Ode
This week’s writing prompt is inspired by Brian Doyle’s essay, “Joyas Voladoras”—an ecstatic ode to the heart, especially and ultimately the human heart—and a subsequent conversation Doyle had about the piece (with writer/interviewer Nick Ripatrazone) in the journal Contemporary Catholic Literature. In that interview, Doyle answers a question about the genesis and composition of “Joyas”:
NR: “Joyas Voladoras” made me cry at a public library, and each time I read the essay to my students I have to fight back tears. You're able to create such authentic sentiment in the piece. Could you discuss the genesis and composition of this essay?
BD: “Waaaal – it’s part of a book called The Wet Engine, about hearts, and how they work and don’t work, and how our species began fiddling with them with knives and medicines and such, written out of roaring terror for one of my sons, who was born missing a chamber in his heart (bit of a logistical problem that), and who was saved by many people especially a terrific cardiologist whom I came to greatly admire, and the book is also very much a celebration of him and his quiet wife, brave and gracious and complex souls. So ‘Joyas’ started as my maniacal notes about all sorts and sizes and shapes of hearts – I don’t know about other writers, but I tend to collect lots of pieces and stories and facts and shreds and tales and bits and then sort of mill them with my fingers and heart to see what might happen – and what happened was a sudden burst of an essay. I mean, that’s how I appear to write nonfiction books, essay by essay, almost – brief passages that tend to be essayshapely because I think I am an essayist in my bones—but ‘Joyas’ spun up and away from the facts into something else. I well remember sitting here at my desk sobbing as I was typing the end of it—the end coming as a great heaving surprise to me. One of the sweetest hardest things about being a writer, I think, is that you are often startled at what comes gushing out of you, given the chance, given the channel, given the craft preparation to give it a chance – sometimes hilarious and odd, but also sometimes painful and bruising….”