Summer 2003
The Summer 2003 Issue highlights the significance of poetry within Mormon culture, with Robert Hughes opening the discussion on the importance of poetic expression in the community. Danielle Beazer Dubrasky contributes to this theme by reflecting on the legacy of Karl Sandberg, commemorating his contributions to Mormon poetry through pieces titled "In Memorium," "Shadow," and "Take My Hand." John M. Rector and Kirsten N. Rector pose a critical question regarding the challenges faced by LDS scholars and artists, exploring the dynamics between faith, creativity, and scholarship within the Latter-day Saint community. In the realm of scriptural studies, Cory D. Anderson examines Jude's use of the pseudepigraphal Book of 1 Enoch. And more!
When the above notice appeared in the Improvement Era in September 1933, it did not seem out of place in a publication intended for the general church membership. In the same issue of the Improvement Era, Theodore E. Curtis posted a notice for another collection of poetry. Its announcement included endorsements from notable leaders of the church:
The summer 2002 edition of Irreanteum: Exploring Mormon Literature is de voted to the theme of environmental writing in LDS theology and culture. It features poems solicited by guest editor Todd Petersen by several contemporary…
“We will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own.” —Orson F. Whitney Since the organization of the Church, Mormon spiritual leaders have emphasized the importance of attaining knowledge, both spiritual and secular.[1] Not only have…
It has been rightly stated that the Epistle of Jude is the most neglected book in the New Testament.[1] Such an assertion was made in 1975 by Douglas Rowston, who noticed that, “[w]ith the exception…
A new litmus test of righteousness has swept the church: the shunning of all R rated and the de facto acceptance of all PG and PG-13 movies. I don’t like litmus tests. They are too…
Brady Udall has given the same sort of message to readers of his fiction. In an interview with the journal Irreantum, Udall said, “I don’t want to teach readers a lesson of any kind. I simply want them to have a hair raising, heart-thumping, mind-numbing, soul-tearing experience.”
For my father-in-law, who knew the conflict Alvin Hawking awoke two hours after dusk. He slipped out of his cot and dressed in the dim yellow light that washed through the screen door at the…
At thirty-eight I’m still single. Actually, let me be perfectly frank: Possibly Steve Young and I are the only people in the Western Hemisphere who have remained celibate until such an advanced age, and he…
About a year and a half after Mitch fell, he decided on a comeback climb. Understandably, his wife was less than enthusiastic about it. Everyone agreed the fall should have killed Mitch or, worse, made…
Luis strained his ears, watching bare jacaranda branches twitch in silhouette against the bedroom wall. The bedroom window was sliding up. It was not a dream. A human shadow was nearly indivisible from the web…
He watches Elain’s buttocks, the tan shorts browned at the seat, as she walks briskly ahead of him on the narrow trail. Her dirty orange day pack bounces on her back, the leaky canteen a…
Sunrise, Friday, November, 22,1963, not yet but about to be one ugly day in U.S. history, and standing over there about to climb into the family Nova was my dad, Jack, the man suffering—in words…
When he was seventeen, David Thatcher Williams and his cousin Cleon, who was also seventeen, hopped a freight in the Provo yards to start a trip to Washington, D.C., to visit David’s Aunt Doris, his…
Bobbie wants to marry me again. Fourteen months now I’ve been pointing out the kids, our wedding pictures, our marriage certificate. Gosh, I even show him the mail—”Mr. and Mrs. Robert Franklin,” right there on…
It’s been ten weeks since Liz (my mother) came to collect me from the islands and pack me back to Michigan. She wanted me to tally my losses and get on with things. Liz has…
Coming Out, Dean Thompson
Spreading Zion Southward?, Michael R. Warner
Errors of Men, Marc A. Schindler
Other Standards, Gary James Bergera
Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library has recently launched the Mormon Literature Database (http://MormonLit.lib.byu.edu), a comprehensive bibliography of all literary writings by or about Mor mons, destined to be an invaluable resource to scholars…
To write is to siphon the clouds, the stars, the wind and rain through the pen. It’s like holding a root into the earth of the soul. It’s like a channel from the sun to…
I have persecuted Mormons for years for ten years. I began riding with the mob in the early 90’s while working for the Utah County Journal. Asked one day to write a quick editorial for…
October snow brings the hunters
down from the mountains
without their kill. Sometimes
it happens this way. Sumac and oak
A washed cup,
folded socks,
three unworn shirts
with no scent of him.
Smooth bedsheets,
dry towels.
He is born breach, meaning gap.
From the beginning
he was negative space
a blue cast shadow,
A rare treat in Manila—real grass,
short and green, probing tentatively
out of rich soil. The sky
waits to rain—black clouds
My son who is blue-eyed and sensitive
thinks he’s alone in his room
where his music bumps and heaves.
I stand unseen at the door which is open
After he was let go, Dad’s job
was changing the rolls on those
little spindles in the bathrooms.
For and in behalf of those dead
before God’s love could smother
them. I enter the font and take a baptism.
Buried in the temple’s basement, twelve
garlanded oxen balance the precarious
“A crackerbox,” my mother called it,
Her marriage’s first scene.
My first home, my brother’s, tucked
Far back for remembering,
The place where she dyed feedsacks
To curtain the windowscreens.
With a neighbor who couldn’t tolerate light,
I took stairs in the dark,
felt for knobs and shapes
of cabinets in windowless rooms. At home,
Quarry workmen slice open the past,
pry limestone chunks with picks,
shave each delicate layer
with a chisel and a sledge.
They are overmatched from the beginning.
Even the black block numbers on their backs
seem to loom on the jerseys that hang slack
and flap about their narrow bodies, smooth
No more constant lover in the spring was there.
I see thee when the blossoms break
the bounds of loveliness,
when streamlets sing.
The shadows on the hills of afternoon
Overflow the canyons and the cliffs.
The sun is low, now gone.
The labor now is done
And gone the care.
One afternoon while eating my sandwich in the faculty lounge of the English Department at the University of Houston, I couldn’t help but notice a 1989 dissertation that was nearly a foot thick: Court of…
All good history is as much about the present as it is about the past. Sillito and Staker’s volume, which includes biographical sketches of dissenters ranging widely across the 180-year history of the LDS church,…
When Charles the Hammer conquered Friesland in 692 C.E., he generously offered baptism into the Christian religion to the defeated Frisian chief Radbod. Just as he was stepping into the font, Radbod hesitated, wondering aloud…
Philip Roth once noted that American writers were divided into two camps: “palefaces,” followers of the refined genteel tradition of Henry James and William Dean Howells with their elevated sensibilities and decorous language, and “redskins”…
