Yoke and Feather

A hybrid collection of braided and narrative essay, litany, prayer, ekphrasis, etymology, and reimagining of myth, Yoke & Feather explores the complex relationship between freedom and obligation. Anchored in a rural mountain childhood, this collection ranges from blessings for the demolition derby and the public-school lice check to Boquillas Canyon along the Rio Grande, to the kitchen of the biblical sisters, Mary and Martha, as they welcome their improbable foster daughter.

Inspired by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg’s interdisciplinary study of midrash, these essays delight in the possibilities concealed beneath the apparent text of the biblical narrative: what might have happened before and after, above and below the porous ancient myth. Reimaginings of Moses, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, and others stream alongside the narrator’s twenty-first century experiences: post-divorce online dating, a new partnership with a single father, the struggle with midlife childlessness, and the conundrums of teaching creative writing in a world of unending crisis.

With Jessie van Eerden’s keen ear for prose and a spirituality informed by rural Appalachia, these lyric essays seek to explore the ways our deepest obligations may lead us to our most authentic forms of freedom.