Book review: “The Gospel of John: A Biography” by Kim Haines-Eitzen
The Gospel of John, the last written of the four canonic gospels, was composed by a poet who might easily be called a mystic. Was the poet also an anti-Semite? [...]
Poem: A penance of sparrows
A penance of sparrows Patrick T. Reardon A penance of sparrows I offer to the flat steel sky, a humble exercise from the gladiator circle, a wind formula. The [...]
Essay: Lines on Paper, Land as Commodity
In 1830, Chicago was a speck of a settlement, with fewer than one hundred people at the edge of what was still a frontier wilderness. But that was about to [...]
Poem: Every thing on the earth
Every thing on the earth Patrick T. Reardon The Angel that presided o’er my birth said, “Little creature, form’d of Joy & Mirth, Go love without the help [...]
Book review: “Chicago Homes: A Portrait of the City’s Everyday Architecture” by Carla Bruni and Phil Thompson
One of the many joys of reading Carla Bruni and Phil Thompson’s Chicago Homes: A Portrait of the City’s Everyday Architecture is the way the book dazzles the reader with [...]
Poem: Soil prophet
Soil prophet Patrick T. Reardon And One-Cent dreamed a river of iron, a lake of steel, gleaming and cold. Bread to eat, clothing to wear. Come, let [...]
Book review: “Trees Ancient and Modern: Woodland Cultures and Conservation” By Charles Watkins
More than thirty years ago, two hundred trees — cottonwoods, mainly, with some horse chestnuts and hackberries — were cut down behind Lane Technical High School, and only arborist Robert [...]
Book review: “Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy” by Christopher White
I don’t think I’m the only Chicagoan who finds it strangely exhilarating to realize that, over the past sixty or so years, I might have ridden in the same el [...]
Poem: Real name
Real name Patrick T. Reardon One-Cent wasn’t his real name, just the name taped on him by authorities who had their own purpose, taped on the wood of his [...]
Book review: “When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy” by David Margolick
Two mysteries of my childhood: Imogene Coca and Nanette Fabray. These two names seemed to pop up frequently on the edges of conversations on television — on The Tonight Show [...]