Book review: “Staring at the Sun — Overcoming the Terror of Death” by Irvin D. Yalom
Here’s an experiment: You wake up in the middle of the night, and standing next to your bed is an angel or a devil or a genii or some spirit [...]
Book Review: “The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger’s Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare’s First Folio” by Andrea E. Mays
There is an image at the end of the glossy photo section in The Millionaire and the Bard by Andrea E. Mays. It shows 82 copies of the First Folio [...]
Book review: “Poetry in the Bible” by Garry Wills
Garry Wills was just 25 years old in 1960 when he completed Poetry in the Bible, a 63-page booklet that was part of the Catholic Know-You-Bible Program. He was at [...]
Book review: “The Hollywood Catechism” by Paul Fericano
If someone comes across a copy of Paul Fericano’s book of poems The Hollywood Catechism (Silver Birch Press, $16, 110 pages) a hundred years from now, I’m not sure what [...]
Poem: We are all Elijah on the mountain
The still, small voice is still an itch in the corner of the skull, a catch of breath, a comma, a hesitancy, a heartbeat, a hush, a scratching at the [...]
Book review: MOON SINGER SERIES: “Moon of Three Rings,” “Exiles of the Stars,” “Flight in Yiktor” and Dare to Go a-Hunting” by Andre Norton
A year and a half ago, I read Andre Norton’s Moon of Three Rings (1966) and described it in a review as one of her best novels. I liked it [...]
Book review: “Images of the American City” by Anselm L. Strauss
Near the end of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, five-term Mayor Carter Harrison Sr. gave a speech in the Music Hall to a crowd of visiting mayors and other [...]
Fiction: “The Summer of ‘64”
“Summer vacation, 1964, the summer after my freshman year in high school, was the beginning of my dark night of the soul.” What the hell? What was Louis Sojo talking [...]
Book review: “Vivian Maier: Street Photographer,” edited by John Maloof
Look. This graceful woman in a stylish black dress is walking across a city street. Her foot is about to step on a trolley rail. She is looking slightly to [...]
Book review: “Quarantine” by Jim Crace
Five people trudged individually yet in an erratic line into the wilderness to spend forty days in quarantine in their individual caves, praying and meditating for their individual reasons. One [...]