What does it mean for a piece of prose to be “poetic’ or “like poetry’? This week, we’re looking at the lyric essay. A lyric essay is an essay that is more experimental in its structure, often fragmented or playful, with heightened poetic effects such as figurative language. Rather than using straightforward narrative or argument, it may be more impressionistic, mosaic, or collaged in its structural approach. The lyric essay also tends to move more associatively from thought to thought. Brenda Miller explains it on page 108 as “songlike’:
Lyric poetry and essays are songlike in that they hinge on the inherent rhythms of language and sound. Lyric essays favor fragmentation and imagery; they use white space and juxtaposition as structural elements. They are as attuned to silences as they are utterance.
Miller also quotes the introduction to the Seneca Review’s thirtieth-anniversary-issue on lyric essays, which is a good treatise to read if you are interested in learning more:
These “poetic essays” or “essayistic poems” give primacy to artfulness over the conveying of information. They forsake narrative line, discursive logic, and the art of persuasion in favor of idiosyncratic meditation. . .Given its genre mingling, the lyric essay often accretes by fragments, taking shape mosaically – its import visible only when one stands back and sees it whole. The stories it tells may be no more than metaphors. Or, storyless, it may spiral in on itself, circling the core of a single image or idea, without climax, without a paraphrasable theme. The lyric essay stalks its subject like quarry but is never content to merely explain or confess. It elucidates through the dance of its own delving.
Be sure to also read Miller’s breakdown of the many different forms lyric nonfiction can adopt in your assigned chapter from Tell It Slant: flash, collage, braided (challah), and hermit crab. She does a pretty good job explaining how these essays can work in accessible ways. Sometimes such essays juggle many different modes at once: personal, political, intellectual, factual or scientific, metaphorical, etc. They may also sample or use techniques from different genres: poetry, fiction, drama, journalism, song, and film.
Maybe you’re a bit confused, and that’s okay. The lyric essay is a more advanced form of essay, complicated in strategy. The lyric essay takes a lot of work to make “good.’ It is not for everyone, and even those who appreciate experimental writing or forms may still become frustrated if it is done sloppily and pointing in too many directions to follow. We aren’t going to write a lyric essay in this course, but it is a useful category to know if you hope to continue writing creative nonfiction in the future, or if you plan to take ENGL 377 (Intermediate Nonfiction).
The lyric essay form is perhaps better suited to certain topics or inquiries than others. For example, maybe the essay concerns a process, and so using a received form or numerical formula is a productive way to structure it, e.g. The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous or the Five Stages of Grief. Another topic for which you might adopt the lyric essay strategy is trauma, or if you are writing about an experience or circumstance in which your psychological state is vulnerable, dreamlike, or questionable. There, the gaps in narrative may simulate that experience (e.g. of recovering from a concussion), and/or experimentation (e.g. a collage form) may also help you to navigate your memory in a way that more accurately reflects its slipperiness. Consider issues or themes in your life that would be well suited for a lyric essay.
“Woven’ by Yuknavitch and “On Shining and Staring/ On Ruin’ by Gallagher are the examples of lyric essays you read for this week. Please post your reading response on them below. Do you think the “poetic” nature of these pieces enhances or hinders your reading experience? Do you think the topics chosen demand the experimental structures they used?
Christy Barrett
I agree that certain topics are better for this type of lyric writing. In Woven by Yuknavitch, the story is literally woven. She weaves in and out of her story to substories. She skips around with the liberty of poetry. It feels like bits of stories woven into one, and she did it amazingly. I never lost interest. I never got bored. Her descriptions are beautiful like when she describes the air in her lungs as concrete. That is exactly how I would expect my lungs to feel in that moment had I been on the wrong end of that gun. There is a freedom in this writing, and she extends to the far reaches of it. She starts this story in a bar, then we learn a lot about this woman… secret things we shouldn’t know, or so it seems. Then we are in the bar again. I really enjoyed this. She mentions that she will try again, like the story was too much to put to paper the first time. She had to weave her thoughts into other loops before she could come back to this. The woven straw star. It’s clearly a difficult memory, and for good reason. She tells it as if the way she is telling it is a coping mechanism… like if she tells it just this way, she can tell it. And I felt that. A painful and raw story told exquisitely.
I have a few favorite lines in this one: 1) The laugh of girls before their voices thin out and tighten from the exhaustion of womanhood. 2) My question is, “Where does my love come from that I walk through male violence to find it?” 3) Woman. Like anyone even knows what that is still. 4) But at the time it seemed everyone, even the moon, was laughing and drunk.
I particularly like the last one. Because when we are laughing and drunk, it’s true. We think everyone else is, too.
Miranda Reynolds
At first, Yuknavitch’s use of folklore braided in and out of her personal experience felt somewhat jarring. The beginning scene when she is at the bar felt very disconnected from her use of the spirit Laume. I was dubious as to how these two themes were supposed to fit together. However, as I read more, the surprising nature of her personal life juxtaposed with the folklore gave the narrative an interesting twist, transforming her experiences into seeming more dream-like and not entirely real. The use of folklore helped give the piece life beyond simply being a confession of the hardships that she had never been brave enough to tell. Then, after reading the rest of her essay and thinking about the seemingly disconnected nature of the beginning at the bar, it seems to suggest an epigraph to her piece, even though it is not a quote. The scene mirrors what she learns as she moves through the narrative, that everyone is made of many different pieces woven together and that we cannot be defined by any one thing. It shows how she learns to loosen up and judge herself less.
I would also definitely say that her essay demands the experimental structure in order to guide the reader to her point. The particular myths of Laume that she chooses bring enlightenment to her own personal threads. In one pairing she precedes a personal instance of her husband holding a gun to her chest with the tragic story of Egle, the queen of the serpents, and Zilvinas, an eel prince. The myth attempts to explain the misunderstandings that come about because of the differences between two ways of life: land and sea. Coming directly after this, her memory of her husband holding the gun expresses a larger theme than domestic violence. It also seems to echo her feelings about love being misunderstanding and confusing most of the time. I think that without her folkloric approach, Yuknavitch’s essay would not have had the same broad impact. The myths gave a more personal touch to the themes that she related, allowing her to write about painful subject matter in a more accessible way.
Nadia Finley
The topics of “Woven” and “On Shining and Staring/On Ruin,” by nature call for a lyric form. The short, non-linier paragraphs of “On Shining” mirror both the disorientation of intoxication and the desperation of sobriety within intense desire. Written out in a more formal or traditionally structured way, “On Shining” would not have had the freedom to pull in so many random memories without feeling like a jumbled up mess. The small breaks, the headings that introduce ideas that flow into one another, these cues pull the piece together in subconscious transitions and breath spaces.
For “Woven,” the very nature of traumatic experiences and personal shame call for a slant way of drawing out Yuknavitch’s deeper story. With the essay seeming to be themed “magical story time,” “Woven” almost feels like a hermit crab essay. Yuknavitch gives bits and pieces of the deeper story within large chunks of mythical stories, perhaps as a way of stating the painful without having to mentally go back to those memories herself.
The poetic writing, alongside being enjoyable to read, further draws out the emotional aspect of each piece. I loved the flow of the phrases, particularly in “Woven.” Each section flowed so naturally.
Without the lyrical form, I don’t think either of these essays would have been written because of the heavily emotional aspect of each topic. Though, when writing in lyrical style, I do think that care should definitely be given in placing similar thoughts next to each other to juxtapose ideas. Personally, I think that I could easily find myself going in all sorts of disconnected directions in an essay with such loose guidelines for structure.
Adeline Knavel
I have been a fan of lyric writings and reading lyric essays, many of them are written all over the place and seem sloppy. Lyric writings have the stereotype of being known as “sloppy”, while Woven by Lidia Yuknavitch’s writing was literally woven together and well written. Woven by Lidia Yuknavitch is woven together, she weaves inside and out of her story and throughout her writing with smaller substories of her life. Her story bounces around and is like many little stories like it’s woven together. One of my favorite lines in her story was when she wrote about how she laughed so hard that she let out a little poop neon blue tights. I liked how when she was writing her story she went from talking about how she was old and pooped her pants from laughing to then writing about when she was four years old and hearing of the water spirit folklore. Lidia Yuknavitch had used so much emotion in her writing that her story wasn’t one of the stereotypical “sloppy” lyric essays but a well-written piece of work. Her poetic writing style and the abundance of emotion in her writing made her piece enjoyable to read.
Ainsley Smith
Yuknavitch’s essay, “Woven” is a very interesting essay to read. “Woven” calls for lyric form when branching off into different memories and into folklore. It pieces together both literary, mystical fantasies and ties them with her own personal vulnerabilities and story. The author did an excellent job with incorporating Laume into her essay in both an effective and capturing way. Laume tied together with her own stories, making the two separate worlds come together in harmony. Using that juxtaposition helped enhance the creativity of her work, capturing me more in her words. Her use of metaphors and imagery gave her story more depth. Her essay flowed like water, easy to read and comprehend when balancing both folklore and her personal life. Describing people as “a woven person” sums up her essay with clarity; showing that people have made mistakes, victories, went through hardship, and people survived. If she didn’t use such poetic structures, the essay would lose lots of its meaning, making it almost ordinary.
The essay, “On Shining and Staring/On Ruin,” by Gallagher also calls for a lyric form. Throughout the essay, she is constantly referring back into her memories, whether she was drunk or sober giving her essay a disorientated mood. It resembled a “hot mess” but it flowed easily though her timeline and maturity. The memories and the writing held emotional baggage that Gallagher had carried through her life, giving more meaning to her essay. The lyrical writing gave the essay more depth, allowing me to empathize with her. If there wasn’t a lyrical structure to her writing, I feel as though her experience of being in love with drinking would be highlighted rather than the experiences and memories she learned from.
Kyleigh McArthur
I felt like “Woven” was very well written and being written in a poetic way helped this piece. I was instantly pulled into the story, reading it from beginning to end without getting distracted with anything, which is a good accomplish for me because I am usually easily distracted while reading. It was so personal and just drew me in I loved it. I felt like this intimate story or set of stories was shared with me and that is a special feeling. I was sad when learning about all the trauma that Yuknavitch experienced, she had to deal with a lot. I could almost feel what she felt when her student apologized on behalf of marines and gave her a hug, she must have felt like so much was lifted off her shoulders. To finally be free of an experience is such a lifting and freeing feeling for lack of a better word. The other essay, “On Shining and Staring/ On Ruin,” felt different to me. It didn’t read as well as the other one to me, it felt a bit more jumbled. It kind of felt like I was reading through someones diary who didn’t write in it everyday, but only would write entries when they remembered. I didn’t connect with this story which could be my fault for not understanding it as well, but it could also be because the writing style wasn’t working too well.
Jewel Blanchard
In Woven by Yuknavitch, her lyric essay enhanced my reading experience. The way she weaves the folk tale and her story made it so interesting. What was even more interesting for me was that Yuknavitch didn’t just tell one story from her life but multiple stories from her life and the folktale that she told matched so well with the story she was trying to tell. I had no idea what lyric essays/writing was until this week. Lyric writing seems like a hard thing to accomplish but Yuknavitch does so well executing her stories with her folktale, it had my interest the entire time reading it. I believe the topic Yuknavitch chooses demands the experimental structures she used.
In On shining and Staring/ On Ruin by Gallagher, she discusses herself and her memories. She also talks about her drinking throughout the story. For me personally, I was not quite interested in this story. I’d have to say that Gallagher’s lyric essay hindered my experience. That doesn’t mean it is not well written, it just means that I didn’t get what I think I was supposed to get from it. I believe that the topics Gallagher uses demands the experimental structures they used, I just wasn’t interested in the stories myself.
Curtis Wolfe
I’m not entirely sure if I have ever read a lyric essay before. But I could understand how certain topics can make for better lyric writing. In Woven, Yuknavitch did an excellent job of weaving her story between folk tale and her real life experiences. She had a nice flow to her story telling, although at times I did have to go back and read previous paragraphs to gather a better understanding on how these essays are created. I think trying anything new creates a chance to enhance myself, although it might feel like I’m hindered by it right now. I think going back and rereading these essays all help be grasp a better idea on how to create my own one day. I believe that both of the essays had to be in the structure that they used. If they used a different structure, I don’t believe that the essays would have had such a dramatic impact on the reader.
katie hopper
I found that Yuknavitch’s weaving was well done and necessary to bring these narratives together to fill in the gaps of the story she really wanted to tell. I can’t say that I loved this piece in its entirety, but I enjoyed the form and feeling her stream of consciousness as she tried to work through this memory that wasn’t all there, coming to terms with its brutality. The folktale part lost me a little in places, but she found a way to find me again with symbols woven throughout the piece. I enjoy the moments where tempo feels deliberate, executing the scene the syllables seek to echo. I adored Gallager’s piece “On Shining and Staring / On Ruin” for both its form and content. It renders some chronology without actually listing it, using moments of sobriety as time stamps. The anecdotes under subheadings of city names animate her No Wine ruminations poetically, perfectly. Relationships to something like alcohol are complex and rooted in memory that is blurred and I enjoyed the places she found her memory to build this portrait that comes to no true conclusion, a work ever in progress.
Andrew S.
I really enjoyed reading lyrical essays for the first time, and Woven really stood out to me. It’s easy for essays to become walls of text that make it more difficult to really take in what’s being said. Woven was written in a series of vignettes, using the mythical spirit of Laume to tie the narratives narratives together. Written in a traditional format, I might think that this would be an unnecessary if not tacky way of holding it all together. But, because it’s using a more lyrical, rhythmic, and abstract format to describe very real events, everything seemed to flow much better.
I think that lyric essays are a fantastic technique when they’re used to counteract the overall dryness of literal description; they inject more creativity and personality into it. That being said, I don’t think any topic demands this style– it just happens to work well for these pieces. Any topic can be covered with any style if done right, even if one style is generally accepted as being more well-suited to the topic than the other. Essentially, it’s not the what, but the HOW that makes an experimental structure mesh well with a topic for an essay.
Johnny Bishop
In Woven I really liked the details that she uses to describe different types of violence in her stories. When she talks about the sting of being stabbed twice and her girlfriend being partially paralyzed and neurologically damaged brought the story to life even if she was just retelling it. The fact that two marines were responsible made me realize that anybody is capable of violence. I think she uses the structures very well.
In on shining and staring/ on ruin I like the fact that she uses two different states of mind. Also how she weaves in the differences in how she writes in each state of mind caught my attention as well as a reader for someone to make something so personal so lyrical takes a lot of skill to me. I think both stories kind of expanded my ideas as a writer in general.
Gabriel Miller
The structure of lyric essay helps to develop the ideas of surreality and nihilism in “On Shining and Staring/On Ruin” in both more literal and subtle ways. The structure of there being labeled stanzas literally emphases wine and drinking, as well as there being countless uses of the words drinking or wine through out the essay. These literal points are compliments by various implications throughout the essay, such as her various struggles in life being one of the stronger reasons she drinks despite her often simply saying she drinks for the fun or enjoyment of it. Overall, the laid back atmosphere and focus on drinking is used to point out the issues she or others face as a means to more realistically portray the view of an alcoholic.
Because of this, I think that the poetic nature of this essay compliments itself due to it allowing for there to be more stress on elements of her point of view. The way it’s segmented allows for the focus on her views on drinking and on how drinking has affected her life in various places. If this was told in a traditional essay, the essay as a whole would be weaker due to that loss in precision. As for the poetic language, it allows to further portray that view of alcoholism through turning to the figurative and abstract to explain why someone would avoid reality.
Timberly Kneebone
I found that Yuknavitch’s “Weaving” was extremely well written. Not only was the story named weaving but the writer did an amazing job at weaving in and out of storylines in order to complete one solid thought. The structure of a lyric essay really helped highlight her writing as a story. I honestly thought that it was one of the best structures for what she was writing in order to create a continuous flowing story. I enjoyed how the story was still organized even though it was written in lyric format.
“On Shining and Staring/ On Ruin” by Gallagher was a whole different story. The story was almost read as though I was the writer experiencing it while being intoxicated. The story felt more disconnected and messy. I found it harder to read but still thoroughly enjoyed it. The story brought raw emotions to the front of the reader’s mind which gave the writing more of an appeal. The story really portrayed an open view on the world from an alcoholic perspective.
Ta'Mariah Jenkins
After reading a lyrical essay, I must say I’m astonished. Woven has a deep understanding of mental, physical, and emotional abuse. It really does hurt to have abuse taken towards you for not fitting social norms. She shows an expressive and twenty-first-century realism that connects well with the audience. Such as the coarse language and the affirmative tone when describing the abuser within the essay. I find who transformative the writing is as she shifts from each experience and the vivid memories that are left behind with her pains. The essay itself feels as though a therapy session is really taken into place. To really examine the scars that take place for us is when we see through the scar can disappear, like the stabbing when the author is with her girlfriend and as her girlfriend gets bashed and the skull heads laugh, but the pain doesn’t go away. It could subside, but it never really goes away, in addition to the feeling. It’s a scary and hurtful process but is essential for healing. Gallagher’s piece is more of a biography feeling but told in a poetic story kind of writing. I feel like though the piece was on the basis of drinking and self-searching, it kind of wasn’t as enhancing compared to Yuknavitch’s piece. Separately both are good, but Yuknavitch’s piece had a feeling of having no control to Gallagher’s piece is more based on choices.
Anna Johnson
I felt like a lyric essay format fit “Woven” by Yuknavich really nicely. What struck an interest in me was how she meshed her real-life stories into mythical folktale. It kept my interest while also reading about her personal stories, they seemed to compliment each other. I think without the use of a lyric essay format, it would not have the same effect on me as it did.
When I started to dive into the essay, I did not expect to read about Laume and all of the stories of them. It was an unusual surprise that I was not mad about, only to learn about Laume and how it can impact a person’s life.
I was intrigued to learn about her reoccurring dream of three sons and how she eventually has had three husbands. She talked about her unborn son being pulled from her and in the form of a husband, I thought that was an interesting connection. But I am sure after twenty years of a reoccurring dream like that, I mean I can’t blame her for thinking that.
Overall, I am more fond of lyric essays and how they impact me as a reader. I had never dived into great lyric essay pieces before and have opened a new interest. As I would feel the emotions of a more standard essay from an author, this delivered on a whole new level. The context of “Woven” would not really have the same effect on me in a more standard format, it was perfectly woven together to capture the author’s stories and meaning behind them.
Sarah Corbett
Reading through these, I realize that I’m not sure if I have ever read a lyrical essay. If I didn’t realize that these were intended to be lyrical, I would’ve assumed that they were collage essays, a style I learned about a few semesters back. Going into these with the knowledge that they were INTENDED to be lyrical though, changed the way I read them. I notice the subtle rhymes in ‘On Shining’, and the circular/flip flop pattern of ‘Woven’. Both of these different methods, to me, felt like an elongated version of poetry. More like the spoken word type of poetry that you see at underground bars though, not your classical poetry.
I’m not sure that the lyrical essay is my style, though I do see the appeal. I can see how this gave the authors a creative way to tell their stories, without sounding like they were listing facts and details. In ‘Woven’, for example, using the lyrical style gave her a natural way to weave (pun intended) in her folklore story, without feeling like she was distracting from her personal narrative.
I really enjoyed these essays! And I wonder how many lyrical essays I might have missed in the past, from simply not noticing the subtlety of it.
Casey Fetterhoff
I’d have to agree with Sarah Corbett, I can’t think of a particular piece I have read which I think qualifies as a lyrical essay. That being said, there are MANY things I have read which I have found to have a particular almost “musical” note to them. As a person who struggles with poetry, I personally strongly feel that reading an essay with a “lyrical” intent to the reading is a great way to bridge that gap that I have previously felt with poetry. Something I am totally comfortable with (standard essay style) meshed with something I feel uncertain of (poetry) creates a harmonious bond between the two that has allowed me to find a couple different lyrical essays besides the ones described, and appreciate the beauty in them beyond just their content as essay pieces! Super glad for this new outlook on a style I was previously unfamiliar with.
Katherine Spencer
For my reading response, I chose to keep my focus on the story “Woven” by Lidia Yuknavitch. True to its’ name, this poetic lyrical essay was woven every which way, in the best way possible. Yuknavitch wove together stories from her life and folklores told to her from her grandmother to create this truly beautiful piece that touches on very sensitive subjects. While sometimes the weaving between her nonfiction stories and the fantasy aspect of Laume could throw me for a loop and leave me momentarily confused, her essay kept me engaged the entire time. When I hear the words “poetry/poetic” and “lyrical” I typically tend to think about rhymes or very short versus or even repetitive versus, and I was pleased to see that wasn’t the case at all. However, in terms of poetic, it definitely raised the bar for me when it comes to any other poetic writings. Rhyming aside, I also I think the word “deep” when I hear someone say something is poetic. This story touched on her personal traumas such as abuse, guns, anti LQBTQ violence, and more in such a deep way that I feel proud of the author for surviving what she had. She fought her whole life, with scars to prove it, and she still came out on the other side. One part of the essay that really stuck with me was when she was telling her students about the attack on her and her then girlfriends life, and an ex convict/marine came up and apologized on behalf of all marines. I was such a raw moment that really stuck with me. Overall I would say this was a really great piece that will stick with me. Those moments in her life wove together to form and shape the person she was and is.
“I like that idea. A woven person.” – Lidia Yuknavitch
Devin Byrd
Yuknavitch’s piece is my favorite so far. Her style of writing is frank, but it effectively conveys her thoughts regarding more broad, abstract topics. Even when describing the tragedies of her own life, her language remains grounded, and I find it far easier to grasp her emotions and thoughts regarding those events without the obscuring affect of forced profundity. The times and traumas she details speak for themselves.
She regards her own mistakes and youthful idiocy with fondness at times, but foregoes the typical, “woe to the wilted Spring flower” approach many writers seem to default to when recalling their younger days, and for that reason I find myself far more appreciative of, and attentive to her words.
I view Yuknavitch’s piece as being as different from Gallagher’s piece as possible without breaking from the genre entirely. Gallagher writes of her own lifetime of drinking and couch surfing almost as if it was some grand, masterfully written tragedy destined to challenge the works of Shakespeare, and regards her own intoxicated musings as profound truths. Every line I read made me wonder more and more if her piece was a desperate attempt to forge some meaning for a life half-lived.
zofia sheesley
I think in “On Shining and Staring/On Ruin” the lyric essay format fits perfectly, it would be too much as a poem and not enough as just a personal essay. I especially love the line “I am twenty-two and a girl on a two a.m. bicycle.’’ It’s simple enough to be in a personal essay but somehow also poetic enough to be in a poem and that’s why this format of a lyric essay is the perfect format for this piece. I think this piece is beautifully blunt and honest and a great self-aware story. The author is very self aware. Right off the bat starting “Woven” I am loving that they are both about young women with drinking problems (seemingly) and at the age of 22. But they have very different moods and styles. This line, “At twenty-two we could drink like beautiful androgynous unafraid fish.” makes this a lyric essay. It is the start of the beautiful poetic stuff in the personal essay. All of the comparisons between her husbands and the dream she had about having 3 sons help create an atmosphere and a greater understanding. I also really love the comparison of the 2nd husband with the gun to help cement the violence and terror of the man. Both essays do a really great job of using the poetic “lyric” elements to cement the descriptions and atmospheres and understandings that a regular personal essay would be lacking.