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The Gift of Language | Heidi Naylor, Revolver

October 26, 2018

The stories in Heidi Naylor’s short story collection Revolver present characters who have experienced regret, grief, loss, and even death. As readers, we have the opportunity to peer into the abyss of their lives, while still garnering from the experience some little hope to carry on. Sounds grim, perhaps, but literature allows us to experience vicariously the circumstances, situations, and tragedies we would rather avoid in our own lives, perhaps with the hope that we might learn therefrom.

Art

October 26, 2018

I’m Trying to Get to Know Jesus

October 26, 2018

For a good portion of my life, I didn’t understand how Jesus fit into the equation. I prayed to Heavenly Father and so I felt like I had some sort of connection to him because I talked to him. And I had often felt the presence of the Holy Ghost so there were some tangible experiences with that member of the Godhead. But I never talked to Jesus and I never felt him in my bosom, so I felt a little confused about how to connect with this brother of mine for whom I quite instinctively have always felt a deep love, even without—it seemed—much contact.

An Intuitive Approach to Art

October 26, 2018

Throughout his life, Daniel has continually experimented with line, form, and color to create abstract artworks. He chiefly works with ink on paper, sometimes employing collage to bring more dimensionality and complexity to his endeavors.…

Lost in Translation | Adam S. Miller, The Sun Has Burned My Skin: A Modest Paraphrase of Solomon’s Song of Songs

October 26, 2018

In my review of Adam Miller’s wonderfully imaginative and provocative book of criticism, Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology (2012), I stated: “At times, Miller seems as much poet as theologian. Essay after essay does what Robert Frost says poetry is supposed to do: ‘begin in delight and end in wisdom,’ although at times Miller’s essays begin in wisdom and end in delight. In reality, Miller’s writing is often theology as poetry.”

I’ve Got a Feeling

October 26, 2018

My dad gave me Hugh Nibley while I was in high school. His writing seemed to be a place set for me at the table of Mormonism. I dug into Nibley’s work and quoted my…

In Memoriam: Douglas Heal Thayer (1929–2017)

October 26, 2018

This is how Douglas Thayer often greeted me when we met in the hallway of the Jesse Knight Building, where both of us taught for years. I wonder if I was the only person who got such a greeting from his rich supply of poems. I was still in my twenties, newly married to Bruce Young, when he first greeted me this way—in 1985. I had taken advanced creative writing from him in 1978, but I’m not sure he remembered that. 

“Twisted Apples”: Lance Larsen Takes on Prose Poetry | Lance Larsen, What the Body Knows

October 26, 2018

What makes something a poem? How do you recognize one, even if it has no broken lines? For most of us who read and love poetry, the answer is, “I just know.” There is the buzz of new vision from a surprising metaphor or imaginative framing, the sensual delight of rhythm and rhyme. But even more, there is the feeling. A good poem sends sparks through our synapses, makes us feel more alive. “I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off,” says Emily Dickinson. It’s visceral.