… the heart of the lyric essay is not reality, not nature, but the music of reality, the music of nature as conceived in the mind of the essayist—the music of beautiful untrue things, which, as Wilde says, is the proper aim of art. ~ Joey Franklin, TriQuarterly Journal, 2014
‘Til the cows come home, says Mama, when asked how long how long those blessed jays be a’squawkin’.
A good lyric essay is music and wit. It has the occasional (but sometimes skewed) facts, and it’s fun, but facts are not the endgame, frivolity and mystery are. The best lyric essay should leave the reader psyched by the turns of phrase, and inspired by its drollery.
Again, the primary goal of a lyric essay is not to impart information as you would in a generic creative nonfiction essay, but to instill “sound,” to draw along the lines of melody. It is poetry over sentence structure. It is metaphor and allusion. And it is literary devices over cold hard facts. Remember “lyric,” and then remember “essay.” We can look at the lyric essay as the spoken word of the literary essay world.
But it must be an essay. Essays are longer than one paragraph, and messier than two. If too short we call it “flash,” and if the form is strange, we want to call it hybrid or experimental, and that’s okay, but we’re especially rooting for something called … “lyric” essay.
Paragraph variety and breaks are to be expected. Associative leaps (aka, not-always-linear-thought) are more than welcome, and appreciated; yea, they are imperative. These are not the standard essays of the high school throwback type. These are poetry in essay motion. Wild poetry. With synths.
Just about everything different, layered, fragmented, etc., is too often called a lyric essay, even the unlyrical or experimental. But as Judith Kitchen pointed out, “for an essay to be lyric, there must be a lyre.” Where there is no music, no lyricism, there is no lyric essay.
In a lyric essay, minimize “I” which will then make it feel less like a personal essay. Vary sentence type, length, and sound (cadence). Pacing is crucial, for a cadre of short sentences—or long sentences, or a lack of punctuation—does not a lyric essay make.
Words should bounce, verbs throttle. Your work is competing against a dozen other immediate distractions. As someone said, “We keep the language awake.”
The essay without a simper is the narrative without a smile. It leaves the reader wanting more. When expecting a lyric essay, plain facts dry up, fill the head with balderdash, and eventually (usually a paragraph or two in), lead to encyclopedic-enervation of the drooping-head-and-rolling-eyes kind. Why can’t we laugh at the presentation of a good scoop? Are facts the enemy of joy?
View writing (or reading) the lyric essay as caring for a needy waif, scrubbing the face and slipping on new clothes won’t do; we all have a story to tell, fits and pieces, in a flash or a long-haul with coffee. What the waif will never be is average: seen too much. Her language strains the common ear. You’ll ask her to repeat, but she already has.
Or, further, think of lyricism as adventure, as a free-wheeling Jeep along a stretch of ocean. You’re driving the Jeep, the day is right, the top is off. Salty ocean breeze whips your hair into impossible knots, and maybe a few grains of sand end up in your teeth, such gritty feel on the tongue. But it’s worth it. It’ll take a while to get the bird’s nest out of that beautiful mane, and you’ll need to rinse and spit, but the feeling after all settles out—the impossibly impossible—you’d do it all again. THAT is the lyric essay writ well.
The most beautiful thing in the world is a lyric essay well-told. But it’s hard to define and often harder to write. Some call it a prose poem or piece of stream of consciousness nonsense. But instead, it’s that sandy beach in summer, warm and welcoming, but not concrete enough to gain traction on. For this reason, writers, and some readers, take to the open road instead of risking uncertainty, but for those who stick it out, who try the “impossibly impossible,” what reward!
In essence, “one does not simply walk into Mordor” just as one does not simply “write a lyric essay.” It’s a painstaking, brain-breaking, ass-kicking, process. It’s van Gogh on the page. It’s Salvador Dali’s synapses unraveled and scribbled down.
No book should be boring. Boring books give reading a bad name. And a lyric essay should sing like an open barn door crooning in the wind on its rusty hinges. Rather than oiling everything in sight so as to kill the song, and rather than throwing rocks at the bluejay, let it sing; let it all sing and sing and sing, such beauty.
