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Crux: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction
Lost Wax: Essays
For her collection Lost Wax, Jericho Parms borrows her title from a casting method used by sculptors. As such, these eighteen essays, centered on art and memory, offer an investigation into form and content and the language of innocence, experience, and loss. Four sections (each borrowing names from the sculptures of Degas, Bernini, and Rodin) frame a series of meditations that consider the boundaries of the discernible world and the extremes of the body and the self. Here Parms draws heavily on memories of a Bronx upbringing in the 1980s and1990s; explorations in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and the American West; the struggle to comprehend race, love, family, madness, and nostalgia; and the unending influence of art, poetry, and music.
Written largely within the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lost Wax is an inquiry into the ways we curate memory and human experience despite the limits of observation and language. In these essays, Parms exhibits and examines her greatest how to describe the surface of marble or bronze; how to embrace the necessary complexities of identity, stillness and movement, life and death—how to be young and alive.
170 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 15, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 3, 2018
4.5 stars
A collection of essays, fragments, thoughts and reflections about life, identity, memory, art, poetry, music, race, family, mental health and the boundaries of the worlds we inhabit. The writing is poetic and split into brief vignettes which make it easier to read but more difficult to get a sense of the author. The whole is a bit like a jigsaw. Each of the four sections borrows names from sculptures (Rodin, Bernini, and Degas). There are stories of an upbringing in the Bronx with a white mother and an African American father, stories about lovers, travel and nature.
The writing is thoughtful and original:
“Every time I wander through a Greek and Roman sculpture court, a mezzanine of antiquities, a hall of baroque-styles figures, I want to be disassembled: to have my arms up to my shoulders fall off as I’m taken from Florence to Pompeii or maybe end up at the Metropolitan or the Louvre having lost my legs. To be stolen, looted by strangers, and feel the tip of my nose, the cap of my knee, chip and blow away. The phantom pain of dismemberment like the rise and fall of panic and desire, like a drug I once took—a mere dose of it laced with an addictive sadness. And I feel this, not just in the company of over-life-sized statues of gods and goddesses, the late Hellenistic and half-cloaked heroes, but also before the busts of Minerva and Dionysius, funerary stones, engraved papyrus, terracotta kraters, smooth, polished capitals and finials, sarcophagi, and headless torsos. Here, these sculptures reveal nearly all of the materials the ancients had on hand: marble, limestone, bronze, gold and silver, ivory and bone. Above all they are reliefs, fragments, the embodiment of classical idealism—of memory—cast from a mold that no longer exists: only the impression remains.”
Parms examines her restlessness and her self-destructive streak; the static nature of sculpture providing a counterpoint. As Parms says:
“..the museum galleries are where I learned to reclaim myself. After years of incessant movement, I turn faithfully to the stone-solid silence of statuary, bow like a courtesan before its classical grace and refuse to feel alone.”
I liked Parms’s honesty about herself and the way she approaches life;
“I fear love for the way it blankets everything it knows. Perhaps that is why I may never stay.”
These essays are a journey, almost a pilgrimage of memory and metaphor. The fascination for individual objects, their shape, feel, colour and form and the poignant one-liners that capture a great deal more;
“the taillight of a lover driving steadily away can forever burn”
I can recommend these essays, they will make you think and reflect.
A collection of essays, fragments, thoughts and reflections about life, identity, memory, art, poetry, music, race, family, mental health and the boundaries of the worlds we inhabit. The writing is poetic and split into brief vignettes which make it easier to read but more difficult to get a sense of the author. The whole is a bit like a jigsaw. Each of the four sections borrows names from sculptures (Rodin, Bernini, and Degas). There are stories of an upbringing in the Bronx with a white mother and an African American father, stories about lovers, travel and nature.
The writing is thoughtful and original:
“Every time I wander through a Greek and Roman sculpture court, a mezzanine of antiquities, a hall of baroque-styles figures, I want to be disassembled: to have my arms up to my shoulders fall off as I’m taken from Florence to Pompeii or maybe end up at the Metropolitan or the Louvre having lost my legs. To be stolen, looted by strangers, and feel the tip of my nose, the cap of my knee, chip and blow away. The phantom pain of dismemberment like the rise and fall of panic and desire, like a drug I once took—a mere dose of it laced with an addictive sadness. And I feel this, not just in the company of over-life-sized statues of gods and goddesses, the late Hellenistic and half-cloaked heroes, but also before the busts of Minerva and Dionysius, funerary stones, engraved papyrus, terracotta kraters, smooth, polished capitals and finials, sarcophagi, and headless torsos. Here, these sculptures reveal nearly all of the materials the ancients had on hand: marble, limestone, bronze, gold and silver, ivory and bone. Above all they are reliefs, fragments, the embodiment of classical idealism—of memory—cast from a mold that no longer exists: only the impression remains.”
Parms examines her restlessness and her self-destructive streak; the static nature of sculpture providing a counterpoint. As Parms says:
“..the museum galleries are where I learned to reclaim myself. After years of incessant movement, I turn faithfully to the stone-solid silence of statuary, bow like a courtesan before its classical grace and refuse to feel alone.”
I liked Parms’s honesty about herself and the way she approaches life;
“I fear love for the way it blankets everything it knows. Perhaps that is why I may never stay.”
These essays are a journey, almost a pilgrimage of memory and metaphor. The fascination for individual objects, their shape, feel, colour and form and the poignant one-liners that capture a great deal more;
“the taillight of a lover driving steadily away can forever burn”
I can recommend these essays, they will make you think and reflect.
October 28, 2017
The idea of Jericho Parm's collection of essays as an ekphrastic work is something she creates throughout the book. It is as though she is commenting on and drawing attention to her desire to create a scene in her mind – one of memory or experience or hope – and then describe it in a variety of ways and from various angles to make sense of it. In other words, not only are her essays ekphrastic because of her narration of works of art and objects she has gazed upon, but it is also that by necessity she pulls a shard of memory, an image, glances at it from one angle and then another, and jots down what comes. Actually, Parms doesn't jot. She pares and plots to find the right words, clearly and keenly understanding the power of words in their connotation, denotation, history, and bearing.
Parms reveals that just as no statue or form – however perfectly imagined at first – retains its originally-intended purity, in the same way, no matter how hard she tries or how deeply she wishes she can find the perfect word to describe the exquisite sweetness of nectar or the texture and granules of things, all she can offer is what she offers: her particular form, her choice of words, carefully crafted, molded by her experiences and memories and histories and bloodlines and fears. She is the seeker of the lost wax of the shapes she sees, desiring to look beyond what is now to discern what might have been the original shapes, connections, and purposes of images, and in her craft, of words.
Parms reveals that just as no statue or form – however perfectly imagined at first – retains its originally-intended purity, in the same way, no matter how hard she tries or how deeply she wishes she can find the perfect word to describe the exquisite sweetness of nectar or the texture and granules of things, all she can offer is what she offers: her particular form, her choice of words, carefully crafted, molded by her experiences and memories and histories and bloodlines and fears. She is the seeker of the lost wax of the shapes she sees, desiring to look beyond what is now to discern what might have been the original shapes, connections, and purposes of images, and in her craft, of words.
February 19, 2024
Absolute favorite nonfiction read, one that didn't even have to try to keep my attention. Jericho Parms writes how I wish I did and every essay was a vibrant scene that her language brought to life effortlessly. I would love to read a future project where she branches into fiction. Mf top 5 authors all time fr up there with Dostoevsky and Allende
August 4, 2024
Loved it! The essays found in this collection have been carefully crafted to form a new sense of meaning through meditations and journeys. Her prose is very elegant and carefully thought out with her words filling each space with absolute distinction or in other words to the point. She is a new voice with her unique style of connection of tangible things, as if each word were carefully integrated into a series of webs. I was lucky enough to be present in one of her readings, astonished to hear an essay be breathed to life by the creator. She gave them new meaning and depth. I tried to read some out loud, the effect is poetic as you feel a greater connection to the reflections she makes. It is as if they were your own experiences or thoughts. I would truly believe or state that some of her perfectly written lines are little miracles that she herself may be amazed about. It is as if she were creating an art about life by capturing those moments, feelings, freedoms, losses. My favorite by far is A Chapter on Red. Wow, it’s crazy good!! I mean how many things can one describe that have to do with the color red. I can imagine the dedicated effort she put in into writing it, everything there is gold! She opened my eyes and helped me realize that it’s a colorful world which at times we forget seeing those colors and the emotions that come from them. If anything read A Chapter on Red and you’ll fall in love with this outstanding essayist!
March 6, 2018
took me a while to get into this one, but once it found its stride, one of the better books I've read this year. each essay is composed around a piece of visual art, which sometimes is a stretch, but ultimately comes together. author writes about her experience growing up in New York, her parents' divorce, and her own relationships, mixed race identity, love, upper middle class privilege in these traditional form/braided essays rife with strong metaphor
April 14, 2021
4.5 stars. Beautifully lyrical, but sometimes swept away in its own lyricism—sometimes reading as wordy rather than true. Particular talent for description. Strongest parts were descriptions of antique statues, moths, senses, colors. Very talented writer. Contemplative, vulnerable, poetic, tangible.
March 1, 2021
Parms jumps back and forth between seemingly disparate stories, then weaves them together with a unifying theme. She packs her descriptions with visual and emotional detail, which creates a visceral, immersive experience for the reader.
July 8, 2017
Stunning!
July 2, 2020
Her prose is stunning. And I love the connections and wanderings she makes. Also the stories of her and her father and mother.
October 24, 2016
The author of Lost Wax may no longer be a collector of tangible things such as “rocks and minerals, artifacts and molds,” the things often associated with childhood, but to this reader it is clear that Jericho Parms’ collection of essays holds up what is tangible— a work of art, the color red, a chair, a notebook, places on the map, blood, family, fish, and friends, to name a few—to reveal what is often ethereal: specific moments in time, experiences of place, and an understanding of what is malleable in human relationships, what of innocence is lost to be gained in identity as one travels through life paying close attention not only to what is in plain sight but to what is newly discovered upon close examination when loss and darkness are upturned to the light. Those moments in Jericho Parms’ capable hands turn the mundane to the sublime and reveal understanding and truth that is at once personal and universally understood. Presented without judgment, in lyrical prose that invites readers to linger, like a puddling butterfly, over the wonder of beautifully crafted language, the author ingeniously weaves sometimes seemingly disparate narrative threads together into an intricate connective tissue that upholds and reveals meaning with astonishing insight. Fueled by literary nourishment, one is compelled to read on, hungry for more “words to describe” the world around us and its ten thousand things, each with the power to leave a lasting impression when the wax is lost.
Believe the formal reviews that are out there. This collection of essays represents a fresh new voice in creative non-fiction and an innovative architect of the literary essay form!
Believe the formal reviews that are out there. This collection of essays represents a fresh new voice in creative non-fiction and an innovative architect of the literary essay form!
February 11, 2018
Beautiful stories dense with metaphor and memory, these essays are so nuanced and poetic, they need to be chewed 100 times before swallowing. I feel like I went on a complicated journey with Parms, and that I've partially lived the life she's lived, through her recollections. I'm jealous of her sophisticated and worldly experience - all the love and art and beauty she has already seen - and blessed to have taken this journey with her, a veritable master class in personal narrative. In fact, I can tell as I write this review that I've been inspired by her use of language to polish up my own.
September 26, 2023
I absolutely loved this collection of essays. I rarely read a book more than once -- too many books, so little time -- but Lost Wax is an exception to that rule. I devoured it the first time, and often pick it up to savor an essay or two again. The writing is beautiful, evocative, and like nothing I've ever read before. Highly recommend.
August 2, 2022
Fantastic use of form. A beautiful collection.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews