michael-dean-k/

The main argument in Joyas Voladoras is “to live fully is to expose yourself to loss/pain.”

There are a few metaphors to support this argument:

• Hummingbirds (living intensely = more heart attacks)
• Whales (biggest hearts, susceptible to loneliness)
• Human examples (opening yourself to love = vulnerability to pain)

It’s a poetic exploration of a single POV, but it doesn’t get into the counter-angles. It uses the tortoise as a counter-point in one example, but dismisses it immediately. It could have covered:

• Living fully doesn’t have to bring pain (a Buddhist perspective)
• It’s better to live cautiously and protect yourself (pragmatism)
• Intensity isn’t worth the cost (conservativism).

Maybe this is a “lyrical essay” and it doesn’t aim to advance our thinking. But something that is an “essay” should be dialectic. It writes through dialectic tensions.

Great writers aren't necessarily great educators. If you're trying to actually transfer knowledge that a stranger across space and time can realistically implement, you might need a level of explicitness that would curl and destroy a memoiristic essay. Both McPhee and Gornick feel as if they care more about their own prose than their readers ability to write prose.