A journal seeking light and beauty in people, places, arts, and culture
Fenton Johnson was an African American poet who wrote before and during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and early 1930s. He self-published several collections of poetry, including A Little Dreaming (1913), Visions of the Dusk (1915), and Songs of the Soil (1916). His poetry is often anthologized and exhibits a range of style from… Continue reading Two Poems by Fenton Johnson
On a midnight in midwinter when all but the winds were dead . . . (Poetry by Alfred Tennyson)
by Ruirui Kuang We landed in Sweden, my mother and I, and got ready to meet my father at the airport. It was just the two of us that day; my grandmother was not with us. The lone figure of the shriveled old woman waving goodbye in Beijing had been as firmly rooted to the land as… Continue reading My Grandmother
"The ticket booth complex huddled below the lofty red brick walls of the Kremlin under an azure August sky. A sleek, modern construction of metal and glass, the ticket office formed a jarring juxtaposition beneath . . ." (Narrative nonfiction by Jonathan English)
by Sumit Dua In the summer after my first year of medical school, I decided to travel to India to visit family. At the same time, I wanted to really learn photography and had purchased a Canon film camera during that first year. So I took the camera with me to craft images of India as… Continue reading Portraits of India
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree / Toward heaven still (A poem by Robert Frost)
It gets dark so early these days. / And we needed to get home, / after the creek / and the climbing the hill / and . . . (Poetry by Katie Murchison Ross)
Quietly I walked through the streets full of people, full of people honoring and celebrating in different ways their loved ones who passed away. . . . (Photography by David Cea)
The first thing you should know: / The tree has leaves. / Leaves whose lives depart, by definition. / Evergreens have needles; palms, fronds. / But leaves fulfill their nomenclatural destiny: / Fade, wither, fall. . . . (Poetry by Jeannie Rose Barksdale)
Oh, Great Spirit, / Whose voice I hear in the winds . . . (Lakota Prayer translated by Chief Yellow Lark)
ENCOMIA 