Essay: Pentecost and the fruit of the Spirit
Last month, for Pentecost Sunday, one of the choices for a second reading was from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and its high point, for me, was this sentence near [...]
Poem: Reaching
Reaching By Patrick T. Reardon Each itch outside the sanctuary of Saint Mary of the Flower is rooted in the Florence street stones, each tiny twitch of unrest before [...]
Book review: “ ‘Comfort to the Enemy’ and other Carl Webster Stories” by Elmore Leonard
In his eighties, Elmore Leonard apparently decided to write whatever he felt like writing. His last six books, published between 2005 and his death in 2013 at 87, were pretty [...]
Poem: Arrival of Godot
Arrival of Godot By Patrick T. Reardon Comfort, yes, comfort, New Jerusalem. Your penance is at its end. Your guilt expiated. Gather, you, Mayor and City Council, in noon-sun Daley Plaza. [...]
Book review: “Write Cut Rewrite: The Cutting Room Floor of Modern Literature” by Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon
Everyone, I suppose, has a sense of the what-if of history. What if Abraham Lincoln hadn’t gone to Ford’s Theater that night and had avoided assassination? What if I had [...]
Book Review: “Democracy’s Rebirth: The View from Chicago” by Dick Simpson
A half a century ago, as a new political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Dick Simpson won election to the Chicago City Council for the [...]
Book review: “Elsewhere: An Elegy” by Faisal Mohyuddin
In his poem “The Hourglass. The Pebble. The Throne of God,” Faisal Mohyuddin ponders “the lightless language of elegy.” His father is dead, and he is grieving. And he wonders [...]
Book review: “The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City” by Kevin Baker
The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City is Kevin Baker’s love letter to the city and the sport and the way they have intertwined for [...]
“The Eiger Sanction” by Trevanian
Some thoughts on re-reading Trevanian’s The Eiger Sanction nearly half a century after I first read it: The thriller The Eiger Sanction was published in 1972 and quickly became [...]
Book review: “Original Sin” by P.D. James
There are two original sins in P.D. James’s 1994 Original Sin. One is central to the mystery. The other is a mournful shadow of history. The story also features the [...]