The Holy Ghost People A Play in Verse by Joshua Young Plays Inverse Press, 2013 $12.95 The power of drama is that it plays back to us the human condition in a way that, while not always wholly realistic, seems just real enough for us to understand and absorb. Add to that the connotative meaning-making …
On Saturday night at the New Hazlett Theater, Texture Contemporary Ballet presented a two hour long show of five works in various styles, proving once again that the company is capable of much more than ballet technique. Associate Director of the company, Kelsey Bartman, opened the show with her group piece, Fun. The popular rock …
Perhaps the greatest challenge for anyone religious is to consider The Answer, but hold off on The Rule. Not long ago, I wrote an essay about growing up Catholic. It was generally sentimental. Among other things, I wrote about the comfort I took from the Church during an emotionally turbulent childhood. Comfort. Stability. When I …
Bright and Yellow, Hard and Cold by Tim Chapman Allium Press, 2014 $14.99 Tim Chapman’s Bright and Yellow, Hard and Cold is a fresh take on the typical crime thriller. Chapman distances his work from the simple, run-of-the-mill, “who done it,” adding complexity by incorporating historical fiction and knowledge of forensic science. Set in both …
A friend invited me to a Civil War reenactment. He was well meaning enough, although why he’d think I, a Vietnam veteran, would enjoy such a thing, who knows? Then he said, “It’s realistic.” To which I replied, “You want realistic? Here’s realistic. Fill their rifles with real bullets. But the blood and the gore, …
The Earth Avails Poems by Mark Wunderlich Graywolf Press, 2014 $15.00 God appears to be making a comeback. Six months ago Flannery O’Connor’s spiritual journal was unveiled in The New Yorker. The break came on the heels of former child evangelist Terry Lucas’ If They Have Ears to Hear (Southeast Missouri State University Press), and …
June, this year has been rainy and unsettling for me here in the condo. June 2nd, I signed the closing mortgage refinance papers into my name here on my dining room table, and I have dwelled for ten days surrounded by The Three Rivers Arts Festival. Living in the midst of the Arts Festival sometimes …
Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan Ballantine Books, 2013 $26.00 (Hardcover) In the trend of novels about famous authors’ wives, Nancy Horan transitions from Frank Lloyd Wright and his three wives in Loving Frank to Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne in Under the Wide and Starry Sky. The …