Nick Ripatrazone, Author at Catholic Herald

Nick Ripatrazone

Sonnez Les Matines, Benedict XVI and the Theatre of the Absurd

March 28, 2024

Nick Ripatrazone explores the jaunty, theologically-rich ride of Sonnez Les Matines, a verse play by JC Scharl. At the start of Lent in 1983, Pope Benedict XVI – then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – gave a retreat in the Vatican for Pope John Paul II and the Roman Curia. “The central mystery of our vocation,” he

Maryann Corbett: Profound and darkly comic

February 02, 2024

Nick Ripatrazone enjoys the latest collection of poems by Maryann Corbett both entertaining and devotional. Tucked in the back of a book, an author’s biographical note is often perfunctory and formulaic. Yet poets, to borrow a sentiment from Robert Frost, must be open to surprises. At the end of The O in the Air, we

Mythmaking online and Marshall McLuhan

January 01, 2024

Nick Ripatrazone explores how Walter J Scheirer’s new book A History of Fake Things on the Internet engages with Marshall McLuhan’s ideas. ‘I see no possibility of a worldwide Luddite rebellion that will smash all machinery to bits,” said media theorist Marshall McLuhan in 1969, “so we might as well sit back and see what is

The poetry of Christmas trees

December 15, 2023

Nick Ripatrazone explores seasonal lines by poets Elizabeth Bishop, WB Yeats, James Merrill and Denise Levertov. In one of her most famous poems, “At the Fishhouses”(1947), Elizabeth Bishop wrote: “Bluish, associating with their shadows, / a million Christmas trees stand / waiting for Christmas.” The lines begin with a melancholy, almost mysterious image, followed by

A bloom of Painted Ladies

November 02, 2023

Nick Ripatrazone appreciates a new God-filled collection of poetry by a writer who is both catholic and Catholic. I first encountered a poem from Butterfly Nebula, the new collection by Laura Reece Hogan, in Scientific American. Founded in 1845, the august publication is not known for its religious content. Yet Hogan, a lay Carmelite who

What we can learn from Aaron Rosen’s What Would Jesus See

October 14, 2023

Seeing as Jesus sees. For those of a certain age, it would be easy to misread the title of Aaron Rosen’s new book as “What Would Jesus Do?” In fact, Rosen, a Cambridge PhD in Theology who has taught at Oxford and Yale, predicted the mistake. “Growing up in rural America in the nineties,” he

New history of the Jesuits in the United States is honest, thorough and thoughtful

August 30, 2023

For the greater glory of God. ‘The head is very large; the forehead is flat, and a foot and a half bet- ween the horns,” wrote the priest. Fr Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit, joined the explorer Louis Jolliet on a canoe journey along the Mississippi River in 1673. Marquette’s prose could be mistaken for

The Bible’s strange poetry

August 03, 2023

A new translation of a book exploring the Bible’s foreign and divine language is a spirited defence of the sacred, poetic Word, says Nick Ripatrazone. Michael Edwards – a London-born professor and poet – was elected to the prestigious Académie Française in 2013. There he serves as a defender of the French language. In this

Poetry about walking the Camino

July 05, 2023

Nick Ripatrazone reflects on a tender and attentive book of illuminating poetry documenting the journey to Santiago de Compostela Nick Maione, an American poet and Byzantine iconographer, has released a new book with Angelico Press – a New York City-based Catholic publisher – titled Infinite Arrivals. The collection is a mixture of lineated and prose

Rescuing a forgotten Seneca

June 01, 2023

Nick Ripatrazone applauds a new translation and presentation of the Roman writer Seneca’s play The Madness of Hercules. Dana Gioia, the notable American Catholic poet and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, has made a trade of writing seminal essays that capture the pulse of the literary moment. In 1991, his essay

Jessica Powers: Habits of poetry and prayer

May 13, 2023

Nick Ripatrazone writes in his new book about Jessica Powers, an American nun and mystical Catholic poet. ‘I should like to go to New York.” Jessica Powers (1905-88) spent the decade following her mother’s death in 1925 as a homemaker, tending to the family farmhouse in Mauston, Wisconsin, to support her brothers. With the marriage

Franz Wright and the cleansing truth of the Resurrection

April 14, 2023

Nick Ripatrazone considers the deep, spiritually introspective words of an award-winning poet who worked with grieving children. In Arlington, Massachusetts, the Centre for Grieving Children and Teenagers had an operating principle: “Being with others who have experienced a death reduces isolation and can provide hope.” In 2004, the centre’s programme director noted that one particular

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