Parts of Speech

A Word That Can’t Be Captured in Words by Charles L. Campbell 

The language of faithful preaching is tensive language—unsettled language, language at the breaking point. For it is language that seeks to speak of God, but cannot fully speak of God. It is the destabilizing language of story and metaphor, paradox and poetry, which gestures toward the space created when language reaches its limits and words collide with each other. The language of preaching, as theologian Karl Barth has put it, is always a “provisional attempt,” never the final word, never controlled by the preacher. Preachers seek to speak of the divine, but always speak humanly, ever aware that our words cannot be equated with the Word of God...      

Speak Softly‑and Carry a Big Check by Daniel Carp (online-only content!)

The modern athlete can make more money off the court through endorsements than through competition, and sometimes that means it pays to be bland...

Foreign Tongue by Ashley Croker-Benn 

I come from sugarcane and rice

Gold that never touched the fingertips of my people

Just blessed their skin a honeyed brown

Left their lips sweet and fruitful...

Falling for the Fast Talkers by Cameron Howard

When I was four years old, I watched That’s Entertainment!, the time-capsule compilation film documenting the golden age of MGM musicals. I was entranced. My delight was so profound, in fact, that my mom noted the reaction in my baby book, alongside more typical milestones like my height and first words...

The Art of Selling by J. Peter Moore  

What separates a poem from a jingle? Is a tagline just poetry that persuades us to buy something? Is poetic speech simply an advertisement for something that cannot be purchased? These were the questions that we asked each afternoon in a seminar I taught through the English department here at Duke, “Mad Men/Avant Poets.”...

Speaking the Speech by Jay O’Berski 

It was the stigma of being considered a “blue-jeaned slobbermouth” that drove Marlon Brando to bellow himself hoarse in an Omaha cornfield. Woodshedding for the role of Mark Antony in Joseph Mankiewicz’s film of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Brando was urged by his mother to do classical (read: respectable) work. He joined a largely British cast—including veterans John Gielgud and James Mason—with enough Shakespeare experience to have Brando shaking in his boots...

A Way to Protect All Ideas by Alexandra Zrenner (online-only content!)

I attended two conferences, interviewed ten women, met another fifteen remarkable women, and produced twenty YouTube videos in eight short weeks just to answer one question: How do we address online hate speech while maintaining free speech?...