Coming in March 2026
While some of my essays are a straightforward single line, most both tangle and untangle, both complicate and clarify. They puzzle as they ravel. And so, the same ravel of text can explore both the blending in a single moment of the exotic and mundane, of fullness and want, of love and abhorrence, of desire and contentment, of freedom and bondage, of severance and connection, and of the creative act as both an evocation and an imposition.
From the Preface in Ravelings:
Essays in Love, Loss, and Wonder
“Lisa Knopp’s essays invite us to notice the things of daily life while pointing us to what shimmers just beyond our line of vision. Knopp is clear-eyed and reverent as she harnesses examples from art and etymology, memory studies and theology, to explore loss, aging, and the rich layers of human appetite. These essays embody the holy work of paying attention, of forging connection, and of letting go. A luminous, tender collection by a master of the form.”—Sonja Livingston, author of The Virgin of Prince Street
“You want to go deep into Lisa Knopp’s essays. They’re not meant for a quick read. Detail is all. Like the impressionists she refers to, each one is itself, often without need for a story. Yet the rich story of her life runs through like a stream—the death of a beloved cat, the death of parents, eating doves, the comfort of a giant sweet potato, consulting the almanac, finding a lost car. These beautifully written essays are a record of a life lived with sensitivity and wisdom. Her essay ‘Still Life with Peaches’ is a map for how to see, how to find words for close-seeing. I couldn’t put this book down.”—Fleda Brown, author of The End of the Clockwork Universe
“Ravelings beautifully knits together the complexities of the head, the entanglements of the heart, and the all-too-human hungers that hit us right in the gut. These essays delve into the rich contradictions of singleness and connection, balance and chance, fullness and lack—always with a sense of wonder and intellectual grace. Thoughtful, poignant, and beautifully written, this is a book I will return to again and again.”—Randon Billings Noble, author of Be with Me Always: Essays
“In this collection of virtuoso essays, Lisa Knopp puzzles and ravels topics ranging from encountering her mother’s dead body to dancing with a broom. The lowly sweet potato, the exalted peach, the art of Renoir and Lassnig, all warrant her probing consideration. The essay on a familiar feeling with the little-known name of velleity is one of many startling discoveries lifted from the ordinary. With every deep dive into these streams of her life, we vibrate like a tuning fork, resonating and enriching our understanding of the intricate balances and delicious contradictions of everyday life.”—Pamela Carter Joern, author of At the Corner of Past and Future: A Collection of Life Stories
Excerpts from Ravelings
While I’m waiting for the light to change, something breaks into tiny pieces. They fall before me like confetti. Golden confetti. I don’t know if they’re coming from within or beyond me. Or perhaps they’re coming from the God who sometimes speaks by filling the sky with stars and whirlwinds, manna and angels, rain like stones, and chariots and pillars of fire. When I see the sunlit, golden pieces drifting down, I have the good sense to stop fiddling with the radio, to stop contemplating where I’ve been and where I’m going, to stop thinking and to just watch. The sparkling pieces don’t land on cars and pavement; nor are they taken by the wind. They fall, and then they’re gone. The light turns green.
A place so lacking in beauty, a place where I never expected to pass so much of my life, a place where I’m always alone because that is how I now move through most of my days, strikes me as an unworthy setting for this dazzling vision. And yet, what better place for beauty and blessedness to fall so unexpectedly and to vanish just as quickly than here?
From “Fleet” in Ravelings: Essays in Love, Loss, and Wonder
As we move across the river, I care less and less about either shore. What absorbs my attention is the buoyant, tinkling words and laughter wafting across the glittering water and the shoosh of the oar plying the water. I lean back in the seat and turn my face toward the shower of light created by short, fast brushstrokes of chalky blue, white, and a blush of pomegranate red, and the low sky, formed by rough and rapid brushstrokes of the same three colors. The sail on a distant boat carries a blue flame, at once shadow and light. It’s not enough to move across the flickering surface while my limp fingers dangle in the cool water: I want to enter the luminescent river; I want to take it into myself.
From “The Renoir” in Ravelings: Essays in Love, Loss, and Wonder
