Dana Gioia

Most Christians misunderstand the relationship of poetry to their faith. They consider it an admirable but minor aspect of religious practice—elegant verbal decoration in honor of the divine. They recognize poetry’s place in worship. Congregations need hymns, and the Psalms should be . . . . Continue Reading »

Let us sing to our city a new song,A song that remembers its name and its founders—Los Pobladores, the forgotten forty-four,Who built their pueblo beside a small river. They named the river for the Queen of the Angels,Nuestra Senora Reina de los Angeles.Poor, they were forced to the margins of . . . . Continue Reading »

The English poet Elizabeth Jennings had the peculiar fate of being in the right place at the right time in the wrong way. Her career began splendidly. Her verse appeared in prominent journals, championed by Oxford’s new generation of tastemakers. Her first publication, Poems (1953), . . . . Continue Reading »

When I was a child in parochial school, we began each morning with ­daily Mass. My mother worked nights, and no one in my family was an early riser. I inevitably arrived late to church. The nuns stared disapprovingly as I slipped in among my more punctual classmates in our assigned pews. This . . . . Continue Reading »

Hanging old ornaments on a fresh cut tree,I take each red glass bulb and tinfoil seraphAnd blow away the dust. Anyone elseWould throw them out. They are so scratched and shabby.My mother had so little joy to shareShe kept it in a box to hide away.But on the darkest winter nights—voilà—She . . . . Continue Reading »

I For years I’ve pondered a cultural and social paradox that diminishes the vitality and diversity of the American arts. This cultural conundrum also reveals the intellectual retreat and creative inertia of American religious life. Stated simply, the paradox is that, although Roman Catholicism . . . . Continue Reading »

“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” I was already an old man when I was born. Small with a curved back, he dragged his leg when walking the streets of Copenhagen. “Little Kierkegaard,” they called him. Some meant it kindly. The more one suffers the more one acquires a . . . . Continue Reading »

Forget about the other six, says Pride. They’re only using you. Admittedly, Lust is a looker, but you can do better. And why do they keep bringing us to this cheesy dive? The food’s so bad that even Gluttony can’t finish his meal. Notice how Avarice keeps refilling his glass whenever . . . . Continue Reading »

Now you’d be three, I said to myself, seeing a child born the same summer as you. Now you’d be six, or seven, or ten. I watched you grow in foreign bodies. Leaping into a pool, all laughter, or frowning over a keyboard, but mostly just standing, taller each time. How splendid your most . . . . Continue Reading »