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Compulsory Feminism

For a long time, what Alexis de Tocqueville called the American “spirit of freedom” was balanced by settled norms that guided young men and women toward domestic life. These norms added up to a sexual constitution that rested on the foundational assumption that men and women had different and . . . . Continue Reading »

Rome’s Concordat

A few months ago, I predicted that the Francis pontificate would seek to establish cordial relations with the Rainbow Reich. (See “While We’re At It,” January 2024, composed late November 2023.) In mid-December the Vatican issued the declaration Fiducia Supplicans, vindicating my . . . . Continue Reading »

The Space Between

How to describe what can’t beseen, invisible, yet universal,what is, has been, will always be,the Endless One, the cosmic forcewithout which nothing would exist,formlessness creating form,the mountain etched on open sky,the music score of notes and rests,silence giving shape to sound, asdarkness . . . . Continue Reading »

Word by Word

Before I formed you in the womb, my son,I knew you. Knew you long before that highspring day in the sixth year of the reignof FDR, when the full-leaved sycamores that frame the tired river that runs Eastsmiled on your mother—just sixteen—andyour father, twenty-one, when they cametogether . . . . Continue Reading »

Games of Chance

You’re bound to lose: the house will always win,in time. At first, though, Fortune flatters thosewho yield to her enticements. You beginwith bits of luck, small stakes. If you propose a higher sum, she’ll play her violin,flash gold-flecked eyes, throw you a long-stemmed rose.When bets get high, . . . . Continue Reading »

Peregrine Falcon

now thou but stoop’st to me—Ben Jonson The falcon like a teardrop heaven criesfrom higher than the city’s tallest towerdesigned to fall precisely through clear skiesnow hurtles at two hundred miles per hourAt such a speed what keeps her flashing eyesfrom drying out her lungs from ripping . . . . Continue Reading »

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