While T.S. Eliot is has a reputation as a Christian poet and certainly uses oodles of Biblical imagery, I don’t think Christians should read him as a Christian poet. First an exposition of Eliot’s style: His post-conversion poems are given a sacred quality by his use of a metaphysical flavor – he uses sensory images to convey a…
Reefs of mushrooms in the moss Yellow cabbage butterflies Matchstick trees, flamed and fallen Black against the pale sky Glassy waters. Glassy eyes. With so much beauty and so much death, my boots smash ants, damp brown with blood, the wonder lingers on the breeze like breaths through slightly parted lips, dark the storm clouds,…
“No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.” – F. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby [To M.L., his boots stretched on the fireplace] From the shadows we watch his face in the blue half-light of the fire. Hear the draft beneath the door and the fire’s dying…
A couple months ago, I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Unfortunately, I had very little money, no car, access only to unreliable tourist buses, and, on top of all that, no smartphone to navigate. My plans ran amuck, and my brother and I careened around the entire city before we finally got to the art…