Death comes into our lives all too often; we don’t seek it out. As much as possible, we focus on essential, everyday concerns and keep death in the distance, at the edge of the horizon.…
For a good portion of my life, I didn’t understand how Jesus fit into the equation. I prayed to Heavenly Father and so I felt like I had some sort of connection to him because I talked to him. And I had often felt the presence of the Holy Ghost so there were some tangible experiences with that member of the Godhead. But I never talked to Jesus and I never felt him in my bosom, so I felt a little confused about how to connect with this brother of mine for whom I quite instinctively have always felt a deep love, even without—it seemed—much contact.
Throughout his life, Daniel has continually experimented with line, form, and color to create abstract artworks. He chiefly works with ink on paper, sometimes employing collage to bring more dimensionality and complexity to his endeavors.…
In my review of Adam Miller’s wonderfully imaginative and provocative book of criticism, Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology (2012), I stated: “At times, Miller seems as much poet as theologian. Essay after essay does what Robert Frost says poetry is supposed to do: ‘begin in delight and end in wisdom,’ although at times Miller’s essays begin in wisdom and end in delight. In reality, Miller’s writing is often theology as poetry.”
My dad gave me Hugh Nibley while I was in high school. His writing seemed to be a place set for me at the table of Mormonism. I dug into Nibley’s work and quoted my…
This is how Douglas Thayer often greeted me when we met in the hallway of the Jesse Knight Building, where both of us taught for years. I wonder if I was the only person who got such a greeting from his rich supply of poems. I was still in my twenties, newly married to Bruce Young, when he first greeted me this way—in 1985. I had taken advanced creative writing from him in 1978, but I’m not sure he remembered that.
What makes something a poem? How do you recognize one, even if it has no broken lines? For most of us who read and love poetry, the answer is, “I just know.” There is the buzz of new vision from a surprising metaphor or imaginative framing, the sensual delight of rhythm and rhyme. But even more, there is the feeling. A good poem sends sparks through our synapses, makes us feel more alive. “I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off,” says Emily Dickinson. It’s visceral.
The mid-November darkness settles early in the afternoon. As my window dims, a tall man with a chocolate complexion peeks through the door. “Charity,” his rich baritone voice fills my small room, “I’m one of…
In the fall of 1973, I enrolled as a sophomore at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. On a whim, I registered for a course titled ENG 240 WRITING POETRY, INSTRUCTOR: E. BELL. I had no idea who “E. Bell” was—male or female? animal, vegetable, or mineral?—but I soon found out. The first day of class, as we eager, would-be-poets settled into our neatly aligned desk-chairs, the door opened and a statuesque woman with the regal swagger of a Hawaiian queen and the deadpan grin of a stand-up comic entered the classroom toting a hefty book bag that she promptly dropped on the teacher’s desk—clunk!
It’s difficult to know where to start in discussing a novel as thoughtful as American Fork. Politics, religion, belonging, family history, ecology, sense of place, the high costs of love and our dogged willingness to pay…