+

Lyric essay

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a...hybrid form of

creative nonfiction

+Genesis

The Seneca Review is widely credited for the nomenclature

and sudden popularity of the Lyric Essay (see its Fall, 1997

issue & subsequent issues; link on website)

Championed by writer John D’Agata we’ll look at more of his

work in Lyric Essay special topics class next semester)

Often described as a hybrid between nonfiction & poetry, but

just as often, if not more often, manifests in myriad forms

One of the most growing and exciting areas of creative fiction

right now, with lots of growing debate about the possibilities of

the form

+Characteristics

Emphasis on use of language, employment of visual imagery,

metaphor (not actually only the dominion of poets, but this is

largely the “lyric” element of the lyric essay)

Experimentation with form

“True” but less concerned with evidentiary means, exhaustive

argument, conventional methods of structure

+Language & Form

+

+Language

Emmanuel’s Spring

Chris Haven

Terrible Emmanuel plants. He has seen what can come of the earth and he digs. Rotting peels and tin cans first. Blue shirts and sweat. He considers his wing but refrains. This is a crop. Sequins and stone. A diamond. Fourteen tree stumps and he needs a bigger hole. A checkered rag and Jimmy Carter’s teeth. Black beards. Anthracite coal and light sweet crude and a ticker machine. The hole goes deep. It is transformative. Knives and the buttons from every machine. A glass jar. Window screens. A dusting of his own dominion. It occurs to him the hole is incomplete and he wishes he could take the happiness he sees but that’s outside his creation. It should always be buried, he thinks, because of what the darkness can do. The last in is black smoke. He fills the hole and regards the mound with disdain. His earlier optimism saddens him. He realizes that the child he was, the one who believed in the earth, is buried in that hole. He considers his hand. The shovel has bitten into his skin. It has left ragged marks like teeth around an apple. Terrible Emmanuel turns and sniffs the air. Spring will have to wait. There’s more burying to do.

+Form

What you’ll see with many lyric essays are experimentations

with form, and it’s constrictive to say “here are the forms of the

lyric essay.”

Nonetheless, there are some forms that tend to be used with

some frequency, as outlined in “Tell It Slant”

(But devising one’s own form is entirely appropriate)

+Prose Poem/Flash Nonfiction

Flash creative nonfiction is a very popular form right now (see

Brevity Magazine online for some of the best examples). These

are very short—Brevity’s flash essays are 750 words or less).

Flash nonfiction—like a prose poem—hones in more on

language and imagery—where the concise nature of the form

requires close attention to each word

As with all poetry, this form also focuses on rhythm and

cadence (although, again, poetry is not the only genre

concerned with rhythm and cadence).

+Flash

ANOTHER EPIC

BY DANTE DI STEPHANO

I have lived in important places, times

—Patrick Kavanagh

I could tell you everything that happened on Linden Street the year the Berlin Wall fell. That was the

year the Hanrahan boy grew his hair to the middle of his back and rode his bike down the block at

seven a.m. sharp every school day. The Perry twins, with red hair longer than the Hanrahan boy’s,

vied for the affections of Dino Taglione and the older girl won. The pipes burst on 20 Linden, and we

lost the love letters my grandmother had bundled in hatboxes and stored in a corner of the cellar.

Masty Hubba danced for loosies and beer in front of the Brickyard Tavern all summer, and

somebody kept stealing the copper gutters off Saint Mary’s rectory roof. Monsignor Brigandi kept

replacing them, and he would curse and pray as he paced the block, throughout all the high holy

days of Ordinary Time, like Achilles in his tent.

—

+COLLAGE

The idea behind collage is to fit together—in writing—otherwise

fragmented pieces, in order to create a whole.

Super easy! (Super kidding). But there are many fine examples

of collage essay to consider. For instance, “Tell It Slant” cites

David Shields’ piece “Life Story,” a lyric essay composed

entirely of bumper sticker slogans that that take the reader

“from the crib to the grave.”

+Braided Essay

Like the collage, uses fragments to create a new whole; like

certain forms of poetry, uses repetition, the reappearance of

certain “strands” of the braid.

“Fourth State of Matter,” which we read earlier in the semester,

is one example of a braided essay, because the author has two

“strands” she weaves back and forth

A braided essay can also be significantly more fragmented than

Beard’s piece (and shorter)

+Hermit Crab

The form itself is a metaphor, as you read in Tell It Slant. The

hermit crab has no armor, so spends its (his/her? Unsure of

hermit crab biology, I’m afraid) life occupying other creatures’

shells.

Example in text is Lorrie Moore’s “How to Become a Writer,”

which uses the “self help” shell/instructional manual format to

tell what is in fact a personal lyric story

In “The Pain Scale,” Eula Bliss uses the form of the pain scale

as her structure. Let’s look at that essay

+Upcoming Lyric Essay Assignment

Choose one of the Lyric Essay exercises on page 123 of Tell It

Slant. Bring any materials you need for the assignment you’ve

chosen to class to write in class on April 22. You don’t need to

anything else to prepare. Preparation may just mean thinking

about it.