essayist

If you've checked my profile, you know I've been reading essays with renewed interest. I heard essayist, poet, Lia Purpura (On Looking) read at Western Michigan University a few weeks back. Gorgeous stuff. Whether she's describing the experience of watching an autopsy, or the nuances of the view from a certain window, her language pulses with vitality and poetry. I don't know if the autopsy account is difficult reading for some. I took Anatomy & Physiology at U of M when I was enrolled (briefly) in their nursing program. We studied cadavers in an old lab—horror movie potential, with it's marble slab tables you tilted with the big iron wheels at one end. Though not as shocking as dealing with the just-dead, the experience lends a slight advantage. Even the most squeamish reader, though, is bound to be caught up in the author's wonder and respect, her effort to understand what is in front of her. I enjoy her ability, like Goldbarth, to weave associations, questions, ruminations, through tangential paths, to establish her circuitous connections with ease and logic. They both leap topic at stunning angles, then find the perfect curve that brings them back to it.