The Lyric Essay As Resistance

Resistance and representation manifests in the subversive genre of the lyric essay.

"The Hobart and William Smith Colleges literary journal, Seneca Review, recently released a special anthology, We Might As Well Call It The Lyric Essay, edited by John D'Agata '95, associate professor of English at the University of Iowa. The double issue was initially envisioned as a compilation of D'Agata's favorite essays from Seneca Review, in celebration of his 15th year as the magazine's lyric essay editor. But the project developed into a year-long course at Iowa in which D'Agata enlisted his students to help choose and edit an anthology to showcase the genre, if not define it." -- Publisher's website.

The first craft guide to the lyric essay form, this book combines hybrid craft essays that embody the key elements discussed, with more traditional craft essays that review relevant lyric theory, craft and history. An orientation to a form that is critical and creative, practical and accessible, Heidi Czerwiec centers the lyric essay on the lyre, on lyric mode, focusing on the resonances of sound, silence and image at the level of language. With topics including sound effects, imagery development, lateral movement, white space, fragmentation, using poetic craft and forms, and pedagogy, this book connects the dots between lyric theory and practice, offering the beginnings of a critical framework for a form that has been vastly undertheorized until now. An essential guide to this exciting and popular hybrid form, Crafting the Lyric Essay will invigorate the study and writing of creative non-fiction.

"Philip’s questions are difficult, and of an intensity of insistence rarely achieved."— Erin Mouré, Books in Canada "Philip’s writing lives on a linguistic frontier where the essay and poem merge to create a new literary form, uniquely hers. These pieces are a pleasure to read— at once sensual and thought-provoking."— Robin C. Pacific "[Philip deploys] all thoughtful ways of making readers aware of how history is created. And how it is denied."— Canadian Materials

What is a lyric essay? An essay that has a lyrical style? An essay that plays with form in a way that resembles poetry more than prose? Both of these? Or something else entirely? The works in this anthology show lyric essays rely more on intuition than exposition, use image more than narration, and question more than answer. But despite all this looseness, the lyric essay still has responsibilities—to try to reveal something, to play with ideas, or to show a shift in thinking, however subtle. The whole of a lyric essay adds up to more than the sum of its parts. In A Harp in the Stars, Randon Billings Noble has collected lyric essays written in four different forms—flash, segmented, braided, and hermit crab—from a range of diverse writers. The collection also includes a section of craft essays—lyric essays about lyric essays. And because lyric essays can be so difficult to pin down, each contributor has supplemented their work with a short meditation on this boundary-breaking form.

Essays from a Native American grandfather to help navigate life's difficult experiences.

A Michelle Obama Reach Higher Fall 2022 reading list pick A Library Journal "BEST BOOK OF 2022" "Aguon’s book is for everyone, but he challenges history by placing indigenous consciousness at the center of his project . . . the most tender polemic I’ve ever read." —Lenika Cruz, The Atlantic "It's clear [Aguon] poured his whole heart into this slim book . . . [his] sense of hope, fierce determination, and love for his people and culture permeates every page." —Laura Sackton, BookRiot Part memoir, part manifesto, Chamorro climate activist Julian Aguon’s No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies is a collection of essays on resistance, resilience, and collective power in the age of climate disaster; and a call for justice—for everyone, but in particular, for Indigenous peoples. In bracing poetry and compelling prose, Aguon weaves together stories from his childhood in the villages of Guam with searing political commentary about matters ranging from nuclear weapons to global warming. Undertaking the work of bearing witness, wrestling with the most pressing questions of the modern day, and reckoning with the challenge of truth-telling in an era of rampant obfuscation, he culls from his own life experiences—from losing his father to pancreatic cancer to working for Mother Teresa to an edifying chance encounter with Sherman Alexie—to illuminate a collective path out of the darkness. A powerful, bold, new voice writing at the intersection of Indigenous rights and environmental justice, Julian Aguon is entrenched in the struggles of the people of the Pacific to liberate themselves from colonial rule, defend their sacred sites, and obtain justice for generations of harm. In No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies, Aguon shares his wisdom and reflections on love, grief, joy, and triumph and extends an offer to join him in a hard-earned hope for a better world.

A brilliant and unsparing examination of America in the early twenty-first century, Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely invents a new genre to confront the particular loneliness and rapacious assault on selfhood that our media have inflicted upon our lives. Fusing the lyric, the essay, and the visual, Rankine negotiates the enduring anxieties of medicated depression, race riots, divisive elections, terrorist attacks, and ongoing wars—doom scrolling through the daily news feeds that keep us glued to our screens and that have come to define our age. First published in 2004, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely is a hauntingly prescient work, one that has secured a permanent place in American literature. This new edition is presented in full color with updated visuals and text, including a new preface by the author, and matches the composition of Rankine’s best-selling and award-winning Citizen and Just Us as the first book in her acclaimed American trilogy. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely is a crucial guide to surviving a fractured and fracturing American consciousness—a book of rare and vital honesty, complexity, and presence.