For over two decades now, Albert Goldbarth has been cultivating his own hybrid essay variety. A marriage of warmth and intelligence, his essays are narratively driven but poetically lyrical, and openly personal while remaining dedicated to the pleasures of arcane research. "These are a whole new breed," Robert Atwan writes. "Albert Goldbarth has spliced strands of the old genre with a powerful new gene, and the results are miraculous."

In Griffin that crossbred creature comprised of eagle, lion, and serpent. Albert Goldbarth joins two essays to form one animal. "Roman Erotic Poetry," written on the cusp of a friend's divorce, explores that strangely compound beast we call marriage. "Wuramon," written on the cusp of a friend's struggle with cancer, considers that strangely compound being every one of us is: an amalgam of spirit and physical body. The resulting book is eccentric, learned, and moving.