Sherry Chandler

Here’s the blurb from EEK. I hope Erin won’t mind my swiping it word-for-word. She makes us all look pretty good:

Kick off your Friday night with the InKY Reading Series, featuring three Kentucky writers and music by Louisville’s own Brigid Kaelin!*

7-9 pm • The Rudyard Kipling in Louisville • open mic • free!

Jim Tomlinson’s short story collection, Things Kept, Things Left Behind, received the 2006 Iowa Short Fiction Award. His work has been published in Five Points, The Pinch, Potomac Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Shenandoah Review and elsewhere.

Sherry Chandler is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Dance the Black-Eyed Girl and My Will and Testament Is on the Desk. Her work has been nominated for the Kentucky Literary Award in poetry and has won the Betty Gabehart Award from the Women Writers Conference, the Joy Bale Boone poetry prize and the Kudzu poetry prize.

Poet Eric Mattingly has a Bachelors degree from Cumberland College and half of a Masters in English from the University of Kentucky. He has worked on three literary magazines and currently lives on a farm in Irvington, Ky.

Brigid Kaelin released her first CD Keep Your Secrets in 2005 and immediately climbed the bestseller list several weeks in a row at the top local music store, outselling every other local solo artist in Louisville in 2005. A 2007 Nashville Star semi-finalist, Brigid sounds like Nellie McKay meets Lyle Lovett, sung by Norah Jones — and played on the accordion. Part folk-rock, part swing, part country, and all original, Brigid plays accordion, piano, and guitar.

A correspondent has drawn my attention to this article, Heaven’s Door Closed to Dylan, in The Guardian:

It was unlikely that the pair would ever be close friends: Pope Benedict XVI, conservative theologian, and Bob Dylan, iconoclastic singer and poet. Yet the pontiff’s feelings about the singer run so deep that he once tried to stop him performing at the Vatican.

In his new book, Pope Benedict recalls his doubts over whether Dylan should have been allowed to play a concert at the behest of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, in 1997. Describing Dylan as a “type of ‘prophet’”, he claimed the singer’s message diverged from that the Pope wished to convey.

…

Pope Benedict goes on to say that he “doubts to this day whether it was right to let this kind of so-called prophet take the stage” in front of the Pope.

Maybe Bob’s the antichrist? Who knew.

But I think perhaps to Pope is doomed to fail in his crusade against pop culture:

Pope John Paul II’s willingness to associate with pop stars is not shared by his successor. Not just distrustful of Dylan, Pope Benedict has claimed that all rock music is the work of Satan and has called off the Christmas pop concerts at the Vatican introduced by John Paul. He also opposes the use of guitars in mass.

I try not to crib from The Writer’s Almanac. I figure everybody knows where to find it and can listen/read for themselves. But I was struck by this final stanza in today’s selected poem:

Pray for the Stutzman family. Their son fights in the war. We call him back to the Prince of Peace, to our Savior who knelt to gather the slave’s ear, brushed the dirt away, lifted it to the side of his flushed face. May we leave no scars. May we ask no blessing for the killing done in His name.

— Todd Davis, from “Prayer Requests at a Mennonite Church” in the collection Some Heaven (Michigan State University Press)