Sixty-four years ago my grandmother was shifting in her sleep, admiring her growing belly with gentle hands, welcoming the October nightfall that enclosed her like prayer. That’s how pregnancy is, ordinary things move on without…
Recently returning from ten years of foreign service in the Middle East, a friend mentioned that he was frequently asked how the United States successfully excludes religion from politics. My friend noted that to Middle…
Days after his death, I felt him
newly jovial alongside me. And weeks later,
when I again dreamed him young,
handing me a pail of watercress,
I am not a historian. But my limited exposure to the discipline tells me that writing history involves arriving at definitions of “eras,” “cultures,” and “movements.” In my work in literary theory, I have been…
Readers unpacked Brian Evenson’s nationally-published collection of controversial short stories, Altmann’s Tongue, in diverse (perverse) ways. Jerry Johnston, a columnist for the Mormon church-owned Deseret News, observed, “The word ‘macabre’ comes to mind. He is…
Did I hold the tiny Chinese shoe
or simply gaze at it
encased in museum glass
in the old mining town
As Sterling McMurrin put it, “Every religion needs a saint, and Lowell Bennion is Mormonism’s saint.” Why does a church need a saint? People need a flesh and blood example, a person who has attained…
I. The coming
Inside this precise granite
the immensity of the walk comes home
Lowell L. Bennion was widely known among Latter-day Saints for his Christlike life and humanitarianism, as well as for his teaching and authorship of numerous church books and manuals.
Leroy Robertson was one of my mentors. I played in the Brigham Young University orchestra under him in 1945-46, studied music theory from him as a graduate student at the University of Utah in 1955,…