The Conference on Christianity & Literature

Autumn 1994, Vol. 44, No. 1

Articles
The Bible in Jane Eyre
CATHERINE BROWN TKACZ     3

Sexuality and Mysticism in the Poetry of William Everson
ROSS LABRIE     29

Face to Face: Samuel Beckett and Vaclav Havel
PHYLLIS CAREY     43

Dialogue
Comedy and Christianity: Surveying the Ground
PEGGY THOMPSON     59

Through a Glas Darkly: Derrida, Literature, and the Specter of Christianity
TERRY R. WRIGHT

Book Reviews
Richard Kay, Dante's Christian Astrology
CHAUNCEY WOOD     93

Roy Battenhouse, ed., Shakespeare's Christian Dimension: An Anthology of Commentary
JOHN D. COX     95

John T. Shawcross, John Milton: The Self and the World
ANTHONY LOW     98

Isaiah Berlin, The Magus of the North: J.G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism
ELIZABETH POWERS     99

Patricia Demers, Heaven Upon Earth: The Form of Moral and Religious Children's Literature to 1850
Samuel F. Pickering, Jr., Moral Instruction and Fiction for Children
GARY D. SCHMIDT     102

Rolland Hein, George MacDonald: Victorian Mythmaker
LARRY E. FINK     105

Michael E. Allsopp and David Anthony Downes, eds., Saving Beauty: Further Studies in Hopkins
STEVEN C. WALKER     108

Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr., Tragic Posture and Tragic Vision: Against the Modern Failure of Nerve
ANTHONY RIZZUTO     109

Paula J. Carlson and Peter S. Hawkins, eds., Listening for God: Contemporary Literature and the Life of Faith
FAYE P. WHITAKER     111

Theodore P. Fraser, The Modern Catholic Novel in Europe
GERALD J. RUSSELLO     113

Luci Shaw, Writing the River: Poems
JANET MCCANN     115

Charles H. Lippy, Being Religious American Style: A History of Popular Religiosity in the United States
CHARLES TIMOTHY SUMMERLIN     117

Poetry
Beyond Belief
IDA FASEL     28

Probable Loss
JOAN F. PETERSON     58

The Things He Carried
TIM BASCOM     120

News
ELVA MCALLASTER     124

Questions to Tammy Ditmore (tammy.ditmore@pepperdine.edu)

 

In the Latest Issue of Christianity & Literature:


My Fellow Creatures
Do a Better Job
Than I

Mary Kennan Herbert

Everything shuts down
in the hummingbird
when it must endure
extreme cold in
paradise, where there
is always a price
to pay.

To survive the icy
nights it shuts down
everything but brain,
heart, and liver, yields
itself to the cold,
and keeps a nugget

of life safe until dawn,
when all systems
are go. I'm not
that good
in the scheme of
things. My ticker
insists on keeping
the pace,

and extremities keep 
on pulsing,
everybody wants
to get into the act.
Hands and feet
could freeze because
of poor decisions
at command

central. The wolf licks
its chops, thinking
of a warm,
gutsy dinner.
Lucky hummingbird.
Tiny perfect jewel,
who can fail to be
impressed

with your efficiency,
your aesthetic
lessons for us,
your captured
sunlight, your mission
to deliver nectar
like a bee,
pleasing the Deity.

Wolf, you can quickly
take me now,
an old body
from the freezer.
Little things,
however, may
escape your notice.
Small, warm,
dazzling.

Winter 2009