Sheila Squillante: Cry, Baby
I pull the car into our spot in the driveway, just in front of the ornamental grasses I planted to hide the water meter from plain view — a blight … Continue reading
Michael Simms: The Master Potter
Today I visited my friend Bill Foglia who’s a master potter. He’s a founding member and the landlord of Penn Avenue Pottery, an artists’ cooperative located in the Strip District, … Continue reading
Major Jackson: A Mystifying Silence — Big and Black
Nigger, your breed ain’t metaphysical. —Robert Penn Warren, “Pondy Woods” Beginning in earnest his long and preeminent literary career in the 1930s, it is safe to say poet and novelist … Continue reading
Adrian Blevins: My Mother’s First Husband
My mother’s first husband, who was the first mentally ill person I ever met, rents storage spaces all over D.C. He saves in crate after carton after crate: paper towel … Continue reading
Video: Jack Kerouac — “McDougall Street Blues”
Jack Kerouac speaks while Steve Allen plays jazz piano. With video clips of New York City in the 1950’s and 60’s. A beautiful piece of collaborative work capturing the mood … Continue reading
Adrian Blevins: What Makes Us Lose Our Minds
You find out about people like Nigel in little bits and pieces, anyway. It happens while you’re wondering whether the hills might in another country look like white elephants until … Continue reading
Adrian Blevins: Of Madmen and Spies
I take as my theme the mentally ill, understanding as I do just how tepid the bathwater is. So let’s not neglect for a moment the voyeur’s own affliction—her writerly … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: Holiness Comes For The Archbishop
Several of my non-Catholic friends have asked me about Pope Francis and Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador. It is not often I am asked about the process of beatification. … Continue reading
Richard Sahn: Life Lessons from Dorothy Day
In 1933 Dorothy Day, a progressive journalist and Catholic convert, and Peter Maurin, a French peasant and philosopher, founded an anarchist-pacifist movement and newspaper they called the “Catholic Worker.” The … Continue reading
Adrian Blevins: Late-Breaking Yew-Berry News from the Madman’s Love Shack
The catalogue of infractions I have committed against this world would overflow a small library, for what it’s worth. I pilfered a pack of gum before I could talk; I … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: The Poet is a Luthier
A poem is a musical instrument. The way its author plays it is not necessarily the way others will play it. The poet is a luthier. He uses certain materials … Continue reading
Sheryl St. Germain: Essay in Search of a Poem
You’ve been trying to finish a poem for what seems like a long time. It’s a poem that has to do with the death of your son. At first you … Continue reading
Adrian Blevins: Word Gluttons and Rhythm Sluts, Book Letches and Paragraph Drunks — The Magic of Metaphor
We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth. –Pablo Picasso With your permission I’d like to take a few minutes … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: Ferguson and the We-ness of Transition
All we have is anger and sadness. On the front page of Friday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch was a story of two policemen shot in Ferguson. There was also a huge photograph … Continue reading →