$12.00 $6.00Add to cart
Issue 62 | Summer 2009
A conversation with Eugene Peterson; artist Bruce Herman and patron Walter Hansen converse about their three-year project producing a cycle of images of the life of the Virgin Mary; and Gregory Wolfe wonders about the directionality of history: is everything going to hell, or is the human race making progress? With poems by Eric Pankey, Nicholas Samaras, Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, and Mark Rudman; a look at Asian cinema by critic Jeffrey Overstreet; and more.
Editorial Statement
Gregory Wolfe, Always Now
Fiction
Jacob M. Appel, The Vermin Episode
Peter Levine, St. John
Poetry
Mark Rudman, Prayer for the Spirits of Montreal
Shane Seely, We Shall Not All Sleep
Second Attempt at Elegy for Anthony Piccione
Sarah Klassen, The Potter
Waiting
Nicholas Samaras, Sacred Air
A Psalm to the Mansions of Heaven
A Psalm to Say these Words until I Can Hear Them
The Unpronounceable Psalm
Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, The Cloak of the Saint
Grace Descending
David Wright, Unrestored Prophet's Head
Web Exclusive: Interview with Nicholas Samaras
Visual Arts
Walter Hansen & Bruce Herman, Sacra Conversazione
Calvin Seerveld, Redemptive Grit: The Ordinary Artistry of Gerald Folkerts
Interview
Luci Shaw, A Conversation with Eugene Peterson
Essays
Anita Sullivan, Scordatura: Upon Listening to Biber's Rosary Sonatas
Jeffrey Overstreet, Departures: Journeys with Asian Filmmakers
Confessions
Ann Conway, The Rosary
Book Review
David Griffith, Brad Gooch's Flannery
Blake Bailey's Cheever
Jacob M. Appel has published short stories in more than eighty literary journals, includingAlaska Quarterly Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Missouri Review, Southwest Review, and Subtropics. He teaches bioethics at New York University, where his research focuses on the rights of religious and cultural minorities to turn down medical care. He also teaches fiction at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. His website is www.JacobMAppel.com.
Ann Conway received her MFA in creative nonfiction from Seattle Pacific University in 2007. A sociologist, she grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and now lives in central Maine. She writes for Image’s blog, Good Letters, and is finishing a memoir on faith, resilience, and a Catholic girlhood.
David Griffith is the author of A Good War Is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America(Soft Skull). He teaches creative writing at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. He is at work on a book titled “Pyramid Scheme: Making Art and Being Broke in America.”
Walter Hansen taught courses in New Testament studies for twenty-five years at Fuller Theological Seminary and Trinity Theological College in Singapore, and is the author of books and articles on biblical theology and Christian spirituality. Along with his wife, artist Darlene Hansen, he has endowed chairs in the art departments of Gordon College and Westmont College. He has presented papers on art and theology at Gordon, Westmont, and the Museum of Biblical Arts.
Bruce Herman is a painter and professor of art at Gordon College near Boston, where he is currently Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in the Fine Arts. His work is housed in many private and public collections, including the Vatican Museums in Rome and Grunwald Center/Armand Hammer Collection at LA County Museum. His website is www.BruceHerman.com.
Sarah Klassen has published six poetry collections, including Simone Weil: Songs of Hunger and Love (Wolsak and Wynn) and A Curious Beatitude (The Muses’ Company). The latter received the Canadian Authors’ Association Poetry Award. Her second collection of short fiction, A Feast of Longing (Coteau), received the High Plains Fiction Award. She lives and writes in Winnipeg and has taught at River East Collegiate, Lithuania Christian College, and the Canadian Mennonite University’s school of writing.
Peter Levine’s fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming in StoryQuarterly, Meridian,Cimarron Review, and Missouri Review; his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times. A graduate of the MFA program at Johns Hopkins, he currently lives in Washington, DC.
Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore is currently the poetry editor for Seasons Journal and Islamica Magazine. Since 2005, the Ecstatic Exchange Series has been bringing out the extensive body of his poetry, most recently including Through Rose Colored Glasses, Like When You Wave at a Train and the Train Hoots Back at You, and The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak. His website is www.DanielMoorePoetry.com.
Jeffrey Overstreet is the author of a “memoir of dangerous moviegoing” called Through a Screen Darkly (Regal) and two fantasy novels, Auralia’s Colors and Cyndere’s Midnight (both from WaterBrook). He is a contributing editor for Seattle Pacific University’s Responsemagazine, and he writes about art, faith, and culture for ImageJournal.org, ChristianityToday.com, Filmwell.org, and his own website, LookingCloser.org.
Eric Pankey is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Pear as One Example: New and Selected Poems 1984-2008 (Ausable). He teaches at George Mason University.
Mark Rudman is the author of seven volumes of poetry and four of prose, most recently a revised version of his book on Robert Lowell, Robert Lowell and the Poetic Act (Parlor). His honors include a National Book Critics Circle Award for Rider (Wesleyan), as well as Guggenheim and NEA fellowships. Recent work has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, and American Poetry Review.
Nicholas Samaras won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for his first book, Hands of the Saddlemaker (Yale). His poems have appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, Paris Review, Poetry, New Republic, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He lives in West Nyack, New York.
Shane Seely is a senior lecturer in the English department at Washington University in Saint Louis. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Passages North, Salamander,Bellingham Review, and other journals. His first book, The Snowbound House, won the Philip Levine Prize in Poetry and will be published in the fall of 2009 by Anhinga Press.
Calvin Seerveld is emeritus senior member in philosophical aesthetics at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. His books include: Rainbows for the Fallen World; Bearing Fresh Olive Leaves (both from Toronto Tuppence); a translation of the Song of Songs cast as an oratorio; and Voicing God’s Psalms (Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, with CD). He lives in Toronto with his wife, Inès Cécile Naudin Ten Cate.
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, and serves on Image’s board of directors.
Michael Sitaras was born in Chios, Greece, and now lives and works as an artist and a priest in western Massachusetts. He has earned a BFA in studio arts from Syracuse University, an MFA from Louisiana State University, has studied at the Saint Martin’s School of Art in London, and holds an M.Div. from Holy Cross Seminary. His work has been shown in New York City and throughout the United States. His Sacred Air project is currently on exhibition at the Museum of Science in Boston.
Anita Sullivan is a poet and essayist whose books include a collection of essays on the philosophy of piano tuning, The Seventh Dragon: The Riddle of Equal Temperament(Unlimited), as well as Ikaria: A Love Story on a Greek Island (Burning Daylight) and The Middle Window, a poetry chapbook (Traprock). She tunes pianos in Eugene, Oregon, and is a founding member of Airlie Press, a poetry publishing collective.
David Wright’s most recent collection of poems is A Liturgy for Stones (Cascadia). His work has also appeared in the anthology A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry (Iowa) and inPoetry East, Ecotone, Artful Dodge, and many others. Since 2001 he has taught creative writing and American literature at Wheaton College.
Read our interview with Nicholas Samaras, only available online!