By Amie Drudge
“There’s a geometrical aspect to grieving that I’m just starting to become aware of, and I’m learning it from these parents who don’t even seem aware of my presence. This roundness is the one, ongoing constant that I sense in this room, the vital link between each parent and the rest of us who have not yet undergone the transformation of ultimate loss.”
– “These Faces” by Robert Vivian (River Teeth 6.1, Fall 2004)
Writing the hard stuff is almost always difficult for the writer. The hope is that it will be equally cathartic for the reader, especially when the work finds a reader who has intimate experience with the subject matter at hand. In this beautiful essay, Robert Vivian’s subject matter is as brutal as it gets: the faces of humans who have lost a child. He quickly reveals, in the second paragraph, that he is not one of these faces. As a reader who has experienced the loss of a child, I am left keening to dissect how it is that he is able to give us such an intimate portrait of these unlucky, grieving faces and how he, who has not lost, writes with such angular authority on the subject. Let’s examine how he does this.
The first thing he does is reveal to his reader the detail that sets up the entire essay- his own loss-less face. Why does he set himself apart from the grievers so quickly? By doing so, he is able to establish a physical juxtaposition, one that he uses throughout the entire essay. This juxtaposition comes in the form of geometry. He describes grieving faces as “round” and his own loss-less face as “angular”. This contrast of opposing shapes immediately gives the reader a deeper understanding of loss and grief, and allows for a nuanced reflection on the complexity of what he is describing.
Reading further into the essay, he continues to contrast “round” vs “angular” faces repetitively. This adds quite a punch each time by not only pinging and ponging back and forth with the differences between the two, but also digging to find elements that are metaphorically similar. For example, he uses metaphors like “loping shoelaces,” “invisible hoops,” “ground zero,” and others to get at roundness. Meanwhile, “spikes,” “shards,” and “sticking” bring to mind angularity. This does its job at suggesting different emotional or psychological qualities, playing on the association of these shapes with different characteristics. “Round” evokes a sense of warmth, softness, or approachability:
“I want to let them know somehow what witnessing their grief means to me, how this same roundness I sense in the room is like so many invisible hoops coming together just above their heads to partake of the infinite pity, the one that goes on forever into the heart of love’s mystery.”
All the while “angular” evokes sharpness, intensity, or a more distant, severe quality. He piles metaphor on top of alliteration, creating a staccato-like rhythm to allow the reader the feeling of angularity as they read:
“Now it seems to me that other people, including myself, are blasé in their comings and goings, and have about them something that’s sticking up or sticking out that will eventually succumb to this same roundness, the edges more or less resembling brittle clefts or cliffs that will finally need to go, judgements and assumptions sticking out like two-by-fours, with spiky waves of energy I have come to think of as illusory senses of being and innocence, perhaps even smugness.”
By placing these two terms side by side, Vivian isn’t just describing the physical appearance of faces. He is using these shapes as metaphors to explore deeper contrasts in human nature—perhaps the tension between gentleness and hardness, openness and reservation, or other dualities in the human condition.
Vivian’s essay thrives on the tension between roundness and angularity. It is in the coexistence of these qualities – fluidity and sharpness, inclusion and division – that the beauty and complexity of life are revealed.
Vivian turns the metaphorical interplay of sharp vs round into a geometrical meditation on what it means to see and truly be seen in the world. I, for one, feel so very seen and long to ask him what loss granted him such full access to planet grief.
Writing Exercise:
- List three hard topics that are difficult for you to write about or perhaps a topic that might be difficult for you to read, i.e. grief, family, love, loss.
- Make a list of ten opposites, i.e. square/circle, long/short, up/down.
- Pick a pair out of your list of opposites and list out other objects/things that are the same geometrical shape OR things that might universally come to mind when thinking of this object. Make sure to do both objects in the pair.
- Now write a few paragraphs comparing and contrasting the two elements with the hard thing you are writing.
Amie Drudge is a mother, a wife, and a creative nonfiction writer. She is well-read, though still finding her written voice—one of the many reasons she is in the Creative Writing program at Ball State University. A lover of words, dogs, cats, and family, Amie balances life as a writer by day and a passionate reader by night. She often feels there aren’t enough hours in a lifetime to read everything worth reading. Her dream is to write a book that tells her story—one that helps others feel a little less alone in this crazy world.
Photo by Caroline Attwood on Unsplash
