One of the classes I’m teaching this quarter is a Creative Writing elective. Hardly a day goes by that one of the students declares he or she is unable to write anything because of “writer’s block.” My response is generally one of amusement, since they appear to have plenty of ideas to talk about. And…

Language was opening me up in ways I couldn’t explain and I assumed it was part of the apprenticeship of a poet. (Jimmy Santiago Baca, A Place to Stand) apprenticec.1300, from O.Fr. aprentiz “someone learning” (13c.), from aprendre (Mod.Fr. apprendre ) “to learn, teach,” contracted from L. apprehendere (see apprehend). Aphetic form prentice was long…

When it comes to faith, I started early. I was five years old when I walked down the aisle at Westbury Baptist Church in Houston, Texas and gave my heart to Jesus. I was the oldest son and namesake of a Southern Baptist preacher, the son of two parents who sang me to sleep with…

I’m writing this morning from a hotel in Napier, Illinois, which borders Wheaton, Illinois, home of Wheaton College, which, for the last four years, has been home for my nephew, Scott, who graduated yesterday. As much of the family as could get here gathered to celebrate him and his achievement, as well as making time…

As I remember we sang a lot about tin soldiers even as our friends and brothers drew lots to see who would wade through rice paddies and not come homeor come home dead inside I was thirteen the springof the Kent State shootingstin soldiers and Nixon cominggo ahead and hate your neighborthe image of the…

In my new vocational incarnation, I am reading more, both books I’ve had stacked around for awhile and those I’m reading again with students. My tenth grade class is reading one of my favorite novels, Alan Paton’s Cry, The Beloved Country, which tells the story of Stephen Kumalo’s search for his lost son. Kumalo is…

I preached this morning at our church here in Durham as the culmination of a study we did on the Book of Job. This is the text of my sermon, “The Last Word.” Only four Saturdays have passed since a group of us gathered to study the story of Job together, and yet way more…

We sat at the oyster bar at Felix’s in the middle of a N’awlins afternoon,eating fried food and listening to the Chi-Lites, the O’Jays, even Harold Melvin and the Blue Notessing Seventies soul as the smiling shucker offered up oysters and opinions, both free of cynicism. From there, we wandered through the shutters and smells…

Ginger and I leave in the morning to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary on the twenty-first, and we’re going to do it in New Orleans, thanks to our friend Jay. So I offer a little traveling music, that is to say, some of the songs we’ve carried with us in our wonderful journey so far….

adjectives attach like grammatical barnaclesexplanatory sidecarsdirecting distinctionsguitars didn’t need them until someone founda Fender and plugged inso we pulled outacoustic and electricto state the obvious writing goes backas far as the storiesand then one day somescheduler needed a name for a course and wrote Creative Writinglegitimizing the mundaneand discounting wordsit’s all creating whetherwriting of stars…