Essay: “Maybe me and you can be wise guys too”
Matthew’s account of the three wise men arriving at the stable to worship the baby Jesus is one of the most touching scenes in the Bible and one of the [...]
Book review: “Voodoo Planet” by Andre Norton
Published sixty-six years ago, Andre Norton’s 63-page novella Voodoo Planet is both caught in the racial attitudes of its time and free of them. And it’s a strange tale for [...]
Poem: Give ear
Give ear Patrick T. Reardon Give ear, Lucy. Consider the streets of Chicago — the numbers, 35th, 79th, 103rd, Streets and Places, below Madison; K-town to [...]
Book review: “Rum Punch” by Elmore Leonard
What a difference 14 years makes! That’s the amount of time between the publication of Elmore Leonard’s novel The Switch (1978) and the appearance of his Rum Punch (1992), both [...]
Book review: “So Many Steps to Death” by Agatha Christie
The Deputy Director of the Unit, a secret laboratory/factory for geniuses, opens the door to Tom Betterton’s quarters and says, “Ah, Betterton — here we are at last! Your wife!” [...]
Poem: A first visit to the Uffizi
A first visit to the Uffizi Patrick T. Reardon Looking for Theopista who is called a saint, painted by Lippi who is called by Browning a brothel-john in [...]
Book review: “Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)” by Herman Melville, illustrated by Barry Moser
Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) is both mythic and intimate, and so, too, are the woodcuts that Barry Moser has created for the centennial edition from [...]
Book review: “The Plan of Chicago: A City in Stories” by Barry Pearce
One of the many fascinating things about a city like Chicago is how the lives of millions of strangers are, unknowingly, intertwined. Barry Pearce gets at this in a savvy [...]
Poem: Poor soul
Poor soul Patrick T. Reardon Poor soul, old soul, sign of the window. Sign of lost soul, track of lost tribe. The woman’s flowers bloom [...]
Book review: “Pieter Bruegel and the Idea of Human Nature” by Elizabeth Alice Honig
The Procession to Calvary, also called Christ Carrying the Cross, is the second-largest painting that Pieter Bruegel the Elder is known to have produced. Created in 1564, the work measures [...]