In the last twenty years, Orthodox Catholics have come to expect their art to be necessarily about beauty. They expect it always and everywhere to lift one up, to be tinged with, to linger in the dimly-lit rooms of old-moneyed Europe, to be passed around among the best families, among like-minded gnostics, generous Jansenists. But these expectations have nothing to do with reality. In fact, most of the real contributions during the postmodern period have come from blue-collar poets--influenced by the Beats. A line can be drawn from Kerouac to Karr, with Merton, Everson, Levertov, Dylan,...
In the last twenty years, Orthodox Catholics have come to expect their art to be necessarily about beauty. They expect it always and everywhere to lif...
The work of a wonderful secular poet, Billy Collins, provides a great model for Christian writers. His Coleridge ""conversation poems"" allow for real play and comedy, all in the service of profundity. These are veins that have not been suitably mined by poets who have access to the larger humanity that only Jesus can provide. But there's more than comedy in this collection. The Sorrows of Mary offer a sober truth, as do the four Gospel sonnets; both sections provide a bracing interlude before we get back to high-spirited comedy in the St. Anthony poems--where the sainted speaker disdains...
The work of a wonderful secular poet, Billy Collins, provides a great model for Christian writers. His Coleridge ""conversation poems"" allow for real...
