The Long Weeping: Portrait Essays - Softcover

Jessie Van Eerden

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0996439757 ISBN 13: 9780996439756

Publisher: Orison Books, 2017

Synopsis

In this collection of portraits, the eye is the vital ''lamp of the body,'' a spiritual organ van Eerden uses to craft essays that are as much encounters as they are likenesses, as much being seen as seeing. Historical subjects like Simone Weil and the Beguines confront the author's imaginative and intellectual being, while the viscerally close foci of family and a lost marriage must also be reckoned with. The author's religious tradition and the rural landscape of Terra Alta, West Virginia are two backgrounds that are neither chosen nor fully understood, but van Eerden's attention to these matters becomes its own form of devotion, a longing to see and to believe--the longing itself taking on the robustness of faith. This is the common goal of these essays, to fully meet each subject and return to it some form of wholeness, a quest full of lush imagery and insights.

About this title

About the Author

Jessie van Eerden is the author of two novels, Glorybound (WordFarm), recipient of the 2012 Editor's Choice Fiction Prize from Foreword Reviews, and My Radio Radio (Vandalia Press, 2016). Her work has appeared in The Oxford American, Image, Cimarron Review, The River Teeth Reader, and Best American Spiritual Writing, among other places. Van Eerden received an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa in 2007 and was awarded the 2007-2008 Milton Fellowship at Image and Seattle Pacific University for work on her first novel. She currently directs the low-residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College.

Edition details

• Publisher: Orison Books
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0996439757
• ISBN 13: 9780996439756
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196