RUMINATE Blog

“This place is a longing”

A Review of Daniel Bowman, Jr.’s A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country

“Mohawk comes / like blackbirds at dawn” begins “Poem for the Undead,” first in Daniel Bowman, Jr.’s A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country.

Fiction, Tunes, Teaching, & Parenting:

Notes from Somewhere Inside a Poetry Sabbatical

Ten days (I kid you not) after my first child was born, I received a phone call from a press to whom, several months prior, I’d submitted my second poetry manuscript.

We’d like to publish your book!

s / s / s (Sufjan Stevens, Serengeti & Son Lux)

We had it good, didn’t we?
We had it good, didn’t we?
Didn’t we?

The questions we ask ourselves so much. The questions that become threads running thru seasons.

A Visual Apologetic

Can God reveal himself through visual art?

This question often elicits conflicting emotions. Many Christians who are artists would intuitively answer the question with an unequivocal, “yes,” but defending this answer to those who are ambivalent or even hostile to visual explorations of God can be unnerving.

A Spiritual Wind & Parenting

“I haven’t read a single parenting book!” I laughed with my friends soon after having my first son. I guess I had a self-righteous moment where I thought the implications of reading a parenting book were legalism and too-high-expectations. But then that thought turned to logic, and I began a mental freak out.