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I Could Name God in Twelve Ways: Essays
I could dream in poetry, could summon words for spiritual experience, could name God in twelve ways and in ten times and places in history.
Award-winning writer Karen Salyer McElmurray details her life's journey across continents and decades in a poetic collection that is equal parts essay-as-memoir, memoir-as- Künstlerroman , and travelogue-as-meditation.
It is about the deserts of India. A hospital ward in Maryland. The blue seas of Greece. A greenhouse in Virginia. It is about the spirit houses of Thailand. The mountains of eastern Kentucky. The depths of the Grand Canyon. A creative writing classroom in Georgia. An attic in a generations-old house. It is about coming to terms with both memory and the power of writing itself.
At turns lyrical, poignant, and alluring, McElmurray probes her personal history from the stance of different places, perspectives, and vulnerabilities as she tenderly and fiercely searches for acceptance and a place to call home.
Award-winning writer Karen Salyer McElmurray details her life's journey across continents and decades in a poetic collection that is equal parts essay-as-memoir, memoir-as- Künstlerroman , and travelogue-as-meditation.
It is about the deserts of India. A hospital ward in Maryland. The blue seas of Greece. A greenhouse in Virginia. It is about the spirit houses of Thailand. The mountains of eastern Kentucky. The depths of the Grand Canyon. A creative writing classroom in Georgia. An attic in a generations-old house. It is about coming to terms with both memory and the power of writing itself.
At turns lyrical, poignant, and alluring, McElmurray probes her personal history from the stance of different places, perspectives, and vulnerabilities as she tenderly and fiercely searches for acceptance and a place to call home.
- GenresMemoir
182 pages, Paperback
Published September 4, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 17, 2025
McElmurray has written a tribute to vulnerability in this collection, but she has also assembled a companion to courage. Though it is a book about wandering, often with no map except her own need to find a universal faith in the far-flung corners of her homes, her not-homes, and the homes of kin, acquaintances, and lovers. She meets herself in all of these places, and tells us just exactly who she sees herself to be, in unflinching terms.
Lately, I've been working on my own courage, and this collection, though it hasn't made it any easier, it has made my forays more accurate. Like a blown-up map revealing details upon details, McElmurray shows us the intricacies of her bravery: self-doubt, and fear, for starters. But she also opens a dialogue about the power of memory to hold us, or to set us free. It's a book about the importance of the journey, but more than that, it honors the places to linger, the ones to pass by, and the ones to return to, and to write down.
Lately, I've been working on my own courage, and this collection, though it hasn't made it any easier, it has made my forays more accurate. Like a blown-up map revealing details upon details, McElmurray shows us the intricacies of her bravery: self-doubt, and fear, for starters. But she also opens a dialogue about the power of memory to hold us, or to set us free. It's a book about the importance of the journey, but more than that, it honors the places to linger, the ones to pass by, and the ones to return to, and to write down.
October 25, 2025
I love this book!
April 1, 2025
Karen Salyer McElmurray may be known as an Appalachian writer, but in I Could Name God in Twelve Ways she transcends regions and becomes a universal voice. These essays make me think of travel memoirist Cheryl Strayed and approach themes voiced by Brene Brown in Braving the Wilderness. McElmurray, too, gives testament to Maya Angelou’s poignant statement: “You only are free when you realize you belong no place - you belong every place - no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.”
However, as McElmurray recounts her travels across the globe and home again to Kentucky, her journey surfaces as a tumultuous and dreamlike quest for truth, identity and faith. She weaves in memories like curling vines, taking us to the places she has roamed: a windstorm in Greece, an inpatient facility, a greenhouse in Virginia, her Aunt Stella’s bedroom.
McElmurray delves into her struggles with anxiety and trauma, meditation and solace. She confesses about being pregnant at fifteen and giving the child up for adoption. She examines a dead-end relationship, in light of the good one she now maintains. She contemplates lost motherhood and rediscovery of the child mother she was with humility and insight. McElmurray returns repetitively to her center – being a writer and teacher of writing - and ultimately grapples with the elusive heart of a story that makes it transcend its container of words, just as souls transcend the limits of flesh.
These stories have the depth and beauty of poetry – rich in language and metaphor. Her meaning is found in the symbol she uses of her family quilts – intricate in stitching and layering and collaging and patterns. She leaves us with the image of an eclectic curio-cabinet collection of objects found far and near, objects both sacred and mundane.
"A piece of jade. Shells from Assateague. Tiny clay caps and a tiny bowl filled with pebbles from Alaska. There are representations of the Holy Mother. Black Madonna from Spain. Hand-carved Mary from Turkey. From Russia, a small icon of Mary and her son. And there are holy photographs. My great-grandmother Beck, sitting in a booth at the Black Cat diner, smoking her pipe. My father, his arm draped across my shoulders, that time I did my first public reading."
Ultimately, McElmurray, says “You are becoming, the spirits say, a vessel for what is missing.” And in this meditation on life and the pursuit of meaning, she arrives, at last, to belong, not to a family or place, but to an artistry and voice all her own.
However, as McElmurray recounts her travels across the globe and home again to Kentucky, her journey surfaces as a tumultuous and dreamlike quest for truth, identity and faith. She weaves in memories like curling vines, taking us to the places she has roamed: a windstorm in Greece, an inpatient facility, a greenhouse in Virginia, her Aunt Stella’s bedroom.
McElmurray delves into her struggles with anxiety and trauma, meditation and solace. She confesses about being pregnant at fifteen and giving the child up for adoption. She examines a dead-end relationship, in light of the good one she now maintains. She contemplates lost motherhood and rediscovery of the child mother she was with humility and insight. McElmurray returns repetitively to her center – being a writer and teacher of writing - and ultimately grapples with the elusive heart of a story that makes it transcend its container of words, just as souls transcend the limits of flesh.
These stories have the depth and beauty of poetry – rich in language and metaphor. Her meaning is found in the symbol she uses of her family quilts – intricate in stitching and layering and collaging and patterns. She leaves us with the image of an eclectic curio-cabinet collection of objects found far and near, objects both sacred and mundane.
"A piece of jade. Shells from Assateague. Tiny clay caps and a tiny bowl filled with pebbles from Alaska. There are representations of the Holy Mother. Black Madonna from Spain. Hand-carved Mary from Turkey. From Russia, a small icon of Mary and her son. And there are holy photographs. My great-grandmother Beck, sitting in a booth at the Black Cat diner, smoking her pipe. My father, his arm draped across my shoulders, that time I did my first public reading."
Ultimately, McElmurray, says “You are becoming, the spirits say, a vessel for what is missing.” And in this meditation on life and the pursuit of meaning, she arrives, at last, to belong, not to a family or place, but to an artistry and voice all her own.
July 28, 2025
I first encountered Karen's writing at the Appalachian Studies conference in March 2025. I sat mesmerized, listening to her read about her travels away from her homeland in Kentucky to Thailand, Greece, and India. Watching her as a child, a young woman, a grown woman shaping her life through words. I fell in love, even if at times I felt like I was falling in love with myself. After the conference, I bought the book I Could Name God in Twelve Ways and savored the 13 essays. In the first essay "Blue Glass" (which is something I collect, btw), she talks of the strand of vulnerability that runs among the women in her family as if she's fought with it for a while: "The kind of vulnerabilty I'm talking about has a bite to it, a stinger your couldn't pull out." In my favorite essay, "Stella, in the upstairs bedroom," she reminds us of the power of memoir and of the responsibility when telling secrets. She writes,"Memoir is a difficult act. It is speaking up. Speaking out loud. Memoir hurts, but it does not dishonor, nor does it disown."
Though this is a collection of essays, threads weave throughout so that when finished, the book echoes. I was left wanting to come back, revisit, and explore what I thought I'd read. In particular, her embodied homes shift and change as she jumps in time from the familiarity of the Appalachian mountains to the fierceness of mountain streams, into the sacred Ganges. She ends with an homage to the journey: "Where the body came from became a dim light on a front porch. Became a memory of a voice in the dark calling me home."
This collection calls me home, too. Through visceral experiences of Spirit, Karen gives me permission to dive deep into my own past with the chance of coming up wiser.
Though this is a collection of essays, threads weave throughout so that when finished, the book echoes. I was left wanting to come back, revisit, and explore what I thought I'd read. In particular, her embodied homes shift and change as she jumps in time from the familiarity of the Appalachian mountains to the fierceness of mountain streams, into the sacred Ganges. She ends with an homage to the journey: "Where the body came from became a dim light on a front porch. Became a memory of a voice in the dark calling me home."
This collection calls me home, too. Through visceral experiences of Spirit, Karen gives me permission to dive deep into my own past with the chance of coming up wiser.
March 16, 2025
Karen Salyer McElmurray is an automatic read for me, and this magnificent collection of essays left me breathless. I love the book jacket description of "travelogue-as-meditation" because McElmurray transported me to countries I'll never see and landscapes so familiar and with each the reading experience was visceral. I was right there with her on a pilgrimage of heart and soul, love and loss, home and family and displacement—each layered and cut-open raw and translucent. I'll never not think about the essay AND THEN THE HOLY RIVER and McElmurray's calls to poetry and words and language, calls both haunting and achingly gorgeous. "I imagined shutting open drawers, folding stray socks, touching you precisely here and there, where surely all the truest words lay." And "Once upon a time, poems flew by themselves...They grew near highways, beside roads headed back east. They took themselves seriously in classrooms at a big, fine school. They learned names for themselves. Ghazal. Pantoum. Cinquain. They reached inside hearts that refused to open. They became journeys."
Yes, yes, and oh what journeys. I loved this book.
Yes, yes, and oh what journeys. I loved this book.
November 17, 2024
"I Could Name God in Twelve Ways: Essays" by Karen McElmurray is a lyrical, meditative series of memoir as essays that reflect on her travels through time and place yearning for home and connection. It's written with such clarity, compassion, and vulnerability. Each individual essay is complete in itself, but each speaks to the others in such a powerful way. You'll think about them long after you've finished the book.
Check out her novel "Wanting Radiance." Its unforgettable characters and plot, plus its emotional intensity make it a very compelling read.
Check out her novel "Wanting Radiance." Its unforgettable characters and plot, plus its emotional intensity make it a very compelling read.
December 5, 2024
A set of 13 memoir essays. I read the first one and was concerned that I wouldn't like any of them but most of the others I enjoyed. Some of the essays jump around a lot, being more of a series of connected mini topics. I saw it recommended on a friend's FB page or I would never have heard of it.
December 2, 2024
Plays with time and reality in a really interesting way, I can’t say I followed all of it, but some really pretty images, and I like how she approaches essays in so many different ways
January 13, 2025
What a beautiful set of memoirs and understandings of place. McElmurray never disappoints in her description, her use of language, and her insights. Masterful.
April 20, 2025
McElmurray’s collection of essays stands as one of the first nonfiction books/memoirs that resonates with me. While others send me on a trail of their life which bears no resemblance to the feelings found in mine—they keep running, keep detaching—McElmurray shows the truly delicate line of wanting so desperately to leave your family and where you grew up while also identifying with your family and the places you haunted while young. Here memory, truth, and omission combine, leading to a few questions: what do we do without the means to comunicate what troubles us?, what do we lose when we do not talk? what is gained when we put ourselves at risk to speak out?
Most striking is McElmurray’s quiet—though in some essays, readily apparent—grief. One that carries through from a longing for a land and time she cannot return to, for the end of lives, for family secrets that erase kins’ agencies, for the end of a world once better known, and to the people who did not enjoy every moment because they felt they might have forever.
Most striking is McElmurray’s quiet—though in some essays, readily apparent—grief. One that carries through from a longing for a land and time she cannot return to, for the end of lives, for family secrets that erase kins’ agencies, for the end of a world once better known, and to the people who did not enjoy every moment because they felt they might have forever.
August 12, 2025
I enjoy her writing—these are some engaging essays with often poetic language.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews