Lyric Essay
1,400 Words
The lyric essay, with its twists and turns, its deep discomfort with basic five-paragraph essay structure, is an ideal genre for doing ranging, original exploration of a topic. Indeed, the form itself usually mimes the meandering, and even at times bumpy nature of a journey. The goal of this assignment is to render, through that unusual structure and mode of exploration, your chosen topic significant to a reader. The goal is to wake the reader up to the dimensions, the import, of your subject. Make the reader think hard, see you subject freshly, and connect (or reconnect) with it deeply. And there are all sorts of ways to do this that “fit” within the lyric essay genre. As we’ve seen in our readings, it’s an extremely flexible genre of creative nonfiction. Some lyric essays are more personal, closer to memoir (like “A Braided Heart” by Brenda Miller), and they depend heavily on description and clever weaving of stories. And some, like Brian Doyle’s “Joyas Boladoras,” are more research-based and hook the reader with the surprising connections made between research and personal experience, the original way the author braids the two in exploring the subject. And some are more lyrical, more musical, like poetry, in their attention to language…while some are quite prosaic—for instance, Dinty W. Moore’s “Son of Mr. Green Jeans” has innovative content and structure, but the language is prosaic, almost journalistic. You have a lot of freedom working in this genre! However, despite the openness of the genre (and despite its relative newness; we are still figuring out what the lyric essay can do), there are certainly commonalities to most lyric essays. Consider:
- As Brenda Miller puts it, “The lyric essay happens in the gaps. In the pause before the next breath demands to be taken.” You might strive to, as most lyric essayists do, take bold leaps from section to section or idea to idea, at least at times, in your lyric essay. There should be a logic behind the leaps, but it often isn’t fully clear to a reader on a first read (or second or third) what that logic is. The leaps create interesting gaps that will deeply involve the reader in the making of meaning, force an attentive and serious readerly engagement. And for serious readers, this is one of the pleasures of the lyric essay.
- Most lyric essays risk falling apart. They push outward in their attempts to explore their subjects with rigor and originality, incorporating personal narrative, research, snippets from other texts, odd anecdotes, etc. and this is where much of their energy comes from. Remember, the lyric essay is, as Tall and D’Agata claim in “New Terrain: The Lyric Essay,” “loyal to that original sense of essay as a test or a quest, an attempt at making sense…” It is, ultimately, a seeking form. (Indeed, that seeking, that reaching to understand a subject in ways that go beyond the traditional, often intellectually and emotionally insufficient depictions of it, that is where a lyric essay’s leaps/gaps come from.) Writers who do well in the lyric essay genre typically take formal risks, push back against the urge to contain, be linear, know exactly where they’re going.
So, for this assignment, one challenge is to find a form for your essay that will work for you given your interests as a writer, given your topic, and given the genre’s flexibility, yes—but the need for attentiveness to lyric essay hallmarks like those I’ve described above as well. You’ll want to find an approach that will help you wake the reader up to the dimensions, the import, the special value, the richness of your topic. Please remember that—though it depends somewhat on the kind of essay you write—you will almost certainly need to do library research for this assignment. Unusual databases like CQ Researcher Plus Archive and Encyclopedia Britannica should help for the “factoid” research often incorporated into lyric essays, but please don’t forget more traditional databases, the wider Internet, and books. Your lyric essay should be 5-6 pages if it’s typed and double-spaced, but you may want to single-space it with white space between your paragraphs (like we’ve seen in many lyric essay examples we’ve read). In this case, your essay should be roughly 3 pages long. Your lyric essay should also be in MLA format and should have MLA in-text citations and a works cited page if you incorporate research. (And again, you probably will use research. Consider that all lyric essay examples we’ve read in class have used research, to differing degrees, to build out the dimensionality of the subjects explored.)
GRADING CRITERIA
Content
- Does the essay demonstrate strong understanding of the lyric essay genre? In other words, does the piece look, sound, feel, etc. like a lyric essay due to the author’s manipulation of the genre’s common formal devices? Has the author used those common formal devices to create an engaging, creative, and perhaps even surprising lyric essay?
- If research is included, is there enough to inform the audience(s) on key subject dimensions? Is the research included well-selected, given the author’s compositional goals? Is the research well-integrated (braided) with the essay’s personal narrative, if personal narrative is a component in the essay?
- Is the level of technical detail appropriate for the intended audience(s) and the genre?
- If images/graphics are included, are they well-composed and integrated effectively?
Organization
- Is the essay well-sequenced to both grip readers and “build out” the exploration? (Remember, lyric essays often dramatize the mind at work on a topic, leaping to and from various, often surprising, areas of content. They are almost never conventional in their movement down the page.)
- If the essay is broken into sections/”mosaic tile” paragraphs, are they the right ones? Are they sequenced effectively?
- Are headings utilized for sections (or even paragraphs) if it will enhance the reading experience? Are they the right headings?
- Are paragraphs unified? Are they clear?
- If images/graphics are included, are they placed well in the essay, integrated at the right points?
Style & Mechanics
- Are tone, syntax, and word choice appropriate for the genre and intended audience(s)?
- Is the voice (the style of thought) consistent throughout?
- Is the essay free of grammatical errors?
- Is wording clear throughout?
- Is highlighting (italics, bold, underlining, bullets, white space, etc.) used effectively, if it’s an element, to enhance readability or the artistry of the essay?
- If citable research has been done, are in-text citations/the works cited in appropriate MLA format?
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