May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
I watched Rebel Without a Cause on TV late one college night when I learned …
And if the tribal dialect has yet to be
sufficiently restored,
and if the pique and pallor of the public
discourse yet continues
to obscure and to efface without the merest
whisper of chagrin, one
might nonetheless resolve to hold the line within,
whenever possible
among one’s also wincing cohort, honoring
the latent beauty of
the true, or, short of truth, what might for the moment
pass for it.
About the Author
Scott Cairns
Scott Cairns teaches modern and contemporary American literature and creative writing at the University of Missouri. He is an accomplished poet whose writing has appeared in the Atlantic, the Paris Review, the New Republic, Books & Culture, and Image.
Susan Lilley
May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
Mary Van Denend
May 3, 2011 / Creative Writing
May 3, 2011 / Creative Writing
Mary Van Denend reflects on Simone Weil’s “Waiting for God,” a seminal piece on Weil’s understandings of grace, affliction, and our “sacred longing” for God.