Lyric Essay Review Notes:
Model lyric essays you need to read to learn how to braid your personal essay-
- Stephen Corey, “A Voice for the Lonely,” In Short178-182
- Carol Lucci Wisner, “Stonehenge and the Louvre Were Cool,” 253-258
- Gretel Ehrlich; “A Match to the Heart,” 219-220 In Short (What central image does she use to portray her experience of being struck by lightning? How does she use white space of the page, incorporate figurative language and lyrical turns of phrase,and leverage images to complicate the meanings?)
- Charles Simic, “Three Fragments,” In Short 191-192
- Richard Rodriguez, “Proofs,” 48-54
- Will Baker, “My Children Explain the Big Issues,” In Short 133-135 (How does Baker piece his different pieces together leaping over time, place and subject?)
- Brian Doyle, “Being Brians” In Fact 163-173 (How doe Brian Doyle piece all Brians’ responses together in his essay?)
A. Focus-Self as a Character/social actor
Brainstorm ideas associated with “Growing Up Game“ by Brenda Peterson –
(Consider your own gender. What expectations are on you because of your gender? How do you feel about those expectations? Were you ever envious over another gender? If so, why? Have you ever been discriminated against because of your gender? What sorts of tasks do you perform at home, in school, in life, which are gender-based? What does your gender “get” you? What does it exclude you from?) 3) Judyth Har-Even, “A Walk Through the Jewish Divorce Ceremony,” In Fact, 269-287 ( How does the author become a character and her life an intense drama? How does the author even use dramatic acts to develop her narrative?
B. Writing Exercise:
Think of yourself in the 3rd person–seeing yourself move through the world as a protagonist.
- First, make a list of your quirks ( “mine your quirks”) -idiosyncrasies, stubborn tics, antisocial mannerism, and so on that set you apart from the majority of your fellowmen( learning to drive at a much later time in life; growing up game). Quirks can also be those small differences that make us feel self- conscious when standing among a crowd. Then focus on one particular “quirk” and describe it in details using all the five senses if necessary.
- Now dramatize the protagonist. Situation yourself in a setting or a social situation. Describe it. Put yourself in an action scene(s), engage in a dialogue and see how your quirky characteristic gets played out (revealed) layer by layer (typically characteristic gestures, the ways the character speaks, i.e. “ I imagined his fingers twirl them with his blunt carpenter’s fingers”
- All good drama needs tension. What is the tension (conflict)- physical, psychological, emotional? What seems to create the tension? Does it involve other characters? How? Portray other characters’ “quirkiness “through thoughts, direct speech and action. Let the readers feel the tension through characters’ action and words.
- Finally, draw connections between the physical event and philosophical reflection, which may serve to help the readers question themselves or the world they live in.
C. What ideas can we borrow from Stephen Corey, “A Voice for the Lonely,” In Short178-182?
Use the Stephan Corey’s essay as an inspiration and write about a song or your favorite singer whose song inspired you or connected you to your “ burning question”. Write down the lyrics, or at least those you remember, and then take a few minutes to jump off of that into a freewrite. With whom do you associate this song/rhyme? Is there a particular occasion, place, or time of day you connect with it? When you think of this song/rhyme, what feelings and/or memories do you associate with it? Can you use a line from the song to “braid” your essay?
D. Writing about Secrets
{Reading and Unpacking: Sandra McPherson, “Secrets: Beginning to Write them Out” (PDF); Lauren Slater, “Three Spheres,” 3-23; Carol Lucci Wisner, “Stonehenge and the Louvre Were Cool,” 253-258]
(Notes from McPherson’s “Secrets”-For what reasons would you refuse to write about it? Have you at some time written about a subject or event that you withheld for a long time? If so, describe what you went through to get it on the page. Writers need especially to feel confident about the decision they have made for themselves- to reveal or not to reveal. Snodgrass wrote, “When events in the poem became no longer applicable in my life, they will be applicable to feelings of other lives.” We should place our work in history. The writer, unlike journalist, maybe struggling to survive a story of much personal anguish. We must ask for things we may not want to hear but which we crave because they are true. We must do it without tattling, or without a tone of tattling, gossiping or babbling. To write about painful memories, we need to learn to ask questions about what we don’t see and to be good observers of what we do see. Any private story is human history not just your own. It can help someone else to live, some else who is perhaps feeling hopeless. Tobias Wolff says a good writer has “the willingness to say that unspeakable thing, which everyone else in the house is too coy, or too frightened, or too polite to say.”)
E. Writing Exercise: Write about something you have decided you will never write about—or you were told never to “tell”—without saying exactly what that is. Try, of course, to do this in the context of your conversation with your burning question. Have others instructed, urged, or pressured you not to talk about certain issues? Not to talk or write in certain ways or in certain kinds of language? Or perhaps actually forbade you to “talk”? You might do this exercise by writing a dialog that imagines someone’s response to your “telling.” For example, “If I told about X, so-and-so would ______.” Or by writing an anecdote that tells a story of an imagined consequence of your “telling.” Or you could free-write a list of reasons you haven’t told—with concrete, narrative or descriptive details for each reason—if for any reason you do not want to “tell.” (Note: You do not have to include the writing you do here in your essay—this is just an exercise.)
Homework: Email a completed 1st draft of your essay to your group members. Be sure to read your peers’ essays before the workshop and bring three copies of your 1st draft to the class on Tuesday so we can workshop it in a small group of 3.