All Posts By

James C. Schaap

My last dance with Ms. Emily

Professor Helen Vendler says that Emily Dickinson changed the first word of the fourth line the poem “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” from “sleep” to

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Recall

Ten years ago maybe, my in-laws, then in their eighties, told us that they had simply mentioned to the pastor, as if in passing, that occasionally they’d

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Life, and Death: a memoir

The house where we lived at that time is long gone, as is the tiny kitchen where I stood, phone in hand, listening. The call

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The Sorcerer’s Smile

Your great-grandma says I talk like an old preacher, which is to say, too much. Maybe she’s right. She’s right about a lot of things.

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A Huge Step

In March, 1968, we drove all night long in order to get to Florida for Spring Break, Daytona Beach. When we got there–as I remember–it

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January Thaw

Here’s how I imagine it. She knows he’s there but she waits, time being of little consequence, after all. He died in the fall, when

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Jubilee

Every time I’ve been in Charles Mix County, South Dakota, in the last few years, I’ve stopped at a ghost town called, simply, Academy, about

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