DiaBLOGue

Digging the Foundation: Making and Reading Mormon Literature

April 26, 2018

As an epigraph to their anthology A Believing People: Literature of the Latter-day Saints, Richard Cracroft and Neal Lambert quote Orson F. Whitney’s 1888 Contributor essay, “Home Literature”: 

We shall yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own. God’s ammunition is not yet exhausted. His highest spirits are held in reserve for the latter times. In God’s name and by his help we will build up a literature whose top shall touch heaven, though its foundation may now be low on earth.

Among the Mormons: A Survey of Current Literature

April 26, 2018

Just over ten years ago I was approached by four young Mormons who were affiliated with Stanford University in one capacity or another. They wanted to know if there was a library market for a…

A Quality Lacking | Melissa Merrill, Polygamist’s Wife

April 26, 2018

“Oh Mother, Father will look so pretty for his wedding!” In these words this book begins and one feels instantly the poignant picture of the woman, Melissa, pressing her husband’s suit, a job she had…

The Law Above the Law | Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith

April 26, 2018

Dialogue 10.1 (1975-1976): 84–86
Review of Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith coauthored by Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill regarding the trial of Joseph Smith and his brother’s Hyrum deaths. Jensen argues that this book is a mustread for anyone who is interested in ‘Mormon history, philosophy, and the law.’

Grandpa’s Place

April 26, 2018

My grandfather, for whom I was named, was born in 1878 in a four-room stone house built by his father in Round Valley, near Morgan, Utah. My great grandfather had a small farm there and a job on the Union Pacific Railroad, but in the spring of 1883…

A Latter-day Ode to Irrigation

April 26, 2018

In 1907 J. J. McClellan, then organist for the Mormon Tabernacle, published a new choral suite under the extravagant title, “Ode to Irrigation.” The first of five choruses described in heavy Victorian prose a truly…

Poor Mother

April 26, 2018

We have a new baby in our family. Soon after Amy was born, our oldest son introduced himself to the woman who was building a house behind ours. “And how many children are there in…

Three Foot Shallows Drowner

April 26, 2018

What is there but hips and thighs 
To a black dwarf? 
And the rudimentary calls and crying 
Of sparrows swinging out