The document discusses the lyric essay, a hybrid form of creative nonfiction. It originated in the late 1990s and is championed by writers like John D'Agata. Lyric essays emphasize language, imagery, and experimentation with form over traditional structure. They explore themes through questions rather than conclusions. Common forms include flash essays, collages, braided essays, and hermit crab essays, which adopt the form of an outside source. The document provides examples and discusses how different forms shape content and themes. It concludes with an in-class assignment to write a collage essay using found text fragments.

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

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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 (check out the anthology
The Next American Essay)
 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

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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
 Less concerned with a conclusion than it is with the questions it
is posing or circling. Rather than read a lyric essay and
conclude its theme, we might instead look for what types of
questions it asks or circles around.

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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)

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Constraints
 This aspect of writing with a formal constraint also shares, of course, an
element with formal poetry, in which certain types of poems rely on a set
number of stanzas and certain patterns in stresses.
 It also shares elements with a form of writing called Ouvroir de littérature
potentielle.” Aka: Workshop of Potential Literature Nickname: OuLiPo
 If lyric essays play with form constraints, OuliPo plays with micro-language
constraints
 Derived in the 60s by French writers and mathematicians as a form of
constraining language to generate inspiration and new ways of creating
writing structures and patterns and, thus language.
 For example: lipograms, in which the writer chooses one (or more) letters
and isn’t allowed to use them in a piece of writing, thus forcing the writer to
become more inventive with the writing.

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Let’s Try an OuliPo
 Choose one (or more) letters (hint: choosing vowels makes this
a much more difficult exercise)
 Write one paragraph about a room you know well: could be
your bedroom, your childhood kitchen, it’s up to you.
 Write the paragraph without your letter (letters) and see what
types of choices you have to make around language, the way
in which it (should) force your writing-brain to slow down.
 Choosing Z isn’t cheating, but it’s not not cheating.

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Forms of the Lyric Essay
 Flash
 Collage
 Braided
 Hermit Crab
 Prose Poetry

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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).

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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.
 —

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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 instanceDavid Shields’ piece
“Life Story,” a lyric essay composed entirely of bumper sticker
slogans, for example.

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Life story, david shields (1996)
 What is the “shell” or received document(s) used for this piece?
 What is the nature of these fragments?
 How would you describe the accumulation of these aphorisms,
structurally?
 In what way is this piece personal? In what was is it universal?
 Looking at either language or content, where do you find
internal moments? Where are the external ones?

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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)

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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.
 For example, in “Mr. Plimpton’s Revenge,” Dinty Moore uses
google maps as the “shell” to write his google maps essay.
 Patrick Madden uses Ebay to write an “ebay essay, “Michael
Martone’s Leftover Water Bottle.”
 Other examples: An essay written in the form of an outline, an
essay using only footnotes and no body, an essay in the form of a
“how to” guide, an essay written as a personal ad, an essay
written as a Craig’s List ad, an essay written as a series of
Facebook posts, an essay using the form of a medical pain scale.
The list goes on and is only limited by your own ideas.

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Google maps
 Without the scaffolding of google maps, what genre of
nonfiction might Dinty Moore’s essay on George Plimpton fall?
 What is the story?
 What impact does it have on the reader to encounter the piece
in the form, and what does it afford Moore?

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Ebay essay
 In Patrick Madden’s essay, he actually made an ebay listing for
Michael Martone’s leftover water; the questions are real
(although there may have been ringers).
 What does this scaffolding provide in terms of the tone?
 What does the form allow Madden to convey without directly
stating it?

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“The Pain Scale” by Eula Biss, p. 28
 In “The Pain Scale,” Eula Bliss uses the form of the pain scale
as her structure. Let’s look at that essay
 What are some of the external elements of this piece? By
external, we might also mean “reported,” elements that come
from the external rather than the internal world.
 What are some of the internal elements. By internal, we might
mean personal, interior thoughts, reflections.
 What is the result of the accumulation of these elements? This
is another way of asking, what does the piece say in its
entirety; what is it probing thematically?

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“Son of Mr. Green Jeans” by Dinty
Moore (p. 389)
 What is the formal constraint of this piece?
 What thematic idea is Moore circling, querying in this piece?
 What external elements does he look at? Give ma an example.
 What are the personal or internal moments? Example:

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Querying the Lyric Essay
 What is the form. If a received form, what type of “shell” or
received document(s) used?
 What is the nature of these fragments?
 How would you describe the accumulation of these aphorisms,
structurally?
 In what way is this piece personal? In what was is it universal?
 Looking at either language or content, where do you find
internal moments? Where are the external ones?

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Genre & Form
 Genre expectations change when the writer plays around with
form.
 Changing a narrative from linear to other morphs the “essay”
into something “that is not quite nonfiction either.”
 One way to consider the hermit crab form is to consider it as an
appropriation of an existent form: for the sake of unsettling the
text.

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Found objects
 This device also borrows from other genres, from the epistolary
novels that were part of the earliest form of the novel, as well
as other realistic devices that exist in fiction: diaries, newspaper
articles, real events, reports etc.

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In-class Lyric Essay Assignment
 Write a rough draft of a collage essay. You may use any part of
the magazines I’ve brought to start yourself out, or other
fragments.
 Goal: to use these fragments/pieces to create a whole other
piece in which the fragments themselves accumulate—to make
the sum greater than its parts.