The Artist Must Begin in Love: A Book Review by Anna A. Friedrich

“...the artist must begin in love and create out of that…” - E. Lily Yu

Don’t look for the Table of Contents when you pick up E. Lily Yu’s new book Break, Blow, Burn, & Make: A Writer’s Thoughts on Creation because you will not find one. I read this book about a week ago, truth be told, in one sitting. Throughout that day, I realized how much I usually reference the Table of Contents in every book I read. Not in novels, of course, but (more) truth be told, I read considerably more non-fiction than fiction, and I have a habit (I’ll blame my dad for this one) of referencing the Contents again and again as I read to figure out where I am, where I’m going, and the general shape of the author’s intent. 

I’m a poet and an Arts Pastor at a city church in Boston, and I try to read as much as I can in the realm of faith and art. I love the work I get to do, and I’ve been shaped by Annie Dillard, Mako Fujimura, Malcolm Guite, Mary Oliver, Jeremy Begbie, Anne Lamott, Andy Crouch, Madeleine L’Engle, Austin Kleon, Julia Cameron, David Taylor, Sarah Arthur—the list is long. In fact, I’m slowly, slowly attempting to write a creativity-unblocking book, myself, inspired by The Artist’s Way, but baptized. So when I see a new book appear on the scene, I am both elated and sheesh, to tell an embarrassing truth—I get a little sting in my chest imagining that this, THIS, is probably the book I want to write, should have written by now, and it’s likely to be way better than anything I’m capable of writing. 

So, I ordered Yu’s book, texted some friends to say I finally found the book that I failed to write and waited for its arrival in the mail. When I got it in my hands, I was first struck by its beauty. Whitney J. Hicks did the jacket design, according to the back flap, and it’s inviting—the design is a simple organic twig of leaves interwoven with the title. The phrase connected to something in my mind, but I couldn’t quite place it. Yu eventually discloses that her title comes from Donne’s poem “Batter my heart three-person’d God”:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

A poem that never fails to make me squirm. I’ve been a follower of this Three Person’d God since my earliest years, but I haven’t prayed this way yet. I am rather enjoying the knocking, breathing, shining, and seeking to mend—that’s as dramatic as I want the Holy Spirit to be in my life. Yu’s title is bold, and her book is bold. 

E. Lily Yu has won some prestigious awards as a novelist, and this new book is her first foray into nonfiction. By reading every word of the Acknowledgments (another habit I think I got from my dad), I learned that she wrote this book after being encouraged to do so by her Substack subscribers. Imagine that! I’m glad they did, and we should all be thankful to the two paid subscribers she particularly mentions: Susan Gossman and Misha Stone.

So the book is new, beautifully designed, has a bold and poetic title, and she’s apparently a good writer (on Substack, no less!). Now you are in the exact same place I was when I cracked it open. 

The journey inside the pages is a delight—fresh, clear, energizing, convicting, practical, and winsome. It’s made up of three equal parts (a nod to Donne?), accompanied by three simple drawings that begin with a leaf, advance to a branch, and culminate in a full-leafed tree. 

The first section is a diagnosis and an invitation. Her diagnosis is literary, cultural, and religious. She grieves the unmet hunger that is so present in many peoples’ souls—whether they’re scrolling social media, reading a new novel or a book review, or listening to a sermon at church—a hunger that she claims is rarely addressed, let alone satisfied with true bread. 

She doesn’t exceed the limits of her expertise by attempting to comment on every single sphere of life, or diagnosing worldwide problems. Rather, she mostly writes about this hunger, as she senses it, in the literary world, while still making reasonable connections with our broader society and with the Christian church in particular. She explicitly names this hunger in herself as the very reason she wrote the book. What is this hunger? 

Your imagination probably needs a good bath before you can hear the answer to that, and her first few pages offer it, but I’ll tell you anyway since this is a book review. The thing we are all hungering for is Love. But before you start imagining pink hearts, hand-in-hand walks on the beach, candlelit dinner, or whatever, let this wash over you:

Yu writes,

By love I mean what Erich Fromm meant, a practice and discipline of giving of one’s own aliveness to another … I mean generous and disinterested agape rather than passionate eros or fond philia. I mean the love that created the universe, that brings order to chaos and meaning to suffering and causes growth in its proper time. (pg. 8)

“Giving of one’s own aliveness”—while of course, this is the way we’re meant to live as followers of Jesus (the ultimate giver of His aliveness), Yu is writing about the craft of writing. This kind of love needs to be the flame that ignites our writing. It’s the kind of writing she says is now terribly hard to find, the kind that she herself attempts to write, and the kind of writers she invites her readers to become. More than once, my eyes swam with tears, and as I put my finger in the book to keep my place, I folded it shut and quietly prayed, “Yes, Lord, let my own writing be fueled by this Love. Let me give of my aliveness in my poems.” 

She writes of bread, and she writes of fire. “To inspire human beings with grace, love, and wisdom—to plant a pale spark in another person’s spirit, and breathe upon it, that the soul might quicken to flame—this is and has always been the unspoken, unwritten duty of writers, artists, and God.” (pg. 18)

The first section ends with a long and wonderfully winding chapter titled “Reading Badly, Reading Well,” where Yu offers an invitation into the kind of reading (and therefore living) that joins mature love to wisdom. The way she addressed the work of the Reader was especially fresh to me. The whole second part of the book is devoted to the craft of writing, but she begins with all kinds of charges to Readers, and I am taking each one to heart. 

Part two is a breakdown of writer’s craft, from understanding the writing life as a vocation to the call for courage and solitude, and much more. I won’t pretend to be your Table of Contents here; you’ll have to read it to uncover what comes before and after such a sentence as, “The artist dies to self, burns, and becomes transparent not out of self-hatred but out of love, so that something greater than the self might come into being.” (pg. 86)

Yu says the most about being a Christian who is a writer in part three. From my perspective, this book is surprisingly hospitable to Christians and non-Christians. The way she interacts with novels and with our cultural moment is compelling no matter your faith, and yet, for a long-time Christian like myself, her way of naming and prodding me towards obedience was clarifying and convicting. 

Her heroes and heroines are summoned, George MacDonald perhaps most of all. She offers up ways to pray before creative work, and she devotes a chapter to getting outside. Literally. She doesn’t resort to “Touch grass,” but God bless her for writing this much-needed reminder, “If we returned our attention to nature, we would realize that life can never be unvarying happiness under a cloudless sky. It is instead a sifting of sediments, a cracking open, a melting, a solidifying, a structuring.” (pg. 205)

This book has no Table of Contents, and it reads like a novel in some ways—when you begin, you must submit to the story, entrust yourself to the author’s leading, and the rewards are manifold. She ends the book with a hopeful image from a George MacDonald story, urging writers and readers in a way that I can only call pastoral:

“To live as if this story is true, despite our doubts, in spite of the active and encircling darkness and the falsity and cruelty in the world—to believe that every human being is beloved of the Creator, and formed to do a beautiful work that no one else can do, if only she will let that love transform her utterly and set her hands to the task is to fly through darkness toward a flame.” (pg. 216)

May it be so. Oh, and I’m still planning to write my book.

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Anna A. Friedrich is a poet and arts pastor in Boston, MA. She shares a poem every Wednesday morning at annaafriedrich.substack.com and her first poetry collection, Under the Terebinth, is forthcoming from Wipf and Stock.