All I Feel Is Rivers: Dervish Essays

by Robert Vivian

All I Feel is Rivers is a collection of a new hybrid writing that, though spiritually akin to prose poems, retains an essayistic form. After several life-changing trips to Turkey, Robert Vivian took up a deep study of Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic, poet, and founder of the religious order that performs the now-famous dervish dance. Vivian’s fascination seeped into his writing, and his newly conceived dervish essays reflect the dynamic movement and ancient symbolism of the ritual dance with wild lyricism, sometimes breathless cadences, and mesmerizing unspooling.
              
Utterly fearless in their passionate avowals of life’s many manifestations, these essays showcase the surprising connectivity between the sacred and profane, uncovered by associative drifting. Vivian’s essays take on grief and loss, the natural world and climate, spirituality and ecstasy, all while pushing the boundaries of what prose can do.
              

Genres: Poetry, Essays

126 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2020

Reviews

[Denver Public Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

My devotion to Mary Oliver and flirtation with Rumi led me to Robert Vivian. Unfamiliar with Vivian's style, I struggled with the selection arrangement and fared better once I initiated myself with "Let a Poem" (p. 25), "Bright Windowsill the Wondering" (p. 34), and "Ink of River" (p. 74).

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I've loved everything I've read by Vivian -- so poetic, deep, reflective, contemplative, spiritual -- but I've got to say, I just didn't get this. I wasn't sure what a Dervish Essay was but thought I'd take a chance, seeing how much I loved his essay collection Cold Snap as Yearning, and I'm still not totally sure what it is. Each is short, a page or two, and they read like stream-of-consciousness meditations on existence and mindfulness -- which seems great, seems like it would be right up my alley -- but I had a hard time really getting much from any of them. They seemed to be repetitive, full of "moments when I'm trembling" and comparisons to fishing and the power of words or getting ready to write: all stuff I can appreciate but kind of lost momentum with after the first couple. I tried reading one a day, approaching each like a poem, something to take in and digest singularly rather than sitting down to read 20 pages, but they just didn't have the power for me that short stories and novels do.