The Catholic World articles from July 1995

The Catholic World archives from July 1995

Intersections: The Poetry of Religious Experience
July 1, 1995... It may be that the subject requires no elaborate discussion. Werent's the origins of the great Greek tragedies--with their rare blending of music, dance, and poetry--ultimately religious, part of celebrations honoring the god Dionysius? Haven't...

Psalm: Cohasset. (poem)
July 1, 1995... I see the tide turn, the boat at anchor off the dock is the vane, a slow swing of its stern, then a steady prow into the channel between the flats still being picked by gulls. I love flow tide, muddy and weedy but like the...

Incident. (poem)
July 1, 1995... A bird hits the ranch window. I close the book. I have to sit the sound through. It was final. The cat will come outside who does what eternity does at dusk, eats mountains without a noise, not bone cracking like the hyena....

Wallace Stevens and the search for God within. (poet)(includes excerpt from 'Collected Poems')
July 1, 1995... With Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens takes his place among America's greatest poets. By common consent Stevens, whose fortieth anniversary of death occurs August second this year, is the major as a spiritual writer. Stevens...

Literature as Continuing Creation, Continuing Revelation
July 1, 1995... Three years ago Daniel Halpern, the director of Ecco Press, commissioned twenty contemporary poets to produce a new translation of Dante's Inferno, with no restrictions on style or approach except the general idea of faithfulness to the original...

If God is this rattler. (poem)
July 1, 1995... If God is this rattler I am stripping of its skin when I am ten, pulling with mouth-nose pliers at the hide along the beads of blood beneath his head on down each side and over a carcass fit now only for a meal to...

If God is a diviner. (poem)
July 1, 1995... If God is a diviner teasing like a water witch dowsing the inner dark with her witch hazel switch to find water beneath dry ground, perhaps she can divine my wellspring with her wand, find the vein that coils and creeps...

On Translating the Psalms
July 1, 1995... The responsorial psalm--particularly when it is sung--is, for me, unquestionably one of the high points of the liturgy. Situated as it is between the first and second readings, it not only provides the opportunity for a heartfelt response to that...

Exsultet. (poem)
July 1, 1995... Maundy Thursday was concupiscence; In-line skates TWENTY BUCKS! "Do you take plastic?" I asked. "Even yours," he said. On Good Friday they waited. After breakfast, I am tempted And quickly succumb, Experiencing the...

Creed. (poem)
July 1, 1995... Closer than my eyelash, though older than The moon, you are the tune I sing to myself, The poem I know as no one else, a song Stronger than death; you are the lord of bugs And teacups, above the angels but Unashamed to be blood and...

The Poetry of Hesitant Assertion
July 1, 1995... Since its recording in early 1992 the London Sinfonietta's moving account of Henryk Gorecki's third symphony, with soprano Dawn Upshaw, has sold almost one million copies. In the world of classical music this is extraordinary. How can we explain...

In a Clay Pot Blooming
July 1, 1995... A few miles from where I live in upstate New York, workers at the Syracuse Pottery make pots out of the red clay they mine from the surrounding hills. The work is tedious, each wet slab of clay pressed by hand on a spinning wheel. Later, the pots...

The Poetry of Contact
July 1, 1995... Every poet must face the facts of life within his own age before he can refuse, accept, or transcend them. Our century, like all that have preceded it, can be said to contain within itself forces of disintegration on the one hand and forces of...

Mozart: Traces of Transcendence.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1995... There are few titles that have more surprised, intrigued and ultimately disappointed this reviewer as much as Hans Kung's Mozart: Traces of Transcendence. Since, as Kung observes, relatively little has been written about the religious...

An Anthology of Sacred Texts by and About Women.
July 1, 1995... In this impressive anthology, general readers of every kind will find a treasure chest of wisdom by and about women from all the major world religious traditions. Rich and varied, these selections give a glimpse of women's religious experience...