DiaBLOGue

In areas distant from the central stakes of Zion, the church may occupy a more important position in the lives of members than it does where Mor mons are more numerous. This is particularly true…

From safe within the geographical and philosophical matrix that is the Church, it is often difficult for people my age and older to realize that such a thing as a “generation gap” may in fact…

Thus Clinton Larson in an interview published in Dialogue for Autumn 1969. Dr. Larson, whom Karl Keller has described as the first “Mormon poet,” also affirmed a hope that “If . . . literary artists . . . take their work as seriously as they should, and by ‘seriously’ I mean that they become professionally responsible, then a significant and coherent literary movement can begin.” Whether a “literary movement” in the church is possible, or even desirable, I wish to leave aside. Good poems, however, should be possible and certainly are desirable; they are, as Larson suggests, “part of the spiritual record” of this people. The recent books of three young writers, who might be thought of as second-generation L.D.S. poets, exhibit the grounds for both the hope and the negation in Larson’s remarks. 

Though the Bible may have generated its share of scholarly disagreement, the New Testament’s message about the need for human understanding remains clear and unambiguous. Christians may be divided on various points of doctrine, but at least there is no disagreement that helping some one else in need has always been considered an act of Christian virtue.