Jo Ann Beard's "The Fourth State of Matter"

THE INTERIOR GAZE: WEEK TWO. Plus: Join us tomorrow for a writing salon and reading discussion!

Jo Ann Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter” may be one of the best essays I’ve ever read.

It’s a master class in trusting one’s reader— Beard weaves several threads of tension throughout the text, starting with the very first opening paragraph.

Bascomb (who wrote the essay “Picturing the Personal Essay: A Visual Guide,” which was included in the Tuesday PDFs), categorizes Beard’s essay “narrative with a lift,” because of the ways in which she builds tension. “The tension,” he writes, “begs for a resolution.”

We begin with a collie, and a “we” that gestures outside of the essay’s present moment:

“The collie wakes me up about three times a night, summoning me from a

great distance as I row my boat through a dim, complicated dream. She’s

on the shoreline, barking. Wake up. She’s staring at me with her head slightly

tipped to the side, long nose, gazing eyes, toenails clenched to get a purchase

on the wood floor. We used to call her the face of love.”

Did you notice that “we” and the “used to” i…