In ‘Requiem,’ her fifth book, Virginia Konchan takes the sacred seriously. She’s jocular with her subjects, including God, yet in doing so she demonstrates sustained attention toward the divine. God is among her natural poetic vocabulary.
Poetry
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Seamus Heaney’s hidden spiritual life
Two new books give a multi-hued portrait of Seamus Heaney as he pursued a late-20th-century vocation as a public advocate of poetry and as a somewhat private advocate of Catholicism as a folk culture.
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
The 2025 Foley poetry contest: Lyric questions about grief
These are poems that grip your heart, stretch your mind and startle your soul awake.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Recognizing our lives as pilgrimages
in ‘Finding God Along the Way,’ Christine Marie Eberle masterfully weaves together Scripture, poetry and Ignatian spirituality.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
Pope Leo XIV’s name choice and facing the world of artificial intelligence
A.I. assistants are advertised as helping us speak more clearly and easily. But are they accomplishing the opposite?
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Charles Taylor on how poetry expresses our deepest yearnings
In ‘Cosmic Connections,’ Charles Taylor focuses on how art, and poetry in particular, both expresses and responds to the unique human experience of “being modern.”
Posted inFaith, The Good Word
On Ash Wednesday, face your fears
A Homily for Ash Wednesday, by Father Terrance Klein
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
The Emily Dickinson poem about love that you should read
By force of her imagination and skill, Emily Dickinson could take the measure of solitude, opprobrium and even damnation.
Posted inArts & Culture, Music
Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and the Communion of Saints
Bob Dylan, more than anyone, fused the pop cultural and the religious experience into one.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Michael Longley’s poetry perfectly blends Irish political and pastoral themes
Michael Longley, the Irish poet whose long career included more than 40 books, died last week. He was lauded by literary, social and political figures alike for his many contributions to Irish literature and to the cause of social reconciliation.