Containing pieces by distinguished scholars including Darlene Harbour Unrue and Robert Brinkmeyer, this book is the first full investigation of the links between Porter’s only novel and European intellectual history. Beginning with Sebastian Brant, author of the late medieval Narrenschiff, whom she acknowledges in her Preface to Ship of Fools, Porter's image of Europe emerges as more complex, more knowledgeable, and more politically nuanced than previous critics have acknowledged. Ship of Fools is in conversation with Europe's humanistic tradition as well as with the political moments of 1931 and 1962, the years that elapsed from the novel's conception to its completion. The contents include: New contexts for Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of fools / Thomas Austenfeld -- Fools and folly in Erasmus and Porter / Jewel Spears Brooker -- "After all, what is this life itself?": humanist contexts of death and immortality in Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of fools / Dimiter Daphinoff -- Paratexts and the rhetorical factor in literature: Sebastian Brant and Katherine Anne Porter / Joachim Knape --.

In his debut collection, Jordan Windholz recasts devotional poetics and traces the line between faith and its loss. Other Psalms gives voice to the skeptic who yet sings to the silence that "swells with the noise of listening." If faith is necessary, this collection suggests, it is necessary as material for its own unmaking. Without a doubt, these are poems worth believing in, announcing, as they do, a new and necessary voice in American poetry. The contents include: Parable -- Myth -- ( psalm ) -- A necessary angel recalls unearthing its terrestrial existence -- The psalm's parable -- Epiphany -- The nomads -- The incarnation -- Of apocalypse -- A prayer -- ( psalm ) -- Gospel -- Ruminant -- The parable's psalm -- ( psalm ) -- Hymn -- Fable -- Intercessory -- Evangel -- Other psalms -- The same old story -- The transfiguration -- The talk -- Bestiary -- The shepherd's song -- Of revelation -- Psalm, stunted -- The heretic.