Lyrical meaning5/22/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Where the personal essay transcribes experiences, the lyric essay creates them. Here, Knight’s prose is a sort of experience-a way of exploring the dream through language as shifting and ethereal as dreams themselves. The prose in Knight’s lyric essay cannot be read the same way as a personal essay might be. Child’s fist, foot, curve, face, the arc of an eye, the symmetry of circles… and then an opening of this body-which surprised her-a movement so clean and assured and then the push towards the light like a frog or a fish.” “The dream goes like this: blue room of water. Now, take this excerpt from a lyric essay, “ Life Code” by J. Fennelly gives us the information we need to make sense of her world, as well as the foreshadow of what’s to come in her essay. The prose in this personal essay excerpt is descriptive, linear, and easy to understand. We would own such a shirt, which extended its tenure in our house as a rag for polishing silver.” We didn’t know yet that this blizzard would earn itself a moniker that would be silk-screened on T-shirts. It wouldn’t have occurred to us, and it wouldn’t have helped. Here are the opening two paragraphs from Beth Ann Fennelly’s personal essay “ I Survived the Blizzard of ’79.” lyric essay: An example of eachĪt its simplest, the lyric essay’s prose style is different from that of the personal essay, or other forms of creative nonfiction. There are few conventions for the lyric essay, other than to experiment, experiment, experiment Personal essay vs. Rather than apply a one-size-fits-all definition for the lyric essay, which doesn’t exist, let’s pay close attention to how lyric essayists approach the open-ended form. They’re also a bit tricky to define-the line between a lyric essay and the prose poem, in particular, is very hazy. In truth, there’s very little that unifies all lyric essays, because they’re so wildly experimental. Lyric essays can also borrow from the braided essay, the hermit crab, and other forms of creative nonfiction. You might start your essay with a normal paragraph, then describe something specific through a sonnet or villanelle, then express a different idea through a POV shift, a list, or some other form. One tactic, for example, is to incorporate poetry into the essay itself. While the form itself is an essay, there’s no reason you can’t break the bounds of expression. That said, there are few conventions for the lyric essay, other than to experiment, experiment, experiment. (We’ll expand on the difference between prose poetry and lyric essay shortly.) Lyric essays employ many of the poetic devices that poets use, including devices of repetition and rhetorical devices in literature. Lyric essays are typically written in a poetic prose style. Lyric essay definition: The lyric essay combines autobiographical writing with the figurative language, forms, and experimentations of poetry. In the lyric essay, the rules of both poetry and prose become suggestions, because the form of the essay is constantly changing, adapting to the needs, ideas, and consciousness of the writer. The lyric essay combines the autobiographical information of a personal essay with the figurative language, forms, and experimentations of poetry. Want to explore the lyric essay further? See our lyric essay writing course with instructor Gretchen Clark. What is a lyric essay, and how do you write one? Let’s break down this challenging CNF form, with lyric essay examples, before examining how you might approach it yourself. Lyrical essays explore the elements of poetry and creative nonfiction in complex and experimental ways, combining the subject matter of autobiography with poetry’s figurative devices and musicality of language.įor both poets and creative nonfiction writers, lyric essays are a gold standard of experimentation and language, but conquering the form takes lots of practice. ![]() In literary nonfiction, no form is quite as complicated as the lyric essay. ![]()
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