Issue 81 | Summer 2014
New poems by Christian Wiman, Lisa Russ Spaar, and Win Bassett; Gregory Wolfe considers the artistic act of re-creation and renewal; Joe Milazzo takes a look at the paintings of Kim Alexander; and Brad Davis interviews Sydney Lea. With fiction by Nathan Poole and Janet Peery; the mysterious paintings of Noah Buchanan; and more.
Editorial Statement
Gregory Wolfe, Making It New
Fiction
Nathan Poole, A Map of the Watershed
Janet Peery, Ideal Marriage
Poetry
Christian Wiman, Love’s Last
The Preacher Addresses the Seminarians
Self-Portrait with Preacher, Pain, and Snow
Coming into the Kingdom
Read our web-exclusive interview with Christian Wiman here.
Daniel Tobin, La Cicada Familia
Lise Goett, Postscript
At the Amphitheatrum Flavium
Tara Bray, Confession: Quaker Meeting
hydrangea
Nicholas Samaras, Translation Back into Native Tongues
Spiritual Fallout
Island as the End of the World
Lisa Russ Spaar, Temple Tomb
Temple Gaudete
Furta Sacra
Anne Shaw, Prayer
Sometimes I Am Permitted
Win Bassett, Deus Ex Machina
I Am Poured Out Like Water
Tania Runyan, The First Horse of the Apocalypse
The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse
A Quick Interpretation of the Sixth Seal
Bruce Bond, Homage to a Philosopher of History...
Interview
Brad Davis, A Conversation with Sydney Lea
The Visual Arts
Joe Milazzo, Plates from a Forgotten Book: The Paintings of Kim Alexander
Gordon Fuglie, Noah Buchanan and the Renewal of Mystery
Essay
Lynda Sexson, Implicit Tree
Review:
Theodore L. Prescott, Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World
Timothy Van Laar and Leonard Diepeveen’s Artworld Prestige
Isaac Anderson, Richard Rodriguez’s Darling
Hilton Als’s White Girls
Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped
Isaac Anderson’s work has appeared in Image, Portland, Fourth River, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. He received an MFA from Ohio State and has been writer-in-residence at Lenoir-Rhyne University. His essay “Lord God Bird” [Image Issue 72] received mention in Best American Essays, 2013. He lives in Kansas City.
Win Bassett’s essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Paris Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Guernica. His stories and poems have been published or are forthcoming in Pank, Ruminate, and Trop. A former assistant district attorney, he serves on the PEN Prison Writing Program fiction committee. He is fiction and poetry editor of the Marginalia Review of Books, managing editor of Yale’s Letters, and community manager for Bull City Press. He studies at Yale Divinity School.
Bruce Bond’s most recent collections of poetry include The Visible (forthcoming from Louisiana State) and Choir of the Wells (forthcoming from Etruscan). His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Georgia Review, The New Republic, and Gettysburg Review. Presently he is a Regents Professor of English at the University of North Texas and poetry editor for American Literary Review.
Tara Bray’s recent poems have been published in Poetry, Southern Review, and Massachusetts Review. She is the author of Mistaken for Song (Persea) and currently resides in Virginia.
Brad Davis’s new book of poems, Still Working It Out, was recently published by Cascade Books. He lives and works on the campus of Pomfret School, a Connecticut boarding school. Sydney Lea, whom he interviewed in this issue of Image, was his advisor at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Gordon Fuglie, a UCLA-educated art historian, began his career at the J. Paul Getty Museum, continuing at UCLA’s Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, then directing the Laband Gallery at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. He currently works as an art journalist and independent curator.
Lise Goett’s second poetry collection, Leprosarium, received the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Other awards include the Paris Review Discovery Award, the Pen Southwest Book Award, and the Barnard New Women Poets Prize, as well as Image’s Milton Fellowship and a fellowship from the Creative Writing Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Joe Milazzo is the author of the novel Crepuscule W/ Nellie (Jaded Ibis) and The Habiliments (Apostrophe), a book of poems. He lives and works in Dallas, Texas, and his virtual location is www.slowstudies.net/jmilazzo.
Janet Peery is the author of Alligator Dance, The River beyond the World, and What the Thunder Said (all from Picador). She is a recipient of the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Whiting Writers Award. She lives in Virginia.
Nathan Poole is a fiction writer from Columbia, South Carolina. He holds degrees from the University of South Carolina and the Warren Wilson MFA program. His debut story collection, Father Brother Keeper, was awarded the 2013 Mary McCarthy Prize by judge Edith Pearlman and is forthcoming from Sarabande Books. He has been awarded the Narrative Prize and Image’s Milton Fellowship.
Theodore L. Prescott is a sculptor, writer, and emeritus professor of art at Messiah College. He is currently working on a public sculpture for Biola University in Los Angeles, which will be installed in the spring of 2015.
Tania Runyan has authored the poetry collections Second Sky (Poiema), A Thousand Vessels (WordFarm), Simple Weight (FutureCycle), and Delicious Air (Finishing Line; a Conference on Christianity and Literature book of the year), as well as the field guide How to Read a Poem (T.S. Poetry). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Christian Century, and elsewhere. Recipient of an NEA fellowship in literature, she also writes for Image’s blog, Good Letters.
Nicholas Samaras’s newest book is American Psalm, World Psalm (Ashland). The poems published here are part of a new manuscript of poems in the voices of John of Patmos and his scribe, Prochoros. He is currently completing a memoir of his childhood in nine different countries.
Lynda Sexson is the author of Ordinarily Sacred (Virginia), Margaret of the Imperfections (Persea), and Hamlet’s Planets (Ohio State), as well as the film My Book and Heart Shall Never Part. The Lynda Sexson Scholarship in Humanities has been established in her honor at Montana State University. Her work has appeared recently in New Orleans Review, Kenyon Review, Gargoyle, and others.
Anne Shaw is the author of two poetry collections: Dido in Winter and Undertow, winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize (both from Persea). Her poems and reviews have appeared in journals including Harvard Review, Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Kenyon Review, and New American Writing. She currently lives in Chicago, where she studies sculpture at the School of the Art Institute. Her work can be found online at www.anneshaw.org.
Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of the poetry collections Glass Town (Red Hen), Blue Venus, Satin Cash, and Vanitas, Rough (all from Persea), as well as a collection of essays, The Hide-and-Seek Muse (Drunken Boat). Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, and Kenyon Review, and her writing about poetry appears in the Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She teaches at the University of Virginia.
Daniel Tobin is the author of six books of poems, including Belated Heavens (Four Way), winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. His most recent book, The Net, is newly out from Four Way Books. Among his awards are fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation.
Christian Wiman’s new book of poems, Once in the West, will be published in September by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. He teaches at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.
Acknowledgments
Noah Buchanan’s paintings of Saints Maria Goretti and Faustina are reproduced with permission of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, La Crosse, Wisconsin. One-time use only. Visit www.guadalupeshrine.org to learn more.
Read our interview with Christian Wiman, only available online!