B. W. Jorgensen
BRUCE W. JORGENSEN lives in Provo and teaches English at Brigham Young University. He is a lifetime member and past president (1990) of the Association for Mormon Letters, which recently awarded him an honorary lifetime membership. He recently published in Dialogue an essay, "Scriptural Chastity Lessons: Joseph and Potiphar's Wife; Corianton and the Harlot Isabel," 32, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 7-34, and a short story, "Measures of Music," 32, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 133-40. He presented an earlier form of this essay at the Association for Mormon Letters conference, February 24, 2001, Salt Lake City, published under the title, "Imagining Mormon Marriage, Part 2: Toward a 'Marriage Group' of Contemporary Mormon Short Stories," in the AML Annual 2002 (Provo, Utah: Association for Mormon Letters, 2002), 37-52.
Gathering Apples in First Snow
Articles/Essays – Volume 06, No. 3
This year October takes us sudden, breaks
The honeylocust leaves with a parching frost
And casts them, ashen green and clattering, down
On sidewalks still glaring as white as summer.
Proving Subcontraries: In memoriam G. Eugene England, 1933–2001
Articles/Essays – Volume 52, No. 4
Imperceptive Hands: Some Recent Mormon Verse
Articles/Essays – Volume 05, No. 4
Thus Clinton Larson in an interview published in Dialogue for Autumn 1969. Dr. Larson, whom Karl Keller has described as the first “Mormon poet,” also affirmed a hope that “If . . . literary artists . . . take their work as seriously as they should, and by ‘seriously’ I mean that they become professionally responsible, then a significant and coherent literary movement can begin.” Whether a “literary movement” in the church is possible, or even desirable, I wish to leave aside. Good poems, however, should be possible and certainly are desirable; they are, as Larson suggests, “part of the spiritual record” of this people. The recent books of three young writers, who might be thought of as second-generation L.D.S. poets, exhibit the grounds for both the hope and the negation in Larson’s remarks.
Read moreOn Second West In Cedar City, Utah: Canticle for the Virgin
Articles/Essays – Volume 06, No. 1
Ave Maria, plena gratia!
One street west, in the ward chapel,
I reinforce with paper thimble
of water and shard of bread
my bond to God:
“No Continuing City””: Reading a Local History: Provo: A Story of People in Motion
Articles/Essays – Volume 09, No. 2
Digging the Foundation: Making and Reading Mormon Literature
Articles/Essays – Volume 09, No. 4
The Vocation of David Wright: An Essay in Analytic Biography
Articles/Essays – Volume 11, No. 2
Almost But Not Quite: Turn Again Home by Herbert Marker
Articles/Essays – Volume 11, No. 3
Maverick Fiction: The Canyons of Grace by Levi S. Peterson
Articles/Essays – Volume 16, No. 2
Scriptural Chastity Lessons, Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife; Corianton and the Harlot Isabel
Articles/Essays – Volume 32, No. 1
Measures of Music
Articles/Essays – Volume 32, No. 3
It came then that Sara dreamed of the flood. It had been the news for weeks, cities all along the Front sandbagging streets, sidewalks, driveways, window wells, a mudslide that made a lake over a…
Read moreToward a “”Marriage Group”” of Contemporary Mormon Short Stories
Articles/Essays – Volume 37, No. 4