Lyric essayIt’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a...hybrid form of creative nonfiction

Genesis

Most credit The Seneca Review 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 (Lifespan of a Fact; we’ll read more of his work in Intermediate Nonfiction)

Often described as a hybrid between nonfiction & poetry, but just as often, if not more often, manifests in myriad forms

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

We looked at flash nonfiction through Brevity Magazine earlier in the semester

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 last week, 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

Lyric Essay Assignment

Using one of the exercises on Page 123 of Tell It Slant, write a lyric essay that will be work shopped in class on Dec. 10 (rough draft due on Dec. 3; all these dates are on our class website)

FAQ:

Do I HAVE to use one of these 18 exercises? Can I make up my own?

I’d rather you use one of these exercises. But if you believe that none of these exercises serve your purposes and that you have a better idea, sure.

Can I actually do Exercise #18?

You are welcome to also record your assignment; but remember that it needs to be in written form for the class.

Other questions?