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Issue 64 | Winter 2009
Poetry by Lise Goett, Paul Mariani, Jeff Gundy, Brett Foster, Luci Shaw, and Sydney Lea; a conversation with Les Murray; and fiction by Scott Russell Sanders. Plus, Suzanne M. Wolfe writes about living through anorexia; Jeremy Begbie reviews the work of two contemporary art critics; an in-depth look at the work of Gerhard Richter; and more.
Editorial Statement
Gregory Wolfe, The King's Great Matter...and Ours
Fiction
Scott Russell Sanders, Waterfall
Poetry
Margaret Gibson, What is Offered
Lessons
Taking the Byzantine Path to Monastiri Aghiou Ioannou
Holly Welker, Last Night's Fire
Orbit
Sentence
Lise Goett, Symphony in Yellow: A Young Girl Reading
Molest the Dead
Luci Shaw, Psalm for the January Thaw
Paul Mariani, Elegy for William Carlos Williams on the Eve of His 125th Birthday
Fish Ladder, Damariscotta
Brett Foster, Petition: California Avenue
Devotion: For Our Bodies
Sydney Lea, Willie's Not Right
Visual Arts
Wayne Adams, A Reflecton in the Window: Gerhard Richter Longs for More
James Romaine, Gerhard Richter: The Capacity for Belief
Interview
J. Mark Smith, A Conversation with Les Murray
Confessions
Suzanne M. Wolfe, This Is My Body
Daniel Taylor, I Tell My Mother Lies
Book Review
Jeremy Begbie, James Elkins's On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art
Daniel Siedell's God in the Gallery
Christopher Benson, Roger Lundin's Believing Again
Wayne Adams received his BFA in art from Calvin College and MFA from Washington University. A Brooklyn-based artist, he has exhibited throughout the Midwest and in New York and Vienna. Recent shows include “The Strange Place” at the Alogon Gallery in Chicago; “Really?” at the New York Center for Art and Media Studies; and a show at Pole Position in Brooklyn.
Jeremy Begbie is the Thomas A. Langford Research Professor of Theology at Duke University and teaches in the faculties of divinity and music at the University of Cambridge. He is a professionally trained musician and has taught widely in the United Kingdom, United States, and South Africa.
Christopher Benson holds an MA in journalism from the University of Missouri and an MA in liberal arts from St. John’s College, and is a book reviewer in Denver, Colorado. His writing has appeared in the Weekly Standard, Christian Scholar’s Review, Books & Culture, Modern Reformation, and Christian Century.
Brett Foster’s poems have appeared in Hudson Review, Literary Imagination, Southwest Review, and in the anthology American Religious Poems (Library of America). New work is forthcoming in Books & Culture, Kenyon Review, and Raritan. He teaches Renaissance literature and creative writing at Wheaton College.
Margaret Gibson is the author of ten books of poems, more recently One Body, winner of the Connecticut Book Award for 2008, and the forthcoming Second Nature (both from Louisiana State). Other recent work includes a memoir, The Prodigal Daughter (Missouri). Professor emerita of the University of Connecticut, she lives in Preston, Connecticut.
Lise Goett’s first poetry collection, Waiting for the Paraclete (Beacon), won the Barnard New Women’s Poetry Prize in 2001. Her other awards include postgraduate fellowships from the Milton Center at Image and the University of Wisconsin, the Paris Review Discovery Award, and the PEN Southwest Book Award for Poetry. Her poems have appeared in such journals as the Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Antioch Review.
Jeff Gundy’s fifth book of poems, Spoken among the Trees (Akron), won the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Award; his critical book Walker in the Fog: On Mennonite Writing(Cascadia) won the Dale W. Brown Book Award. He was a 2008 Fulbright lecturer at the University of Salzburg, Austria. Other recent work is in Georgia Review, Shenandoah, Kenyon Review, and Poetry Salzburg Journal.
Sydney Lea is author of eight collections of poems; a ninth, Young of the Year, is forthcoming from Four Way Books. He teaches at Dartmouth College and is moderator of the First Congregational Church of Newbury, Vermont.
Paul Mariani is one of America’s leading poets and literary biographers. His volumes on William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell, and Gerard Manley Hopkins have all been New York Times notable books. His books of poetry include The Great Wheel (Norton) and Deaths & Transfigurations (Paraclete). His nonfiction works include God and the Imagination (Georgia). In 2009 he won the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award for Poetry. He is University Professor of English at Boston College and has taught in the low-residency MFA program at Seattle Pacific University.
James Romaine is the co-founder of the New York Center for Arts and Media Studies, a program of Bethel University. He has a PhD in art history from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he wrote his dissertation on Tim Rollins and K.O.S. He is a frequent lecturer and the author of numerous articles on faith and the visual arts.
Scott Russell Sanders, a distinguished professor emeritus at Indiana University, is the author of twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently A Private History of Awe (North Point), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and A Conservationist Manifesto (Indiana). Among his honors are the Lannan Literary Award, the John Burroughs Essay Award, the Mark Twain Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA.
Luci Shaw is a poet, essayist, teacher, and lecturer. Her most recent books are What the Light Was Like (Wordfarm), Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation (Eerdmans), and Breath for the Bones: Essays on Art, Imagination, and Spirit (Thomas Nelson). She is writer-in-residence at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada.
J. Mark Smith teaches English at Grant MacEwan University (formerly College) in Edmonton, Alberta. He is the author of the poetry collection Notes for a Rescue Narrative. His essay on modern science, “The Molecule That Went behind the World,” appeared last winter in Queen’s Quarterly.
Daniel Taylor teaches at Bethel University in Minnesota and is the author of six books, including The Myth of Certainty, Letters to My Children (both from InterVarsity), Tell Me A Story, and In Search of Sacred Places: Looking for Wisdom on Celtic Holy Islands (both from Bog Walk). He is cofounder of the Legacy Center and a contributing editor for Books and Culture.
Suzanne M. Wolfe is the executive editor of Image and an instructor in English at Seattle Pacific University. She and her husband, Greg Wolfe, have coauthored several books on literature and prayer for children, including Bless This House: Prayers for Families and Children (Jossey-Bass) and Books That Build Character: A Guide to Teaching Your Child Moral Values Through Stories (Touchstone). Her first novel, Unveiling, was published by Paraclete Press in 2004. She is currently working on her second novel.
Holly Welker has an MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona and a PhD in contemporary American literature from the University of Iowa. Her poetry, fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Essays, Black Warrior Review, Cream City Review, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Iowa Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Laurel Review, Literature and Belief, Other Voices, PMS,Poetry International, Spoon River Poetry Review, Sunstone, and TriQuarterly.
Read our interview with Jeremy Begbie, only available online!