Whether confronting a gravel road, a hallucinatory vision of a horse-woman, a deep sensitivity to noise, or the curiosity of crows, Robert Vivian sees the world in a novel way, and this collection gives readers the opportunity to share his unique and intriguing vision.

Robert Vivian’s stories, poems, essays, and plays have appeared in Georgia Review, Harper's, Glimmer Train, Massachusetts Review, Creative Nonfiction, Cross Currents, New Intensity, The Best Men's/Women's Stage Monologues of 1996–1998, and dozens of other publications. Many of his plays have been produced in New York City. He currently teaches English and creative writing at Alma College in Michigan.

“Crystalline and luminous. . . . The ravishing simplicity of Vivian’s prose is perfectly balanced by the peacock-plumed precision of his metaphors, such as the image of crows as the ‘dark hangnails of God,’ the sound of a broken back as ‘the click of a gear lock, or a key turning in a rusty door.’”—Kirkus Reviews

“In this collection of personal essays, Robert Vivian offers a series of vivid, intensely reflective, and soul-searching renderings of the lives and landscapes of the Great Plains. . . . The book’s many character sketches demonstrate his journalistic eye for detail and poetic ability to pierce the heart. . . . In its most luminescent moments—and there are many in this book—Cold Snap as Yearning takes on the pitch and gravity of spiritual autobiography, bringing to mind the work of such writers as Simone Weil and Thomas Merton, though the spiritual realm Vivian evokes is characterized more by divine absence than presence.”—Great Plains Quarterly

“Each of these vivid essays probes the mystery of encounter, that is, the impermanence of what our five senses tell us, despite the constancy of memory. Each is set in the Midwest, and in each, the author displays his uncanny ability to identify the fading present.”—Publishers Weekly

“[Vivian] achieves for his readers a sustained musical pitch on which his memorable observations of the daily and the ordinary can ride.”—Georgia Review

“Vivian’s writing is consistently poetic in the sense that such care has been taken in assembling every sentence, every phrase, that scarcely a word could be changed without lessening the effect. . . . Cold Snap as Yearning is a lovely book, a series of sharply focused lessons in introspection, in being on the outside of the world and looking in, only to discover that by looking closely you have magically passed through the mirror and are, to your pleasure, a part of it all.”—Ted Kooser, Lincoln Journal Star (NE)