Presentation to Lyric Essay Class based on assigned readings in The Rose Metal Field Guide to Flash Nonfictin, edited by Dinty Moore

1. And its relationship to the lyric essay

2.  As with the lyric essay, “flash” itself may be a
relatively new term, but the idea of brevity in
the essay form is not
 William MakepeaceThackeray’s “Roundabout
Papers” refers to a term that did not endure:
“the essaykin.”
 The parlor game anecdote points to today’s
environment of creative nonfiction: perils and
excitement (Dinty Moore, Intro, Rose Metal
Press Field Guide toWriting Flash Nonfiction)

3.  Influenced by the surging popularity of flash
fiction (which introduced the term “flash”
itself)
 Influenced by the growth of online literary
journals
 Influenced by that 1997 introduction of the
“lyric essay,” which doesn’t require brevity,
but often does utilize it

4.  Like our oulipo exercises, are in part a
practice of constraint and, in this case, of
compression.
 Judith Kitchen & Mary Paumier Jones
published three highly regarded flash
anthologies, setting the word length at 2,000
 Dinty Moore founds Brevity, word length at
750
 And I’m mentioning this because your flash
pieces will have a max word length of 2,000

5.  Flash nonfiction in part defined by its wholeness,
its discreteness
 May be part of a larger piece, but stands alone
 Is not a detail of something larger, but is its own
world
 “…the brief essay form is discrete, sharply
focused, and must be held up, studied like a
small tableau, to reveal the secrets of human
nature contained therein.” (Field Guide, p. XX)

6.  Both Cooper & then Lia Purpura use the
visual arts to consider the lure, intimacy,
fascination with miniatures, the explosion of
detail within a whole, versus picking a detail
from a larger piece
 For example, Purpura (“On Miniatures”)
compares a detail from Bosch’s Garden of
Earthly Delights versus a Faberge egg.

7.  Energy
 Urgency
 “…the best flash…could never work in the
longer form because the energy of the piece
hinges on the rapid-fire sharing of
information.The urgency of having to fit the
content into an abbreviated frame is what
makes it powerful.” (Field Guide, p. XXII)

8.  What is happening in this essay?
 Observations and examples of her use of
language: identify the poetics
 What is its metaphor: identify the tenor &
vehicle, as it were
 What is the question, the assay, if you will
(what makes this an essay?)
 What drives the piece?

10.  Borich’s essay uses what as the basis for the
flash?
 What is the essay here?
 Tenor and vehicle?
 Where is the decisive moment?Where is the
movement?
 Are there poetics? Lyricism? Find examples
 (p. 12-14)

11.  How does Brenda Miller use the detail of
hitting a piece of wood to lead her into the
essay “Swerve” (p. 31)
 How does “briefness” enable her in writing
this piece?
 Similarly, how does Rigoberto González
describe the relationship between image &
memory?

12.  “the separation between the trigger and the
memory takes only a split second, but it’s
important to tell them apart because once
that key image/object/symbol is identified it
can be used as a trope in the narrative.”
(González, p. 33)
 “In this way, flash nonfiction is more like a
prose poem…whose vehicle is sensory
imagery, and whose tenor is emotional
experience.” (p. 34, emphasis mine)

13.  “Toy Soldier” by González (p. 35-36)
 “TheWhite Suit” by Anne Panning (pages 41-42)
 “Hochzeit” by Debra Marquart (pages 47-49)
• examples of the lyric elements
• examples of the essay elements
• elements of urgency
• necessary compression
• details that anchor the piece
• anything else that you notice
• hint: we are practicing what will be required for
workshop on your pieces

14.  Anne Panning in her chapter on “thingy-ness”
discusses the use of “sliding,” transition,
accumulation, in the brief essay, and the use
of segmentation, writing “…there’s
something inherently organic about he fusion
of content and form in flash nonfiction (Field
Guide, p. 39)

15.  Write down the entire alphabet
 Pick one letter and write down as many
things you can think of that start with that
letter
 Just one of those words and write a brief
paragraph about it
 Repeat, as many times as you want (let’s aim
for three, but we’ll see how far we get in the
time we have)

16.  Look at what you’ve written: search for meaning and pattern (and for all the other elements
we’ve discussed today)
 Read for class from Rose Metal Anthology, “WritingThrough Innocence and Experience by Sue
William Silverman (p. 70); “The Sounds and Sense of Sentences” by Barbara Hurd (p. 76);
“Weaving Past, Present, and Future in Flash Nonfiction,” (p. 105) “Over the River andThrough the
Woods, to Almanac We Go: On the Use of Research and Lists in Flash,” (p. 113) “Building a Frame,
Giving an Essay a Form;” (p. 126)
 Read handout: "It isWhat It Is" by Eula Biss
 Read online: "Soundtrack" by Sally Ashton in Brevity "Post Mortem" byTraci Brimhall "The Essay
Determines How itWill Begin" by Suzanne Roberts (links on class website)
 Bring to class an object, photograph or other concrete item of importance or interest to use in our
in-class writing exercise.
 We will have more generative writing toward potential first-draft flash pieces, which will be due
for distribution in class on Sept. 28. Remember that you can use the materials generated in class
assignments toward that piece; you can write something entirely new; you can use any of the
exercises from Rose Metal Field Guide toward generation.