This month's discussion was anchored by explorations of faith and belief in and through art.

‍

The list

• 'On Believing', by Hanif Abdurraqib: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/04/11/on-believing/
• 'Chapter', by Ida Vitale: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/four-poems-vitale/
• YES, I AM A DESTROYER by Mira Mattar
• 'Innocent Landscape' by Elinor Wylie: https://allpoetry.com/Innocent-Landscape
• 'Let the Mystery Be' by Iris DeMent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gQVS2fCsek
• 'Poem 202' by Emily Dickinson: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48184/faith-is-fine-invention-202
• 'Do You Believe in Magic' by The Lovin' Spoonful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnbfuAcCqpY
• Compensation by Ralph Waldo Emerson (excerpt)
• Believing in Literature by Tomas Weber: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/believing-in-literature/
• 'Only Child' by Marcus Mumford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z1gpoQVkV4
• 'The Envoy of Mr. Cogito' by Zbigniew Herbert: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48501/the-envoy-of-mr-cogito
• 'Church Going' by Philip Larkin
• 'Émigré Library' by Boris Dralyuk: https://hudsonreview.com/2022/01/emigre-library-calendars/#.Y_0RRbTMLKg
• 'Faith' by Rubén Darío
• 'I'm a Believer' by The Monkees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQAqprjOuA
• 'Tomorrow' & 'Harlem' by Langston Hughes
• Tristessa by Jack Kerouac (fragment):
  
  It’s infinitely worse than the sleeping dream I've had of Mexico City where I go dreary along empty white apartments, grey, alone, or where the marble steps of a hotel horrify me——It's the rainy night in Mexico City and I'm in the middle of Mexico Thieves' Market district and El Indio IS a well known thief and even Tristessa was a pick pocket but I dont do more than Hick my backhand against the bulge of my folded money sailor-wise stowed in the railroad watchpocket of my jeans——And in shirtpocket I have the travellers checks which are unstealable in a sense——That, Ah that side street where the gang of Mexicans stop me and rifle through my dulflebag and take what they want and take me along tor a drink—— It's gloom as unpredicted on this earth, I realize all the uncountable manifestations the thinking mind invents to place a wall of horror before its pure perfect realization that there is no wall and no horror, just Transcendental Empty Kissable Milk Light of Everlasting Eternity's true and perfectly empty nature——I know everything's all right but I want proof, and the Buddha's and the Virgin Marys are there reminding me of the solemn pledge of faith in this harsh and stupid earth where we rage our so-called lives in a sea of worry, meat for Chicagos of Graves——right this minute my very father and my very brother lie side by side in mud in the North and I’m supposed to be smarter than they are——being quick I am dead. I look up at the others glooping, they see I've been lost in thought in my corner chair but are pursuing endless wild worries (all mental a hundred per cent) of their own——They're yakking in Spanish, I only understand snatches of that virile conversation——Tristessa keeps saying ‘chinga’ at every other sentence, a swearing Marine,——she says it with scorn and her teeth bite and it makes me worry, ‘Do you know women as well as you think you do?’——The rooster is unperturbed and lets go a blast.
  ‍