made up of Romans and people from the town and other parts of Italy that were allied [...]
Book review: “Sor Juana’s Love Poems/Poemas De Amor” by Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz, translated by Joan Larkin & Jaime Manrique
On one of the first pages of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Dolly Oblonsky is packing to leave her womanizing husband and is described as taking something out of an open [...]
Book review: “The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation” by Natalie Y. Moore
In The South Side, WBEZ reporter Natalie Y. Moore examines the myriad ways in which the lives of African-Americans in the Chicago region are limited, constrained, stifled and lessened by [...]
Book review: “First Love” & “Look for My Obituary,” two novellas by Elena Garro
The first love in Elena Garro’s novella First Love isn’t exactly what you might expect. For one thing, it isn’t about teenagers nor about the sweaty, fevered lust that love [...]
Poem: beard
winter afternoon in the classroom a half-sleep the nun speaks and rests the eight-year-olds bow heads over loose leaf write in the row along the windows in the second to [...]
Book review: “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis
On Christmas Day, 1937, the family of Doremus Jessup is enjoying a festive afternoon in their Vermont home with friends, including shop-owner Louis Rotenstern, a Jewish bachelor. Suddenly, there’s a [...]
Book review: “A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination” by Philip Shenon
Over the last half century, scores and probably hundreds of books have been published about the 1963 assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and its investigation by the Warren Commission. [...]
Book review: “The Discworld Graphic Novels: The Colour of Magic & The Light Fantastic” by Terry Pratchett
I’ve written before about the difficulty of translating Terry Pratchett’s funny, witty, silly, insightful, wacky and clear-eyed novels into other art media. A year and a half ago, I saw [...]
Book review: “The Buried Giant” by Kazuo Ishiguro
Many reviewers were flummoxed last year when they tried to come to grips with Kazuo Ishiguro’s seventh novel The Buried Giant. A lot of readers are likely to have the [...]