MOH: In official LDS Church materials, from magazines to manuals to temple walls, there’s a lack of abstract art, in favor of highly representational, literal art. What is the role of abstraction in religious art,…
Listen to the interview about this piece here. Listen to the audio version of this piece here. A man stands naked on the rubber of a checkout counter’s clnveyer belt, face smeared with something red.…
Renaissance scholar Ada Palmer estimates we know 1 percent of what happened five hundred years ago and that two-thirds of what we know is wrong. I have no reason to doubt her expertise—and every reason…
Phyllis Barber’s new work, The Precarious Walk: Essays from Sand and Sky, spans immense time. The book carries the reader from Barber’s childhood in post–World War II Nevada through adolescence, multiple marriages, children, relocation, ecological…
Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. Halfway through the session, I become awareof a full bladder and nothing else.All that is holy is eclipsedby flesh. I pant in claustrophobiabetween the lady who…
Frankly, I am not sure why I was invited to review Matthew Wickman’s Life to the Whole Being. It is not an opportunity that I sought or for which I volunteered. I have written very…
Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. How that late sabbath afternoon you sat cross-legged on their lawn, Elder S at your side, the couple just across, their backs to her late summer…
Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here. 1. a patient’s accountof medical history,a reiteration of conditionscontracted by mortality,a form of proud flesh’sgranulation over a wound,a raised tissue massdelineating impact to sayhere is pain,…
Sometimes from the thresholdof these doorswe are greeted by another self,another worldwe wish to worship, incarnationthe tithe we offerfor such a crossing: we, seeking the divine,the divine leaning toward us,fading coal of memory igniting into…
Questions from My Past Listen to an interview about this piece here. My patriarchal blessing indicates that I am a literal descendant of Ephraim and heir to specific blessings and promises. But what does this…