Robert D. Vivian Q & A with Eastern Iowa Review
Chila: I admire anyone who can write a 400-word sentence that makes sense. I've already read your essay several times and will read it several more in the days ahead, I'm sure. Tell us how you managed this feat, please. Quite brilliant, really.
Robert: The 400 word sentence...Well, more and more I simply bow to the energy driving a particular piece, and my main work is staying out of my own way and letting the language go where it wants, where it must. Can sometimes almost close my eyes and let this happen. I wish I had a more sophisticated response to this, but after 25 yrs. of serious writing the truth is I understand it less and less, and this is a beautiful, wonderful thing.
Chila: Experimental essays are thrilling to me, especially when they also encompass many of the elements of the lyric essay. How would you differentiate between the two? And what do you feel they have in common?
Robert: For me every genre comes out of the lyric--it's just a question of degree. And maybe it's the case that any genuinely wild lyrical essay will be deemed experimental because it pushes and plays with boundaries--b/c, at least for me, it's like the late coach Jim Valvano running around looking for someone, anyone, everybody to hug. Yes, that's it: only connect, only connect, only connect. Or only touch, only embrace, only reach out.
Chila: Actually, you call this work a "dervish" essay. Tell me how that came about.
Robert: I've had the great good fortune of having taught a few times in Turkey--mainly in Samsun on the Black Sea where some of my dearest friends in the world live. I was exposed in a very real and direct way to Sufism and the works of Mevlana (Rumi). I'm still recovering. Thus the appellation of dervish essays, which I hope is not an appropriation in any way but a way to honor the beauty of what I came to know about Rumi's poetry and the country and people of Turkey.
Chila: You have a book of these coming out this spring. Where will we be able to find it? How long did it take to write?
Robert: Anchor & Plume will publish my first book of these called Mystery My Country this April [2016]. I'm thrilled and humbled by this. The book took me about two years to write.
Chila: What's your next project?
Robert: Right now I'm just working on more of these kinds of essays and holding on for dear life. I don't know where they will lead, but I didn't know where any of them have been heading.
Chila: Anything else you'd like to share with us, especially about writing?
Robert: Only that writing has become a way to celebrate the earth and my brief time on it. I can't believe how beautiful the planet is.
Chila: I admire anyone who can write a 400-word sentence that makes sense. I've already read your essay several times and will read it several more in the days ahead, I'm sure. Tell us how you managed this feat, please. Quite brilliant, really.
Robert: The 400 word sentence...Well, more and more I simply bow to the energy driving a particular piece, and my main work is staying out of my own way and letting the language go where it wants, where it must. Can sometimes almost close my eyes and let this happen. I wish I had a more sophisticated response to this, but after 25 yrs. of serious writing the truth is I understand it less and less, and this is a beautiful, wonderful thing.
Chila: Experimental essays are thrilling to me, especially when they also encompass many of the elements of the lyric essay. How would you differentiate between the two? And what do you feel they have in common?
Robert: For me every genre comes out of the lyric--it's just a question of degree. And maybe it's the case that any genuinely wild lyrical essay will be deemed experimental because it pushes and plays with boundaries--b/c, at least for me, it's like the late coach Jim Valvano running around looking for someone, anyone, everybody to hug. Yes, that's it: only connect, only connect, only connect. Or only touch, only embrace, only reach out.
Chila: Actually, you call this work a "dervish" essay. Tell me how that came about.
Robert: I've had the great good fortune of having taught a few times in Turkey--mainly in Samsun on the Black Sea where some of my dearest friends in the world live. I was exposed in a very real and direct way to Sufism and the works of Mevlana (Rumi). I'm still recovering. Thus the appellation of dervish essays, which I hope is not an appropriation in any way but a way to honor the beauty of what I came to know about Rumi's poetry and the country and people of Turkey.
Chila: You have a book of these coming out this spring. Where will we be able to find it? How long did it take to write?
Robert: Anchor & Plume will publish my first book of these called Mystery My Country this April [2016]. I'm thrilled and humbled by this. The book took me about two years to write.
Chila: What's your next project?
Robert: Right now I'm just working on more of these kinds of essays and holding on for dear life. I don't know where they will lead, but I didn't know where any of them have been heading.
Chila: Anything else you'd like to share with us, especially about writing?
Robert: Only that writing has become a way to celebrate the earth and my brief time on it. I can't believe how beautiful the planet is.
Many thanks to Robert for his unique essay and his thoughts here. I'm finding that those who seem to write the best lyrical pieces are likewise the greatest appreciators of our world and its surroundings, the macrocosm we call "home." Another interview by Robert over at Barnstorm may be of interest; it deals primarily with what he has labeled "the dervish essay." - Chila
Robert D. Vivian is an Assistant Professor of English at Alma College in Michigan, and also teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts low residency MFA program. He is author of The Tall Grass Trilogy, Water And Abandon, and two collections of meditative essays, Cold Snap As Yearning and The Least Cricket Of Evening. He has written more than twenty plays produced off and off-off Broadway, and his work has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Creative Nonfiction, Glimmertrain, Georgia Review, and elsewhere. His next book Mystery My Country will be published early spring, 2016.
Robert D. Vivian is an Assistant Professor of English at Alma College in Michigan, and also teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts low residency MFA program. He is author of The Tall Grass Trilogy, Water And Abandon, and two collections of meditative essays, Cold Snap As Yearning and The Least Cricket Of Evening. He has written more than twenty plays produced off and off-off Broadway, and his work has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Creative Nonfiction, Glimmertrain, Georgia Review, and elsewhere. His next book Mystery My Country will be published early spring, 2016.