“I was recently giving a sermon and found myself spontaneously quoting from Amy Leach’s singular and surprising new book. I expect many readers will find their own lives troubled (in the Biblical sense) and enlightened by her fresh perceptions. She has lived into a hard-earned and entirely credible wisdom, the best evidence for which is her irrepressible sense of humor. One feels companioned by this book, and sorry when it ends.” — Christian Wiman, author of Zero at the Bone Amy Leach grew up in Texas, lives in Montana, and earned her MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University …
Tag: Ralph Waldo Emerson
David Shumate on When Words Become Thunder
“David Shumate’s High Water Mark is absolutely fresh and unpredictable. . . . You will be surprised by your confrontation with the utterly first rate.” — Jim Harrison David Shumate is the author of The Floating Bridge and High Water Mark, winner of the 2003 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. His poetry has appeared widely in literary journals and has been anthologized in Good Poems for Hard Times, The Best American Poetry and The Writer’s Almanac. Shumate is poet-in-residence at Marian University and lives in Zionsville, Indiana. David and I talk about poems that surprise you, the elemental essence that gardening, cooking, contemplation, poetry share, what it means …
Season Two Trailer
On the cusp of season 2, I was ruminating on how I might introduce the tonality of this series of conversations. The September musing jumped to mind. In this musing, I reflected one some words to live by according to Ralph Waldo Emerson And there was one Emerson line that stuck to my ribs. No matter how hard I scraped, it would not leave me alone. “Nothing great is ever accomplished without enthusiasm.” Not cheerleader or car salesman enthusiasm. But enthusiasm as the fire within, the fire blazing the passions of being and becoming. In the resonance of this enthusiasm …