The Long Weeping: Portrait Essays

by Jessie van Eerden

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.

Genres: Essays

196 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2017

About the author

Jessie van Eerden is the author of two essay collections, Yoke & Feather and The Long Weeping, and three novels: Glorybound, My Radio Radio, and Call It Horses which won the 2019 Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Best American Spiritual Writing, Oxford American, AGNI, Image, New England Review, and other magazines and anthologies. She has been awarded the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award, the Michael Steinberg Memorial Essay Prize, the Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction, the Milton Fellowship, and a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship. Jessie holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa and teaches at Hollins University.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jessie van Eerden's book, The Long Weeping, is a beautiful book of essays, exploring subjects of the Appalachian world often misunderstood, or even ridiculed, by many writers and artists. She looks at poverty and hardship, never backing down from the grim, but often hard beauty, of deep rural life, all the while cloaking her work in the gritty spirituality that coats her memories and her world. A stunning collection!

[Marie Manilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jessie Van Eerden’s THE LONG WEEPING is one of the most beautiful essay collections I’ve ever read. It is soulful and penetrating, intelligent and honest, and topped off with a remarkable exploration of grief of biblical proportions. Though she would be humbled by the comparison, Van Eerden might just be West Virginia’s own Simone Weil.

[Rachel Rosolina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Van Eerden’s writing style, much like the book’s cover, reminds me of painting. Sometimes there is a blur in the words that permits movement in a way text usually can’t. Sometimes there is a layering that adds depth and shadow. It was a rare textural textual experience. Throughout the collection, she weaves threads through repetition of phrase. This is my favorite kind of writing: subtle, letting the readers connect the dots. By doing so, the readers also get that moment of epiphany when a term jogs their memory of a previous passage and the meanings begin to layer.

Her essays read like prose poems, delivering truth through light that shimmers and is hard to pin down. She captures the moments much more honestly than a portrait photographer ever could.

For my full review, check out my blogpost: http://www.rachelrosolina.com/2018/06...

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these passionate, searching, lyrical essays as I love their passionate, searching, lyrical author who is my friend. In the prologue, she describes her child-self at the water pump with another child, and writes: "For the rest of my life I will remember the taste of the water that says, Don't waste time on water that is not water, on thirst that is not thirst." Readers, this writer's had her ear to the world and been listening closely since childhood, intelligently, feelingly. Check her out!

[Carole Duff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a gorgeous essay collection. While reading the essays, I felt like I was exploring the nuanced movements of a symphony, which I wanted to replay. And, indeed, I did reread, each time fathoming another layer of van Eerden’s thoughts and meaning.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book overall. Its sense of place is riveting. The final chapter, while finely crafted, feels like fiction and thus doesn’t fit with the rest of the book—it deserves a standalone venue. I look forward to reading more of van Eerden’s work!

[Bethany Jarmul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunningly beautiful, honest, lyrical, spiritual. My new favorite collection of essays!

[R. Gene Turchin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This deep and emotional book by Jessie van Eerden consists of two parts: a collection of essays on her childhood and early adult life; and a riff on the story or Rizpah, a concubine of old testament King Saul.
The first part (the essays) are wrought in beautiful, evocative language as if they were a long poem. There are conflicting emotions. Loss, suffering, sadness and yet, somehow, they evoke a warmth and sense of love.
The story of Rizpah slides between the bible story and the same character losing her sanity after a great loss in current time. It takes a careful an quiet reading.
This book is both rich and warm and filled with passion and written by a master craftsman.