I’ve long admired Nick Ripatrazone’s writing so was thrilled to see him review The Book of Hulga for U.S. Catholic. He singled out the poem “Phenomenology of Sow” as a poem that “contains lines that capture O’Connor’s uncanny ability to find grace in the messiest moments.” I was pleased by that because I almost left the poem out of the book. The only thing he gets wrong is partially my fault–he allowed that Hulga is a reasonable assumption for the “angular intellectual proud woman” in the novel O’Connor didn’t live long enough to write. In a later letter, she clarified this woman wasn’t her or Simone Weil exactly: “My heroine already is, and is Hulga.”
http://www.uscatholic.org/blog/201604/approaching-god-inch-inch-30621