Vivian writes so beautifully, it makes me ache. So beautiful, I read certain passages aloud. The lyrical essay is perhaps my favorite genre, though not a very prolific or crowded genre. It makes me appreciate Vivian's writings all the more. His books present what is finest about any genre of writing: the ability to emote, with such beauty and precision, and in such an easily metabolized way. It is so easy for these books and the rich emotion they hold to become part of my mood. What is finer than that? I am in need of beautiful emotion the way I am in need of water and air, especially in these difficult times (2020, eh?).

I mean, just read a few of these gorgeous passages:
On ghosts: "I like how they watch me read without telling me what to think" (3).

"I would not have waked them to save their lives, nor known how, so sacred was their sleep, so far off, mysterious, and shy. When they woke hours later, it was like the smoke of sleep still lingered around their heads, haunting them with sainthood or death... I was a light sleeper, hair triggered, a hollow vibrating twig; and it seemed they knew how to give themselves up to sleep with such voluptuousness and ease that even now it seems related to the very fog I was driving through years later..." (38).

"I need hope incarnate like him, I need to glimpse his example more than once in a while. I need to fall in lockstep behind him, not because is Christian or a bishop but because he changes the molecules of the air into something reverent, mysterious, and faintly humorous, as if God himself is truly playing a joke on us, not a knee-slapper but some kind of gentle benediction that gives us the capacity to smile" (79).

Though many of the essays are delicious, I found I have a love/hate relationship with Vivian's essays. I either love them, gush over them, or hate them. And by hate, I just skip them entirely. In this particular collection, "Hotel in Auschwitz" and "Prejudice in Teeth" were the ones I read a few lines of, and then skipped.

His keen and discerning eye is his first gift. His ability to write and share them with us, his second. Though there are times when his essays can flirt with sheer hurtful gawking, with his observation having too sharp an edge against his innocent and unaware human subjects. I felt much the same way reading some of his essays in Cold Snap as Yearning. I love people watching, I get it. I don't care for people poking. I much prefer when he observes and writes of what is beautiful and divine -- that is what makes me ache so sweetly. Not everyone will share my taste, and I'm sure the essays in their own way were well written, no doubt. I suppose personal taste made them difficult to read.

I am so excited to read his newest, All I Feel is Rivers. I felt much more mysticism in this collection that I did in Cold Snap as Yearning, and it was such a pleasant surprise. It is not a surprise that he would excel in that space. Writing about spirituality and saying something new, fresh, powerful, is difficult. One's spiritual experiences are often times ineffable, and if us normal people try and communicate them anyway, it doesn't come out quite how it was felt and experienced, but rather contrived and clunky. So, I am so looking forward to reading what he does when he gives himself over to the divine. Beautiful. ( )