Book review: “The Glorious Pool” by Thorne Smith
The Glorious Pool, with the salaciously seductive image of a nude woman on the cover, is a screwball comedy of a novel about a fountain — er, pool — of [...]
Poem: Salt
Salt By Patrick T. Reardon . Child of the Century was born in a wash of salt water, a covenant with breathing, an opening of the eyes to power and [...]
Book review: “Jolliet and Marquette: A New History of the 1673 Expedition” by Mark Walczynski
The expedition of discovery that Louis Jolliet, a merchant-explorer, and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest, undertook with five other men in 1673 was a pivotal moment in the history of [...]
Announcement: New Poetry Book — “Salt of the Earth: Doubts and Faith”
My sixth book of poetry Salt of the Earth: Doubts and Faith has just been published by Kelsay Books. It’s my third book of poetry in the last ten months, [...]
Book review: “I Surrender: A Memoir of Chile’s Dictatorship, 1975” by Kathleen Osberger
r Kathleen Osberger’s account of her three harrowing months as a religious volunteer with a community of Catholic nuns in Chile a half century ago brings the reader deep into [...]
Book review: “And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle” by Jon Meacham
The concluding sentence of Abraham Lincoln’s eloquent, poignant and contemplative Second Inaugural Address has long been held up as one of the most stirring evocations of American idealism. It reads: [...]
Book review: “The Member of the Wedding” by Carson McCullers
With its strangeness and ambiguities, with its dreaminess and veiled threats, Carson McCullers’s 1948 novel The Member of the Wedding has the feel of a book-length prose poem. Certainly, a [...]
Essay: Printers Row – A Celebration of Community
Near the end of last Saturday at this year’s Printers Row Lit Fest, an 80-year-old Italian painter from the North Shore told me she’s going to have a huge party [...]
Book review: “The Happy Prince & Other Tales” by Oscar Wilde
It’s something of a surprise to be reminded that Oscar Wilde — the author of The Picture of Dorian Gray and the subject of a scandalous 1895 trial over consensual [...]
Book review: “By Permission of Heaven: The True Story of the Great Fire of London” By Adrian Tinniswood
Ask the average American, and you’d most likely find that the British royals have a pretty dopey reputation. For nearly half a century, there have been all these tabloid stories [...]