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| Essays
and Articles by Emily Hiestand |
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To explore these essays and articles, click the titles or More. For info about book publications, go to Books. Happy reading.
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Hymn
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Recipient of The National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism — A tribute to the wisdom and community of an urban black church |
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The Constant Gardener March 2007 expanded version
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A journey to Sweden and the home of naturalist Carolus Linnaeus. ”Settled so early it is mentioned in Norse mythology, the Uppsala region is the oldest part of Sweden, long the seat of the pagan Svea kings, whose deities were Thor, Freyr, and Odin, and whose burial mounds still rise in nearby Gamla (Old) Uppsala. The city today stretches out along the flatlands by the Fyris River, then ripples up a tall glacial ridge, culminating at its highest elevation in a massive 17th century castle whose great bulk is considerably leavened by being painted pink — the color of a poached salmon." More |
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Dept.
of Real Places The Atlantic Monthly August 2001 |
“The newest aid to navigation along the New England coast is a cluster of ovoid structures that loom 130 feet tall, and rather perkily for such giants, on the tip of Deer Island, in Boston Harbor. The eggs, as they are commonly called (and there are a dozen), cut a dashing, futuristic figure against the blue-green Atlantic: Rem Koolhaas meets the Jetsons meets Fabergé." More |
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of Ellis |
“Peering
in the windows, I see no metal shelves
laden with wheel bearings and chrome-plated
parts. No custom wheels, radar detectors,
bike racks, or fog lamps. No fuzzy dice.
No grilles. The mind reels. Ellis the
Rim Man had seemed a permanent fixture,
so welded into the life of our city,
and so emblematic of America's obsession
with automobiles, that it would be with
us forever.” More |
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Warm
Spell Bostonia 2001 |
“Whenever
I am out like this, marveling at the
so-called ordinary world, I like to remember
that aimless wandering is a respectable
activity in some parts of the globe.
By which I mean Paris." More |
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| Water
Park Bostonia 2002 |
“Circulating
on the banks of the river, breathing
deeply, letting myself be drawn from
one blue-green fact to another, I have
often felt like Wimpy
buoyant on the scent from some nearby kitchen." More |
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| “The
land that may become civic treasure lies
in deep shadow, pulverized by cranes,
edged by Jersey barriers. But who will
be surprised to hear that even in this
condition the terrain is full of allure,
and the countless small things that could
stop Flaubert in his tracks." More |
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“In another kind of guide, I would place the blue jay with the great collage artists, with Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell, Jean Arp, and Louise Nevelson, all those bricoleurs who take the occasion of a fragmenting world to practice a recombinatory art—linking decorum and glitz, high and lo, the funny and elegiac, making a moody frisson of the commonplace."
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Bostonia |
"The rooms are inhabited now mostly by a first-rate collection of remnants: scraps of paper, fragments of plaster and wood, bits of wire and string, a whole solar system of stray marks, splatters, and whirling stains—the textures, colors, and rhythms of happenstance. Art studios everywhere bloom with this engaging accumulation, the unintentional by-product of creativity." More
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Toward the Livable City Milkweed Press 2003
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"Along with good shop talk and more fun than you might imagine, journeys to infrastructure give the visitor deep respect for the souls who build and tend these bastions. At Deer Island, I ate a sandwich lunch on the seawall with a young mason named Kevin who is continuing a family tradition of building local infrastructure. “My dad built I-93,” he told me, proudly, “and my granddad built the Boston & Maine Railroad.” I loved the way this young man gave his forebears total credit for the massive interstate and rail transportation projects, as if the two of them were his own personal Paul Bunyans. Which, of course, they are." More info
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Introduction Milkweed Press 2000 |
"Ideas about nature are famously malleable. Take a peek, and Shazamm! you have opened what Casey Stengal once called 'a box of Pandoras.'" This essay is the introduction to a terrific collection of poems, edited by Laure-Anne Bosselaar, including works by Czeslaw Milosz, Chase Twichell, Jeffrey Harrison, Martin Espada, and Derek Walcott. More info
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Joanne reflected in a tide pool
Halibut Point, Cape Ann
Photograph ©2003 Emily Hiestand
