Last spring I wrote an essay for the March 2004 AML symposium in which I argued that the most effective poets writing from the LDS culture are those who provide a counterweight to the main…
Collections of scholarly articles often display their strengths in their parts rather than in their functioning as a unified whole. After all, the structure of such volumes invites readers to pick and choose and, if…
Krakauer’s success has come as a writer of narrative nonfiction. He is best known for Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster (New York: Villard,1997). In Under the Banner of Heaven:…
3 She held the umbrella close to her head, limiting her vision to the circle of stones at her feet. Anna watched her companion’s hemline bounce in time to the click of her heels against…
My family and I drove hours one Sunday to see
a meadow in the mountains of Arizona. We stood
behind a split-rail fence. “It’s beautiful,”
my dad said. “It’s for sale. If we had money
we’d buy it.” And we climbed the fence
and wandered that acre of wildflowers and ferns,
ate fried chicken and picked up our litter,
and went home.
There are no waves on the bay side of the peninsula. The tide simply licks up and back, up and back on the sand shore. Beyond the shore, tall sailboats of vivid blues, greens, and…
Sacred, subtle slavery, the mother’s task
That burden of creation’s holy power.
To love a clot of flesh and never ask
If it deserves its soul at chosen hour.
David S. King has led a life exceptional for its combination of public and ecclesiastical service. His parents were Vera Sjodahl King (1891-1955) and William Henry King (1862-1949), a four-term U.S. Senator from Utah. Born…
Just off the highway
in the setting sun
cattle gather on a hill.
My foot lets up
In 1989, the Primary Association released a new songbook for Mormondom’s children, its first since 1969. Evaluating it for a professional hymnody publication, one reviewer commented: “This handsome volume’s 8V2 x 11″ pages exude a special kind of coziness…. The plentiful decorative illustrations use pastel colors exclusively—and so, in their way, do most of the songs…. [F]or every song about a specifically Mormon doc trine or practice, at least four would fit into practically any Christian, in deed any civilized context.”