In a book filled with the debates and arguments of theologians, Marty E. Marty gives the final words to two people who knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the last days of his Nazi captivity before his execution on April 9, 1945. It was in prison where Captain Payne Best, a British spy, met the Lutheran pastor. [...] The post Book review: “Dietrich Bonhoeffer s ‘Letters and Papers from Prison’: A…
Deep Patrick T. Reardon One-Cent runs like two thousand pigs into the deep. He is where the wind starts. Later, he will be buried facedown. The beaver trap snaps. Wendi in a dress and doubt, hereticked. Two brothers, one paid the price. The nun, unJesused, still in love with the uglies at the [...] The post Poem: Deep appeared first on Patrick T. Reardon .
The two searchers in John Ford’s classic Western The Searchers — Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) and Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter) — come upon a smoldering Indian village and the bodies of men, women and children slaughtered by the cavalry of Col. George Armstrong Custer, and they are shocked. It is, writes Glenn Frankel in The [...] The post Book review: “The Searchers: The Making of an American…
Picture this: Six goofily regular guys in the middle of the night are stumbling neck-deep in a turbid bog, called the Waters, in a stumblebum effort to carry Rose Thorn Zook, a pregnant woman they’ve known all their lives, to the island where her family has lived for generations and where she wants to give [...] The post Book review: “The Waters” by Bonnie Jo Campbell appeared first on Patrick T.…
Voice Patrick T. Reardon . Hear my voice. Hide me. He underwent translation, like a poem set afire, like a slashed Madonna and Child. Sword tongue and bitter salad. River of peace, unfountained. He apologized for self-death in the note in his angular writing, left-handed difficulty, trouble. Oh, what a beautiful. Oh, what a good. [...] The post Poem: Voice appeared first on Patrick T. Reardon .
The subtitle of a book can be distracting, enlightening and, at times, misleading. My sense — for what it’s worth — is that the author may come up with the title, but it’s often the publisher and the marketing people who compose the subtitle. I think that’s what happened with Withold Rybczynski’s 2013 book How [...] The post Book review: “How Architecture Works: A Humanist s Toolkit” by Witold…
William Somer was Henry VIII’s fool. He also served in some capacity in or on the edge of the court during the reigns of Henry’s children: Edward VI, the sickly Protestant teen; the fervid Catholic Mary I; and Elizabeth I, another Protestant. The fact that he was able to stay linked to the Tudor courts [...] The post Book review: “Fool: In Search of Henry VIII s Closest Man” by Peter K. Andersson…
Jagged Patrick T. Reardon The shoeless guy sleeping on the McDonald’s bench along the north windows is the god of still waters. The unfocused one, rocking over his Egg McMuffin, was once the mayor of Akron, now el-riding through the cold night, sneaking rest in the blank before the morning rush. The wraith [...] The post Poem: Jagged appeared first on Patrick T. Reardon .
Laboring in obscurity two centuries ago, William Blake is now considered one of the great figures of English poetry and a brilliant idiosyncratic visual artist. The story of his life, as told by Peter Ackroyd in his 1996 book Blake: A Biography, stirred me as a poet in a direct, intense and immediate way. During [...] The post Book review: “Blake: A Biography” by Peter Ackroyd appeared first on…
Back in the 1950s, there was a TV series called The Millionaire. The idea was that, each week, a rich guy would give away $1 million to someone he’d never met. Then, the recipient had to decide what to do with the money, for better or worse. Photo: Nano Erdozain In the first [...] The post Essay: Listening with a hearing heart appeared first on Patrick T. Reardon .