lyric essay brainly

A Guide to Lyric Essay Writing: 4 Evocative Essays and Prompts to Learn From

Poets can learn a lot from blurring genres. Whether getting inspiration from fiction proves effective in building characters or song-writing provides a musical tone, poetry intersects with a broader literary landscape. This shines through especially in lyric essays, a form that has inspired articles from the Poetry Foundation and Purdue Writing Lab , as well as become the concept for a 2015 anthology titled We Might as Well Call it the Lyric Essay.  

Put simply, the lyric essay is a hybrid, creative nonfiction form that combines the rich figurative language of poetry with the longer-form analysis and narrative of essay or memoir. Oftentimes, it emerges as a way to explore a big-picture idea with both imagery and rigor. These four examples provide an introduction to the writing style, as well as spotlight tips for creating your own.

1. Draft a “braided essay,” like Michelle Zauner in this excerpt from Crying in H Mart .

Before Crying in H Mart became a bestselling memoir, Michelle Zauner—a writer and frontwoman of the band Japanese Breakfast—published an essay of the same name in The New Yorker . It opens with the fascinating and emotional sentence, “Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.” This first line not only immediately propels the reader into Zauner’s grief, but it also reveals an example of the popular “braided essay” technique, which weaves together two distinct but somehow related experiences. 

Throughout the work, Zauner establishes a parallel between her and her mother’s relationship and traditional Korean food. “You’ll likely find me crying by the banchan refrigerators, remembering the taste of my mom’s soy-sauce eggs and cold radish soup,” Zauner writes, illuminating the deeply personal and mystifying experience of grieving through direct, sensory imagery.

2. Experiment with nonfiction forms , like Hadara Bar-Nadav in “ Selections from Babyland . ”

Lyric essays blend poetic qualities and nonfiction qualities. Hadara Bar-Nadav illustrates this experimental nature in Selections from Babyland , a multi-part lyric essay that delves into experiences with infertility. Though Bar-Nadav’s writing throughout this piece showcases rhythmic anaphora—a definite poetic skill—it also plays with nonfiction forms not typically seen in poetry, including bullet points and a multiple-choice list. 

For example, when recounting unsolicited advice from others, Bar-Nadav presents their dialogue in the following way:

I heard about this great _____________.

a. acupuncturist

b. chiropractor

d. shamanic healer

e. orthodontist ( can straighter teeth really make me pregnant ?)

This unexpected visual approach feels reminiscent of an article or quiz—both popular nonfiction forms—and adds dimension and white space to the lyric essay.

3. Travel through time , like Nina Boutsikaris in “ Some Sort of Union .”

Nina Boutsikaris is the author of I’m Trying to Tell You I’m Sorry: An Intimacy Triptych , and her work has also appeared in an anthology of the best flash nonfiction. Her essay “Some Sort of Union,” published in Hippocampus Magazine , was a finalist in the magazine’s Best Creative Nonfiction contest. 

Since lyric essays are typically longer and more free verse than poems, they can be a way to address a larger idea or broader time period. Boutsikaris does this in “Some Sort of Union,” where the speaker drifts from an interaction with a romantic interest to her childhood. 

“They were neighbors, the girl and the air force paramedic. She could have seen his front door from her high-rise window if her window faced west rather than east,” Boutsikaris describes. “When she first met him two weeks ago, she’d been wearing all white, buying a wedge of cheap brie at the corner market.”

In the very next paragraph, Boutskiras shifts this perspective and timeline, writing, “The girl’s mother had been angry with her when she was a child. She had needed something from the girl that the girl did not know how to give. Not the way her mother hoped she would.”

As this example reveals, examining different perspectives and timelines within a lyric essay can flesh out a broader understanding of who a character is.

4. Bring in research, history, and data, like Roxane Gay in “ What Fullness Is .”

Like any other form of writing, lyric essays benefit from in-depth research. And while journalistic or scientific details can sometimes throw off the concise ecosystem and syntax of a poem, the lyric essay has room for this sprawling information.

In “What Fullness Is,” award-winning writer Roxane Gay contextualizes her own ideas and experiences with weight loss surgery through the history and culture surrounding the procedure. 

“The first weight-loss surgery was performed during the 10th century, on D. Sancho, the king of León, Spain,” Gay details. “He was so fat that he lost his throne, so he was taken to Córdoba, where a doctor sewed his lips shut. Only able to drink through a straw, the former king lost enough weight after a time to return home and reclaim his kingdom.”

“The notion that thinness—and the attempt to force the fat body toward a state of culturally mandated discipline—begets great rewards is centuries old.”

Researching and knowing this history empowers Gay to make a strong central point in her essay.

Bonus prompt: Choose one of the techniques above to emulate in your own take on the lyric essay. Happy writing!

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

Forget Merit: Write Poems to Express Yourself

6 Types of Poetry to Read on National Read a Book Day

How to Start Writing Poetry as a Total Beginner

An Introduction to the Lyric Essay

An introduction to the lyric essay, how it differs from other nonfiction, and some excellent examples to get you started.

Rebecca Hussey

Rebecca holds a PhD in English and is a professor at Norwalk Community College in Connecticut. She teaches courses in composition, literature, and the arts. When she’s not reading or grading papers, she’s hanging out with her husband and son and/or riding her bike and/or buying books. She can't get enough of reading and writing about books, so she writes the bookish newsletter "Reading Indie," focusing on small press books and translations. Newsletter: Reading Indie Twitter: @ofbooksandbikes

View All posts by Rebecca Hussey

Essays come in a bewildering variety of shapes and forms: they can be the five paragraph essays you wrote in school — maybe for or against gun control or on symbolism in The Great Gatsby . Essays can be personal narratives or argumentative pieces that appear on blogs or as newspaper editorials. They can be funny takes on modern life or works of literary criticism. They can even be book-length instead of short. Essays can be so many things!

Perhaps you’ve heard the term “lyric essay” and are wondering what that means. I’m here to help.

What is the Lyric Essay?

A quick definition of the term “lyric essay” is that it’s a hybrid genre that combines essay and poetry. Lyric essays are prose, but written in a manner that might remind you of reading a poem.

Before we go any further, let me step back with some more definitions. If you want to know the difference between poetry and prose, it’s simply that in poetry the line breaks matter, and in prose they don’t. That’s it! So the lyric essay is prose, meaning where the line breaks fall doesn’t matter, but it has other similarities to what you find in poems.

Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. By signing up you agree to our terms of use

Lyric essays have what we call “poetic” prose. This kind of prose draws attention to its own use of language. Lyric essays set out to create certain effects with words, often, although not necessarily, aiming to create beauty. They are often condensed in the way poetry is, communicating depth and complexity in few words. Chances are, you will take your time reading them, to fully absorb what they are trying to say. They may be more suggestive than argumentative and communicate multiple meanings, maybe even contradictory ones.

Lyric essays often have lots of white space on their pages, as poems do. Sometimes they use the space of the page in creative ways, arranging chunks of text differently than regular paragraphs, or using only part of the page, for example. They sometimes include photos, drawings, documents, or other images to add to (or have some other relationship to) the meaning of the words.

Lyric essays can be about any subject. Often, they are memoiristic, but they don’t have to be. They can be philosophical or about nature or history or culture, or any combination of these things. What distinguishes them from other essays, which can also be about any subject, is their heightened attention to language. Also, they tend to deemphasize argument and carefully-researched explanations of the kind you find in expository essays . Lyric essays can argue and use research, but they are more likely to explore and suggest than explain and defend.

Now, you may be familiar with the term “ prose poem .” Even if you’re not, the term “prose poem” might sound exactly like what I’m describing here: a mix of poetry and prose. Prose poems are poetic pieces of writing without line breaks. So what is the difference between the lyric essay and the prose poem?

Honestly, I’m not sure. You could call some pieces of writing either term and both would be accurate. My sense, though, is that if you put prose and poetry on a continuum, with prose on one end and poetry on the other, and with prose poetry and the lyric essay somewhere in the middle, the prose poem would be closer to the poetry side and the lyric essay closer to the prose side.

Some pieces of writing just defy categorization, however. In the end, I think it’s best to call a work what the author wants it to be called, if it’s possible to determine what that is. If not, take your best guess.

Four Examples of the Lyric Essay

Below are some examples of my favorite lyric essays. The best way to learn about a genre is to read in it, after all, so consider giving one of these books a try!

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine’s book Citizen counts as a lyric essay, but I want to highlight her lesser-known 2004 work. In Don’t Let Me Be Lonely , Rankine explores isolation, depression, death, and violence from the perspective of post-9/11 America. It combines words and images, particularly television images, to ponder our relationship to media and culture. Rankine writes in short sections, surrounded by lots of white space, that are personal, meditative, beautiful, and achingly sad.

Calamities by Renee Gladman

Calamities is a collection of lyric essays exploring language, imagination, and the writing life. All of the pieces, up until the last 14, open with “I began the day…” and then describe what she is thinking and experiencing as a writer, teacher, thinker, and person in the world. Many of the essays are straightforward, while some become dreamlike and poetic. The last 14 essays are the “calamities” of the title. Together, the essays capture the artistic mind at work, processing experience and slowly turning it into writing.

The Self Unstable by Elisa Gabbert

The Self Unstable is a collection of short essays — or are they prose poems? — each about the length of a paragraph, one per page. Gabbert’s sentences read like aphorisms. They are short and declarative, and part of the fun of the book is thinking about how the ideas fit together. The essays are divided into sections with titles such as “The Self is Unstable: Humans & Other Animals” and “Enjoyment of Adversity: Love & Sex.” The book is sharp, surprising, and delightful.

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

Bluets is made up of short essayistic, poetic paragraphs, organized in a numbered list. Maggie Nelson’s subjects are many and include the color blue, in which she finds so much interest and meaning it will take your breath away. It’s also about suffering: she writes about a friend who became a quadriplegic after an accident, and she tells about her heartbreak after a difficult break-up. Bluets is meditative and philosophical, vulnerable and personal. It’s gorgeous, a book lovers of The Argonauts shouldn’t miss.

It’s probably no surprise that all of these books are published by small presses. Lyric essays are weird and genre-defying enough that the big publishers generally avoid them. This is just one more reason, among many, to read small presses!

If you’re looking for more essay recommendations, check out our list of 100 must-read essay collections and these 25 great essays you can read online for free .

You Might Also Like

Lyric Poetry: Expressing Emotion Through Verse

This musical verse conveys powerful feelings.

 Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

• Poetic Forms
• Favorite Poems & Poets
• Best Sellers
• Classic Literature
• Plays & Drama
• Shakespeare
• Short Stories
• Children's Books

• Doctor of Arts, University of Albany, SUNY
• M.S., Literacy Education, University of Albany, SUNY
• B.A., English, Virginia Commonwealth University

A lyric poem is a short verse with musical qualities that conveys powerful feelings. When writing lyrical poetry, a poet may use rhyme, meter, or other literary devices to create a song-like rhythm and word structure.

Unlike narrative poetry , which chronicles events, lyric poetry doesn't have to tell a story. A lyric poem is a private expression of emotion by a single speaker. For example, American poet Emily Dickinson described her inner feelings when she wrote the lyric poem that begins, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, / And Mourners to and fro .

Key Takeways: Lyric Poetry

• A lyric poem is a private expression of emotion by an individual speaker.
• Lyric poetry has musical qualities and can feature poetic devices like rhyme and meter.
• Some scholars categorize lyric poetry into three subtypes: Lyric of Vision, Lyric of Thought, and Lyric of Emotion. However, this classification is not widely agreed upon.

Origins of Lyric Poetry

Song lyrics often begin as lyric poems. In ancient Greece, lyric poetry was combined with music played on a U-shaped stringed instrument called a lyre. Through words and music, great lyric poets like Sappho (ca. 610–570 B.C.) poured out feelings of love and yearning.

Similar approaches to poetry were developed in other parts of the world. Between the fourth century B.C. and the first century A.D., Hebrew poets composed intimate and lyrical psalms, which were sung in ancient Jewish worship services and compiled in the Hebrew Bible. During the eighth century, Japanese poets expressed their ideas and emotions through haiku and other poetic forms. Writing lyrically about his private life, Taoist writer Li Po (710–762) became one of China's most celebrated poets.

The rise of lyric poetry in the Western world represented a shift from epic narratives about heroes and gods. The personal tone of lyric poetry gave it broad appeal. Poets in Europe drew inspiration from ancient Greece but also borrowed ideas from the Middle East, Egypt, and Asia.

Types of Lyric Poetry

Of the three main categories of poetry—narrative, dramatic, and lyric—lyric is the most common and the most difficult to classify. Narrative poems tell stories. Dramatic poetry is a play written in verse. Lyric poetry, however, encompasses a wide range of forms and approaches.

Nearly any experience or phenomenon can be explored through the emotional and personal mode of lyric writing, from war and patriotism to love and art.

Lyric poetry has no prescribed form. Sonnets , villanelles , rondeaus , and pantoums are all considered lyric poems. So are elegies, odes, and most occasional (or ceremonial) poems. When composed in free verse , lyric poetry achieves musicality through literary devices such as alliteration , assonance , and anaphora .

Each of the following examples illustrates an approach to lyric poetry.

William Wordsworth, "The World Is Too Much With Us"

The English Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) famously said that poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." In The World Is Too Much with Us , his passion is evident in blunt exclamatory statements such as "a sordid boon!" Wordsworth condemns materialism and alienation from nature, as this section of the poem illustrates.

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!"

Although The World Is Too Much with Us feels spontaneous, it was composed with care ("recollected in tranquility"). A Petrarchan sonnet, the complete poem has 14 lines with a prescribed rhyme scheme, metrical pattern, and arrangement of ideas. In this musical form, Wordsworth expressed personal outrage over the effects of the Industrial Revolution .

Christina Rossetti, "A Dirge"

British poet Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) composed A Dirge in rhyming couplets. The consistent meter and rhyme create the effect of a burial march. The lines grow progressively shorter, reflecting the speaker's sense of loss, as this selection from the poem illustrates.

"Why were you born when the snow was falling? 

You should have come to the cuckoo’s calling, 

Or when grapes are green in the cluster, 

Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster 

For their far off flying 

From summer dying." 

Using deceptively simple language, Rossetti laments an untimely death. The poem is an elegy, but Rossetti doesn't tell us who died. Instead, she speaks figuratively, comparing the span of a human life to the changing seasons.

Elizabeth Alexander, "Praise Song for the Day"

American poet Elizabeth Alexander (1962– ) wrote Praise Song for the Day to read at the 2009 inauguration of America's first Black president, Barack Obama . The poem doesn't rhyme, but it creates a song-like effect through the rhythmic repetition of phrases. By echoing a traditional African form, Alexander paid tribute to African culture in the United States and called for people of all races to live together in peace.

"Say it plain: that many have died for this day.

Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,

who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built

brick by brick the glittering edifices

they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.

Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,

the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables."

Praise Song for the Day is rooted in two traditions. It's an occasional poem, written and performed for a special occasion, and a praise song, an African form that uses descriptive word pictures to capture the essence of something being praised.

Occasional poetry has played an important role in Western literature since the days of ancient Greece and Rome. Short or long, serious or lighthearted, occasional poems commemorate coronations, weddings, funerals, dedications, anniversaries, and other important events. Similar to odes, occasional poems are often passionate expressions of praise.

Classifying Lyric Poems

Poets are always devising new ways to express feelings and ideas, transforming our understanding of the lyric mode. Is a found poem lyric? What about a concrete poem made from artful arrangements of words on the page? To answer these questions, some scholars utilize three classifications for lyric poetry: Lyric of Vision, Lyric of Thought, and Lyric of Emotion.

Visual poetry like May Swenson's pattern poem, Women , belongs to the Lyric of Vision subtype. Swenson arranged lines and spaces in a zigzag pattern to suggest the image of women rocking and swaying to satisfy the whims of men. Other Lyric of Vision poets have incorporated colors, unusual typography, and 3D shapes .

Didactic poems designed to teach and intellectual poems (such as satire) may not seem especially musical or intimate, but these works can be placed in the Lyric of Thought category. For examples of this subtype, consider the scathing epistles by 18th-century British poet Alexander Pope .

The third subtype, Lyric of Emotion, refers to works we usually associate with lyric poetry as a whole: mystical, sensual, and emotional. However, scholars have long debated these classifications. The term "lyric poem" is often used broadly to describe any poem that is not a narrative or a stage play.

• Burch, Michael R. " The Best Lyric Poetry: Origins and History with a Definition and Examples. " The HyperTexts Journal.
• Gutman, Huck. " The Plight of the Modern Lyric Poet. " Except from a seminar lecture. “Identity, Relevance, Text: Reviewing English Studies.” Calcutta University, 8 Feb. 2001.
• Melani, Lilia. " Reading Lyric Poetry. " Adapted from A Guide to the Study of Literature: A Companion Text for Core Studies 6, Landmarks of Literature, Brooklyn College.
• Neziroski, Lirim. "Narrative, Lyric, Drama." Theories of Media, Keyword Glossary. University of Chicago. Winter 2003.
• The Poetry Foundation. "Saphho."
• Titchener, Frances B. " Chapter 5: Greek Lyric Poetry. " Ancient Literature and Language, A Guide to Writing in History and Classics.
• What Is Narrative Poetry? Definition and Examples
• An Introduction to Blank Verse
• The Sonnet: A Poem in 14 Lines
• What Is Ekphrastic Poetry?
• Introduction to Found Poetry
• What Is Enjambment? Definition and Examples
• Understanding the Definition of an Acrostic Poem
• What Is an Iamb in Poetry?
• What Kind of Poem Is a Pantoum?
• The Beat Take on Haiku: Ginsberg's American Sentences
• Singing the Old Songs: Traditional and Literary Ballads
• Internet Research for Lines of Poetry
• Overview of Imagism in Poetry
• An Introduction to the Song-Like Villanelle Form of Poetry
• An Introduction to Free Verse Poetry
• What Is a Rondeau in Poetry?

• Craft and Criticism
• Fiction and Poetry
• News and Culture
• Lit Hub Radio
• Reading Lists

• Literary Criticism
• Craft and Advice
• In Conversation
• On Translation
• Short Story
• From the Novel
• Bookstores and Libraries
• Film and TV
• Art and Photography
• Freeman’s
• The Virtual Book Channel
• Behind the Mic
• Beyond the Page
• The Cosmic Library
• The Critic and Her Publics
• Emergence Magazine
• Fiction/Non/Fiction
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
• The History of Literature
• I’m a Writer But
• Lit Century
• The Lit Hub Podcast
• Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
• Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
• Write-minded
• The Best of the Decade
• Best Reviewed Books
• BookMarks Daily Giveaway
• The Daily Thrill
• CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

Writing From the Margins: On the Origins and Development of the Lyric Essay

Zoë bossiere and erica trabold consider essay writing as resistance.

Once, the lyric essay did not have a name.

Or, it was called by many names. More a quality of writing than a category, the form lived for centuries in the private zuihitsu journals of Japanese court ladies, the melodic folktales told by marketplace troubadours, and the subversive prose poems penned by the European romantics.

Before I came to lyric essays, I came to writing. When my teacher asked the class to write a story for homework , I couldn’t believe my luck. But in response to my first attempt, she wrote in the margins: this is cliché .

As a first-generation college student, I was afraid I didn’t know how to tell a story properly, that my mind didn’t work that way. That I didn’t belong in a college classroom, wasn’t a real writer.

And yet, language pulled me. Alone in my dorm room, I arranged and rearranged words, whispered them aloud until the cadences pleased me, their smooth sounds like prayers. I had no name for what I was writing then, but it felt like a style I could call my own.

While the origins of the lyric essay predate its naming, the most well-known attempt to categorize the form came in 1997, when writers John D’Agata and Deborah Tall, coeditors of Seneca Review , noticed a “new” genre in the submission queue—not quite poetry, but neither quite narrative.

This form-between-forms seemed to ignore the conventions of prose writing—such as a linear chronology, narrative, and plot—in favor of embracing more liminal styles, moving by association rather than story, dancing around unspoken truths, devolving into a swirling series of digressions.

D’Agata and Tall’s proposed term for this kind of writing, “the lyric essay,” stuck, and in the ensuing decade the word would be adopted by many essayists to describe the kind of writing they do.

As a genderfluid writer and as a writing teacher, I’ve always appreciated the lyric essay as a literary beacon amid turbulent narrative waves. A means to cast light on negative space, to illuminate subjects that defy the conventions of traditional essay writing.

Introducing this writing style to students is among my favorite course units. Semester after semester, the students most drawn to the lyric essay tend to be those who enter the classroom from the margins, whose perspectives are least likely to be included on course reading lists.

Since its naming, the lyric essay has existed in an almost paradoxical space, at once celebrated for its unique characteristics while also relegated to the margins of creative nonfiction. Perhaps because of this contradiction, much of the conversation about the lyric essay—the definition of what it is and does, where it fits on the spectrum of nonfiction and poetry, whether it has a place in literary journals and in the creative writing classroom—remains unsettled, extending into the present.

I thought getting accepted into a graduate program meant I had finally opened the gilded, solid oak doors of academia—a place no one in my family, not a parent, an aunt or uncle, a sibling or cousin, had ever seen the other side of.

But at my cohort’s first meeting in a state a thousand miles from home, I understood I was still on the outside of something.

“Are you sure you write lyric essays?” the other writers asked. “What does that even mean?”

The acceptance of the lyric form seems to depend largely on who is writing it. The essays that tend to thrive in dominant-culture spaces like academia and publishing are often written by writers who already occupy those spaces. This may be part of why, despite its expansive nature, many of the most widely-anthologized, widely-read, and widely-taught lyric essays represent a narrow range of perspectives: most often, those of the center.

To name the lyric essay—to name anything—is to construct rules about what an essay called “lyric” should look like on the page, should examine in its prose, even who it should be written by. But this categorization has its uses, too.

Much like when a person openly identifies as queer , identifying an essayistic style as “lyric” provides a blueprint for others on the margins to name their experiences—a form through which to speak their truths.

The center is, by definition, a limited perspective, capable of viewing only itself.

In “Marginality as a Site of Resistance,” bell hooks positions the margins not as a state “one wishes to lose, to give up, or surrender as part of moving into the center, but rather as a site one stays on, clings to even, because it nourishes one’s capacity to resist.”

To write from the margins is to write from the perspective of the whole—to see the world from both the margins and the center.

I graduated with a manuscript of lyric essays, one that coalesced into my first book. That book went on to win a prize judged by John D’Agata and named for Deborah Tall. I had finally found my footing, unlocked that proverbial door. But skepticism followed me in.

On my book tour, I was invited to read at my alma mater alongside another writer whose nonfiction tackled pressing social issues with urgency, empathy, and wit. I read an essay about home and friendship, about being young and the hard lessons of growing up.

After the reading, we fielded a Q&A. The Dean of my former college raised his hand.

“I can see what work the other writer is doing quite clearly,” he said to me. “But what exactly is the point of yours?”

Writing is never a neutral act. Although a rallying slogan from a different era and cause, the maxim “the personal is political” still applies to the important work writers do when they speak truth to power, call attention to injustice, and advocate for social change.

Because the lyric essay is fluid, able to occupy both marginal and center spaces, it is a form uniquely suited to telling stories on the writer’s terms, without losing sight of where the writer comes from, and the audiences they are writing toward.

When we tell the stories of our lives—especially when those stories challenge assumptions about who we are—it is an act of resistance.

Many of the contemporary LGBTQIA+ essayists I teach in my classes write lyrical prose to capture queer experience on the page. Their works reckon with nonbinary family building and parenthood, the ghosts of trans Midwestern origin, coming of age in a queer Black body, the over- whelming epidemic of transmisogyny and gendered violence.

The lyric essay is an ideal container for these stories, each a unique prism reflecting the ambiguous, messy, and ever-evolving processes through which we as queer people come to understand ourselves.

Lyric essays rarely stop to provide directions, instead mapping the reader on a journey into the writer’s world, toward an unknown end. Along the way, the reader learns to interpret the signs, begins to understand that the road blocks and potholes and detours—those gaps, the words left unspoken on the page—are as important as the essay’s destination.

The lyric essays that have taught me the most as a writer never showed their full hand. Each became its own puzzle, with secrets to unlock. When the text on a page was obscured, the essay taught me to fill in the blanks. When the conflict didn’t resolve, I realized irresolution might be its truest end. When the segments of the essay seemed unconnected, I learned to read between the lines.

The most powerful lyric essays reclaim silence from the silencers, becoming a space of agency for writers whose experiences are routinely questioned, flattened, or appropriated.

Readers from the margins, those who have themselves been silenced, recognize the game.

The twenty contemporary lyric essays in this volume embody resistance through content, style, design, and form, representing of a broad spectrum of experiences that illustrate how identities can intersect, conflict, and even resist one another. Together, they provide a dynamic example of the lyric essay’s range of expression while showcasing some of the most visionary contemporary essayists writing in the form today.

__________________________________

Excerpted from The Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth from the Margins , edited by Zoë Bossiere and Erica Trabold. Copyright © 2023. Available from Wayne State University Press.

• Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Zoë Bossiere and Erica Trabold

Previous article, next article, support lit hub..

Join our community of readers.

to the Lithub Daily

Popular posts.

Ling Ling Huang on the Similarities Between Classical Music and Fiction Writing

• RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month

10 of the Best Examples of the Lyric Poem

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

A lyric poem is a (usually short) poem detailing the thoughts or feelings of the poem’s speaker. Originally, lyric poems, as the name suggests, were sung and accompanied by the lyre , a stringed instrument not unlike a harp. Even today, we often use the term ‘lyricism’ to denote a certain harmony or musicality in poetry. Below, we introduce ten of the greatest short lyric poems written in English from the Middle Ages to the present day.

1. Anonymous, ‘Fowls in the Frith’.

We begin our whistle-stop tour of the lyric poem in the thirteenth century, a whole century before Geoffrey Chaucer, with this intriguing and ambiguous anonymous five-line lyric:

Foulës in the frith, The fishës in the flod, And I mon waxë wod; Much sorwe I walkë with For beste of bon and blod.

A ‘frith’ is a wood or forest; the poem, written in Middle English, features a speaker who, he tells us, ‘mon waxë wod’ (i.e. must go mad) because of the sorrow he walks with.

Because the last line is ambiguous (‘the best of bone and blood’ could refer to a woman or to Christ), the poem can be read either as a love lyric or as a religious lyric.

We have gathered together more classic medieval lyrics here .

2. Sir Thomas Wyatt, ‘ Whoso List to Hunt ’.

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, hélas , I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind …

One of the most popular and enduring lyric forms has been the sonnet: 14 lines (usually), in which the poet expresses their thoughts and feelings about love, death, or some other theme. In the English or ‘Shakespearean’ sonnet the poet usually brings their ‘argument’ to a conclusion in the final rhyming couplet.

Here, however, Sir Thomas Wyatt offers an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, but he introduces the distinctive ‘English’ conclusion: that rhyming couplet. In a loose translation of a fourteenth-century sonnet by Petrarch, Wyatt (1503-42) describes leaving off his ‘hunt’ for a ‘hind’ – in a lyric poem that was possibly a coded reference to his own relationship with Anne Boleyn.

3. Robert Herrick, ‘ Upon Julia’s Clothes ’.

Whenas in silks my Julia goes, Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows The liquefaction of her clothes …

This very short lyric poem, by one of England’s foremost Cavalier poets of the seventeenth century, is deceptively simple. It seems to be simply a description of the woman’s silken clothing, and its pleasure-inducing effects on our poet.

But the poem seems to hint at far more than this, as we’ve explored in the analysis that follows the poem (in the link provided above). It might be described as one of the finest erotic lyric poems of the early modern period.

4. Emily Dickinson, ‘ The Heart Asks Pleasure First ’.

The Heart asks Pleasure – first – And then – Excuse from Pain – And then – those little Anodynes That deaden suffering …

So begins this short lyric poem from the prolific nineteenth-century American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-86).

The poem examines what one’s ‘heart’ most desires: a common theme in lyric poetry. The heart desires pleasure, but failing that, will settle for being excused from pain, and to live a life without suffering pain.

5. Charlotte Mew, ‘ A Quoi bon Dire ’.

Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was a popular poet in her lifetime, and was admired by fellow poets Ezra Pound and Thomas Hardy. ‘A Quoi Bon Dire’ was published in Charlotte Mew’s 1916 volume The Farmer’s Bride . The French title of this poem translates as ‘what good is there to say’. And what good is there to say about this short poem? We think it’s a beautiful example of early twentieth-century lyricism:

Seventeen years ago you said Something that sounded like Good-bye; And everybody thinks that you are dead …

Follow the link above to read this tender lyric poem in full.

6. W. B. Yeats, ‘ He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven ’.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light …

The gist of this poem, one of Yeats’s most popular short lyric poems, is straightforward: if I were a rich man, I’d give you the world and all its treasures. If I were a god, I could take the heavenly sky and make a blanket out of it for you.

But I’m only a poor man, and obviously the idea of making the sky into a blanket is silly and out of the question, so all I have of any worth are my dreams. And dreams are delicate and vulnerable – hence ‘Tread softly’. But Yeats, using his distinctive lyricism, puts it better than this paraphrase can convey.

7. T. E. Hulme, ‘ Autumn ’.

A touch of cold in the Autumn night – I walked abroad, And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge Like a red-faced farmer …

This short poem by arguably the first modern poet in English was written in 1908; it’s a short imagist lyric in free verse about a brief encounter with the autumn (i.e. harvest) moon. This poem earns its place on this list of great lyric poems because of the originality of the image at its centre: that of comparing the ‘ruddy moon’ to a … well, we’ll let you discover that for yourself.

8. H. D., ‘ The Pool ’.

After Hulme’s free verse lyrics came the imagists – a group of modernist poets who placed the poetic image at the centre of their poems, often jettisoning everything else. H. D., born Hilda Doolittle in the US in 1886, was described as the ‘perfect imagist’, and ‘The Pool’ shows why.

In this example of a short free-verse lyric poem, H. D. offers what her fellow imagist F. S. Flint described as an ‘accurate mystery’: clear-cut crystalline imagery whose meaning or significance nevertheless remain shrouded in ambiguity and questions. Here, H. D. even begins and ends her poem with a question. Who, or what, is the addressee of this miniature masterpiece?

9. W. H. Auden, ‘ If I Could Tell You ’.

Lyric poems weren’t all written in free verse once we arrived in the twentieth century. Indeed, many poets of the 1930s, such as the clear leader of the pack, W. H. Auden (1907-73), wrote in more traditional forms, such as the sonnet or, indeed, the villanelle: a form where the first and third lines of the poem are repeated at the ends of the subsequent stanzas.

In this tender lyric poem, Auden explores the limits of the poet’s ability to communicate to the world – or perhaps, to a loved one?

We have analysed this poem here .

10. Carol Ann Duffy, ‘ Syntax ’.

Duffy’s work shows a thorough awareness of poetic form, even though she often plays around with established forms and rhyme schemes to create something new.

First published in 2005, ‘Syntax’ is a contemporary lyric poem about trying to find new and original ways to say ‘I love you’. Duffy’s poem seeks out new ways to express the sincerity of love, explored, fittingly enough, in a new sort of ‘sonnet’ (14 lines and ending in a sort-of couplet, though written in irregular free verse). A love poem for the texting generation?

We introduce more Carol Ann Duffy poems here .

Discover more from Interesting Literature

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Type your email…

2 thoughts on “10 of the Best Examples of the Lyric Poem”

• Pingback: Monday Post – 16th December, 2019 #Brainfluffbookblog #SundayPost | Brainfluff
• Pingback: 10 Interesting Posts You May Have Missed in December 2019 – Pages Unbound | Book Reviews & Discussions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

• Craft Essays
• Teaching Resources

Consider the Platypus: Four Forms—Maybe—of the Lyric Essay

What is a lyric essay? Lyric comes from the late sixteenth century: from French lyrique or Latin lyricus, from Greek lurikos, from lura ‘lyre.’

To the ear, “lyre” and “liar” sound the same, which I resist because I do not condone lying in essays, lyric or otherwise. But mythology tells us that the origins of the lyre come from a kind of lie.

Hermes, the gods’ messenger and something of a trickster, stole Apollo’s sacred cattle. Hermes tried to deny his theft but ultimately confessed. In atonement, he gave Apollo a new way to make music: the lyre. Later Apollo taught Orpheus how to play the lyre and Orpheus became the best musician and poet known to humankind. He charmed trees, rocks, and rivers. While sailing with the Argonauts he overpowered the Sirens with his songs, allowing the ship and its crew to pass safely on their quest to find the Golden Fleece. And when his wife died, he sang his way into the underworld to retrieve her. His music was so powerful it could almost—almost—raise the dead.

Lyric essays have the same power to soothe, to harrow, to persuade, to move, to raise, to rouse, to overcome.

Like Orpheus and his songs, lyric essays try something daring. They rely more on intuition than exposition. They often use image more than narration. They question more than answer. But despite all this looseness, the lyric essay still has the responsibilities of any essay: to try to figure something out, to play with ideas, to show a shift in thinking (however subtle). The whole of a lyric essay adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

I came to define a lyric essay as:

a piece of writing with a visible / stand-out / unusual structure that explores / forecasts / gestures to an idea in an unexpected way

But about that visible / stand-out / unusual structure, that unexpected idea: Lyric essays are tricky. If you try to mount one to a spreading board, it’s likely to dodge the pin and fly away. If you try to press one between two slides, it might find a way to ooze down your sleeve. And if you try to set it within a taxonomy, it will pose the same problems as the platypus—a mammal, but one that lays eggs; semiaquatic, living in both water and on land; and venomous, a trait that belongs mostly to reptiles and insects. It will run away if on land—its gait that of a furry alligator—or swim off in the undulating way of beavers. Either way it can threaten you with a poisoned spur before it ripples off.

Despite its resistance to categorization, there are four broad forms of the lyric essay that are worth trying to define:

Flash Essays

origin Middle English (in the sense ‘splash water about’): probably imitative; compare with flush and splash

I define flash essays as being one thousand words or fewer. They are short, sharp, and clarifying. The shortest ones illuminate a moment or a realization the way a flash of light can illuminate a scene. Longer ones may take a little more time but regardless of their length, the meaning of the essay resonates more strongly than its word count might suggest.

Lightning flashes, as do cameras, flares, signals, and explosions; all show a brief moment in a larger scene. A small syringe can deliver a powerful drug. A capsule can too—unless it dissolves in a glass of water to reveal a paper flower. Regardless of their content, flash essays are imitative of their form. They give the reader a splash of a moment and leave us flushed with emotion and meaning.

Segmented Essays

origin late sixteenth century (as a term in geometry): from Latin segmentum, from secare ‘to cut’

Segmented essays are divided into segments that might be numbered or titled or simply separated with a space break.

These spaces—white space, blank space—allow the reader to pause, think, consider, and digest each segment before moving on to the next. Each section may contain something new, but all still belong cogently to the whole.

Segmented essays are also known as

(origin late Middle English: from French, or from Latin fragmentum, from frangere ‘to break’)

(origin mid-nineteenth century: from Greek parataxis, from para- ‘beside’ + taxis ‘arrangement’; from tassein ‘arrange’)

(origin early twentieth century: from French, literally ‘gluing’)

(origin late Middle English: from French mosaïque, based on Latin musi(v)um ‘decoration with small square stones,’ perhaps ultimately from Greek mousa ‘a muse’)

How you think of an essay may influence how you write it. Citrus fruits come in segments; so do worms. Each segment is part of an organic whole. But a fragmented essay may be broken on purpose and a collage deliberately glued together.

Braided Essays

origin Old English bregdan ‘make a sudden movement,’ also ‘interweave,’ of Germanic origin; related to Dutch breien (verb)

Braided essays are segmented essays whose sections have a repeating pattern—the way each strand of a braid returns to take its place in the center.

Each time a particular strand returns, its meaning is enriched by the other threads you’ve read through.

You can braid hair for containment or ornamentation. You can braid fibers into a basket to carry something or into a rope to tie something. Maybe it’s something you want to hold fast. Or maybe it’s to tense a kite against the wind—to fly.

Hermit Crab Essays

origin Middle English: from Old French hermite, from late Latin eremita, from Greek eremites, from eremos ‘solitary’

origin late sixteenth century (referring to hawks, meaning ‘claw or fight each other’): from Low German krabben

Hermit crab essays, as Brenda Miller named them in Tell It Slant , borrow another form of writing as their structure the way a hermit crab borrows another’s shell. These extraliterary structures can protect vulnerable content (the way the shell protects the crab), but they can also act as firm containers for content that might be intellectually or emotionally difficult, prodigious, or otherwise messy.

In life hermit crabs aren’t hermits at all; they’re quite social. And in a way hermit crab essays are too, because they depend on a network of other extraliterary forms of writing—recipes, labels, album notes—and what we already know of them.

I’ve always thought that a hermit crab’s front looks like a hand reaching out of the shell, a gesture that draws the onlooker inwards. Instead of needing a shell that protects, the contents of a hermit crab essay might lie in wait—like the pellets in a shotgun shell or a plumule of a seed—ready to burst beyond the confines of the form and take root in the reader’s mind.

But some of these forms overlap. A lyric essay can be many things at once—flash and braided, segmented and hermit crab—the way a square is also a rectangle, a parallelogram, a quadrilateral. One shape, but many ways of naming it.

Orpheus’s lyre accompanied him through all sorts of adventures. It traveled with him as deep as the underworld and after his death was sent by Zeus to live among the stars. You can see its constellation—Lyra—in the summer months if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, the winter months if you live in the Southern. This feels like an apt metaphor for the lyric essay: The stars are there, but their shape is what your mind brings to them.

A version of this essay was published as the introduction to A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays .

Randon Billings Noble is an essayist. Her collection  Be with Me Always   was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2019 and her anthology of lyric essays,  A Harp in the Stars ,  was published by Nebraska in 2021. Other work has appeared in the Modern Love column of  The New York Times, The Rumpus, Brevity,  and  Creative Nonfiction . Currently she is the founding editor of the online literary magazine  After the Art and teaches in West Virginia Wesleyan’s Low Residency MFA Program and Goucher’s MFA in Nonfiction Program. You can read more at her website,  www.randonbillingsnoble.com .

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Click here to cancel reply.

© 2024 Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction. All Rights Reserved!

Designed by WPSHOWER

Jump to navigation Skip to content

Search form

• P&W on Facebook
• P&W on Twitter
• P&W on Instagram

Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

Find a home for your poems, stories, essays, and reviews by researching the publications vetted by our editorial staff. In the Literary Magazines database you’ll find editorial policies, submission guidelines, contact information—everything you need to know before submitting your work to the publications that share your vision for your work.

Whether you’re pursuing the publication of your first book or your fifth, use the Small Presses database to research potential publishers, including submission guidelines, tips from the editors, contact information, and more.

Research more than one hundred agents who represent poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers, plus details about the kinds of books they’re interested in representing, their clients, and the best way to contact them.

Every week a new publishing professional shares advice, anecdotes, insights, and new ways of thinking about writing and the business of books.

Find publishers ready to read your work now with our Open Reading Periods page, a continually updated resource listing all the literary magazines and small presses currently open for submissions.

Since our founding in 1970, Poets & Writers has served as an information clearinghouse of all matters related to writing. While the range of inquiries has been broad, common themes have emerged over time. Our Top Topics for Writers addresses the most popular and pressing issues, including literary agents, copyright, MFA programs, and self-publishing.

Our series of subject-based handbooks (PDF format; $4.99 each) provide information and advice from authors, literary agents, editors, and publishers. Now available: The Poets & Writers Guide to Publicity and Promotion, The Poets & Writers Guide to the Book Deal, The Poets & Writers Guide to Literary Agents, The Poets & Writers Guide to MFA Programs, and The Poets & Writers Guide to Writing Contests.

Find a home for your work by consulting our searchable databases of writing contests, literary magazines, small presses, literary agents, and more.

Poets & Writers lists readings, workshops, and other literary events held in cities across the country. Whether you are an author on book tour or the curator of a reading series, the Literary Events Calendar can help you find your audience.

Get the Word Out is a new publicity incubator for debut fiction writers and poets.

Research newspapers, magazines, websites, and other publications that consistently publish book reviews using the Review Outlets database, which includes information about publishing schedules, submission guidelines, fees, and more.

Well over ten thousand poets and writers maintain listings in this essential resource for writers interested in connecting with their peers, as well as editors, agents, and reading series coordinators looking for authors. Apply today to join the growing community of writers who stay in touch and informed using the Poets & Writers Directory.

Let the world know about your work by posting your events on our literary events calendar, apply to be included in our directory of writers, and more.

Find a writers group to join or create your own with Poets & Writers Groups. Everything you need to connect, communicate, and collaborate with other poets and writers—all in one place.

Find information about more than two hundred full- and low-residency programs in creative writing in our MFA Programs database, which includes details about deadlines, funding, class size, core faculty, and more. Also included is information about more than fifty MA and PhD programs.

Whether you are looking to meet up with fellow writers, agents, and editors, or trying to find the perfect environment to fuel your writing practice, the Conferences & Residencies is the essential resource for information about well over three hundred writing conferences, writers residencies, and literary festivals around the world.

Discover historical sites, independent bookstores, literary archives, writing centers, and writers spaces in cities across the country using the Literary Places database—the best starting point for any literary journey, whether it’s for research or inspiration.

Search for jobs in education, publishing, the arts, and more within our free, frequently updated job listings for writers and poets.

Establish new connections and enjoy the company of your peers using our searchable databases of MFA programs and writers retreats, apply to be included in our directory of writers, and more.

• Register for Classes

Each year the Readings & Workshops program provides support to hundreds of writers participating in literary readings and conducting writing workshops. Learn more about this program, our special events, projects, and supporters, and how to contact us.

The Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award introduces emerging writers to the New York City literary community, providing them with a network for professional advancement.

Find information about how Poets & Writers provides support to hundreds of writers participating in literary readings and conducting writing workshops.

Bring the literary world to your door—at half the newsstand price. Available in print and digital editions, Poets & Writers Magazine is a must-have for writers who are serious about their craft.

View the contents and read select essays, articles, interviews, and profiles from the current issue of the award-winning Poets & Writers Magazine .

Read essays, articles, interviews, profiles, and other select content from Poets & Writers Magazine as well as Online Exclusives.

View the covers and contents of every issue of Poets & Writers Magazine , from the current edition all the way back to the first black-and-white issue in 1987.

Every day the editors of Poets & Writers Magazine scan the headlines—publishing reports, literary dispatches, academic announcements, and more—for all the news that creative writers need to know.

In our weekly series of craft essays, some of the best and brightest minds in contemporary literature explore their craft in compact form, articulating their thoughts about creative obsessions and curiosities in a working notebook of lessons about the art of writing.

The Time Is Now offers weekly writing prompts in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction to help you stay committed to your writing practice throughout the year. Sign up to get The Time Is Now, as well as a weekly book recommendation for guidance and inspiration, delivered to your inbox.

Every week a new author shares books, art, music, writing prompts, films—anything and everything—that has inspired and shaped the creative process.

Listen to original audio recordings of authors featured in Poets & Writers Magazine . Browse the archive of more than 400 author readings.

Ads in Poets & Writers Magazine and on pw.org are the best ways to reach a readership of serious poets and literary prose writers. Our audience trusts our editorial content and looks to it, and to relevant advertising, for information and guidance.

Start, renew, or give a subscription to Poets & Writers Magazine ; change your address; check your account; pay your bill; report a missed issue; contact us.

Peruse paid listings of writing contests, conferences, workshops, editing services, calls for submissions, and more.

Poets & Writers is pleased to provide free subscriptions to Poets & Writers Magazine to award-winning young writers and to high school creative writing teachers for use in their classrooms.

Read select articles from the award-winning magazine and consult the most comprehensive listing of literary grants and awards, deadlines, and prizewinners available in print.

• Subscribe Now

Craft Capsule: Lyric vs. Narrative

• Printable Version
• Log in to Send
• Log in to Save

as the sweetapple reddens on a high branch     high on the highest branch and the applepickers forgot— no, not forgot: were unable to reach

There was woman who was old, blind and likewise unable to walk. Once she asked her daughter for a drink of water. The daughter was so bored with her old mother that she gave her a bowl of her own piss. The old woman drank it all up, then said: “You’re a nice one, daughter. Tell me—which would you prefer as a lover, a louse or a sea scorpion?”

Please log in to continue. LOG IN Don't yet have an account? SIGN UP NOW -- IT'S FREE!

When I first started reading and writing creative nonfiction , I was particularly struck by the “braided essay”—its poeticism, its interlacing movements, its endless possibilities. The beauty of a braid lies in the way it weaves distinct strands into a coherent whole, the way individual strands intermittently appear and disappear.

If you’ve ever felt like your essay was missing something or needed more texture, or if you’re someone who loves miscellany, a braided essay might be right for you. But before I wax eloquent about the braided essay:

What is a braided essay?

A braid is a structure commonly used in the genre of creative nonfiction, though it can easily be adapted for use in other genres. Richard Powers’ The Overstory and Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 are great examples of novels that use braiding as a structure.

Simply put, a braided essay is one that weaves two or more distinct “threads” into a single essay. A thread can be a story with a plot or simply a string of thought about a specific topic.

A braided essay is one that weaves two or more distinct “threads” into a single essay. A thread can be a story with a plot or simply a string of thought about a specific topic.

If all of this sounds abstract and complicated, don’t fret: the good news is that a braided essay is much easier to understand in practice than in theory. Consider, for instance, Roxane Gay’s “ What We Hunger For ,” which consists of two threads. In thread A, Gay writes about The Hunger Games and the representation of female strength in pop culture. In thread B, she recounts memories of her childhood as a girl. Gay breaks up these two threads into smaller fragments, then alternates fragments from thread A with those from thread B.

This alternating movement draws out themes and ideas from each thread, such that the essay as a whole points to larger ideas and themes.

This alternating movement draws out themes and ideas from each thread, such that the essay as a whole points to larger ideas and themes. In the case of “What We Hunger For,” the result of braiding is an essay that combines The Hunger Games and the writer’s personal experiences to gesture to the themes of strength, trauma, storytelling, the power of reading, and hope for healing. This happens often in braided essay: the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

What counts as a “thread?”

For something to count as a “thread,” it has to be sufficiently distinct in terms of style and/ or content. To braid these threads together, break each into fragments, then alternate a fragment from one braid with a fragment from another braid. Check out the following diagram to see how this works:

How to braid threads in a braided essay

To help your reader distinguish one thread from another, writers often add a visual break between fragments from different threads. This usually means inserting either an additional section break or an asterisk between fragments.

In addition, while there are no maximum number of threads you can include in an essay, an essay with too many threads can get out of hand really quickly!

What makes a braided essay coherent?

Distinct threads often speak to one thing (or a few things) that unifies the essay. In Maggie Nelson’s Bluets , it is the narrator’s love of blue—established in the very beginning of the book-length essay—that provides coherence to the many threads in the essay, which range from philosophy to personal suffering, vision to pain. In other essays, what unifies the threads becomes apparent only as the essay develops; the pleasure of reading such essays comes from seeing how disparate threads gradually come together. A good example is “ Time and Distance Overcome ” by Eula Biss, which begins as an essay about the history of telephone poles and develops into a meditation on race. Another wonderful example by Biss is “Babylon,” which can be found in her book Notes from No Man’s Land .

The best braided essays, however, unfold associatively, even ambiguously.

The best braided essays, however, unfold associatively, even ambiguously. While coherence is important, making the links between the various threads too neat or too obvious can make an essay feel contrived and boring. When writing a braided essay, it’s always good to remember: your reader is often smarter than you think!

Before we explore how to write a braided essay, let’s look more closely at braided essay examples for inspiration.

Braided essay examples

• Rebecca Solnit’s “The Blue of Distance” is a classic braided essay that weaves the narrator’s meditations on the color blue in 15th century paintings and her personal reflections on distance, memory, and longing. This unlikely pairing plunges the reader into a poetic, blue-hued aura, inviting us to contemplate our own relationships with distance and longing. “The Blue of Distance” can be found in A Field Guide to Getting Lost alongside two more essays of the same name.
• In “ The Empathy Exams ,” Leslie Jamison draws on events in her personal life and her experiences working as a medical actor to craft a moving meditation on the concept of empathy. This essay also uses the form of a hermit crab essay (for more on hermit crabs, check out #9 in this article) with deftness and to great emotional effect. This essay can also be found in Jamison’s book, The Empathy Exams .
• Annie Dillard’s “An Expedition to the Pole” is a fascinating braided essay that interlaces the narrator’s religious experiences in church with reportage on famous polar expeditions. While this essay is rather long, the ending – in which the two separate threads fuse into one – makes it entirely worth it. “An Expedition to the Pole,” which opened up my ideas of what’s possible in a braided essay, can be found in Dillard’s essay collection, Teaching a Stone to Talk .
• In “Reality TV Me,” Jia Tolentino’s reflection on her time as a contestant on a reality tv show is intercut with short, ekphrastic descriptions of various scenes from the show. The result is a fun yet compelling meditation on the concepts of reality and performance. This essay can be found in Tolentino’s essay collection, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion .
• Braiding Sweetgrass offers, in the words of its author Robin Wall Kimmerer, “a braid of stories” about nature “woven from three stands: indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinaabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most.” Expect to be delighted, jolted, and awed by this brilliant book.
• Rivka Galchen’s Little Labors is a miscellany of thoughts on motherhood, children’s literature, and great women writers. Enchanting and entirely unique, Little Labors is a great braided essay example in book form.
• In A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause , Shawn Wen paints a portrait of the mime Marcel Marceau with a varied collection of materials. At times cutting and moving, this innovative essay is a must-read.

Inspired yet? Follow this step-by-step guide on how to write a braided essay to write your own!

How to write a braided essay

The writing process, by definition, requires many rounds of drafting and revision. For a more general step-by-step guide to writing essays, check out the guides in these articles on writing lyric essays , narrative essays , and memoirs .

1. Get inspired and generate ideas

The best way to learn how to write a braided essay is to read one, and to get an idea of what’s possible. Next, begin making a list of ideas for your essay. If you’re in need of writing prompts, check out our Facebook group !

2. Do a freewrite

Once you’ve chosen one idea, explore its possibilities by doing a freewrite. While freewriting , be sure to keep your pen moving – don’t even stop to correct any grammatical or spelling mistakes! The point of a freewrite is to keep the ideas flowing until you arrive at an idea that feels right. In the words of Peter Elbow, who developed the freewriting strategy, “The consequence [of writing] is that you must start by writing the wrong meanings in the wrong words; but keep writing until you get to the right meanings in the right words. Only in the end will you know what you are saying.” In my personal experience, it often takes at least 10-15 minutes for a freewrite to yield the ideas that feel right.

3. Read your freewrite

As you read what you’ve just written, highlight important themes, ideas, words, and/or motifs. Rely on your intuition in this process. Of these, identify the core of the essay you’d like to write. This is the primary thread of your essay.

4. Begin writing your primary thread

Rather than starting from “the beginning,” however, begin with the thing that resonates most with you. Doing so not only helps you to maintain momentum in the writing process, but also provides an anchor for your writing. Because braided essays are so associative, it can be easy to lose track of what feels right in the process of writing.

5. Start on your other thread(s)

It is often much easier to build a braided essay when you do it bit by bit, rather than thread by thread. The reason is that, with a braided essay, development in one braid often affects another. It’s much easier to develop one thread alongside another. This also makes the final produce much more organic.

6. Read what you have so far

Now that you have written the beginnings of several threads, read what you have and notice how your essay has already morphed. Doing these regular “check-ins” with your braided essay can help you to stay on top of how it is developing. If not, a braided essay can get unruly very quickly!

7. Continue writing

If you’re not sure how to continue, do research. This can be any form of research – from interviews to googling, immersive to archival. As you do research, keep an eye out for opportunities for expansion. Ask yourself: what new associations emerge?

8. Repeat steps 4-7 until satisfied.

Good writing is often built section by section, rather than produced in one burst. As you read what you have written so far, note places to expand and places to cut.

Once you’re satisfied with your braided essay, begin paying attention to the finer things: word choice, sentence structure, figurative words. Revising and editing are key to making your braided essay work. If you’re looking for a fresh pair of eyes to look at your writing, check out our schedule of nonfiction workshops !

Writing a braided essay for the first time can be challenging, but remember to have fun in the process. If you’d like to learn about other forms of creative nonfiction, check out this article !

Write the best braided essays at Writers.com

What will your braided essay be about? Perhaps you’ll combine the most seemingly unrelated topics: your marriage with the history of paleontology; your time in high school with musings on the color orange; the anatomy of an orca with your favorite jacket.

Whatever the braids, write the best braided essays at Writers.com, where you’ll receive expert feedback on the essays you write. Find inspiration in our upcoming creative nonfiction courses , and forge new relationships between seemingly-unalike things.

I have written a braided essay (although I did not know it by this name until reading this post) of approximately 11,000 words. Too long for a short-story; too short for standard creative nonfiction.

Where does one publish a braided essay of intermediate length?

Hi Kathleen,

Good question! I don’t know of any journals off the bat that accept essays of that length–generally, the upper limit will range between 3,000 and 7,500 words. Nonetheless, you might find a good home for your essay at this article: https://writers.com/best-places-submit-creative-nonfiction-online

Best of luck!

Hi Kathleen, This is such a great explanation of the Braided Essay and these examples are amazing. I just bought ‘A Twenty Minute Silence’– thank you for introducing me to this text.

Question: I teach Creative Writing and my students love these Lyric Essay forms, but one student noted, ‘It seems like most collage and braided essays are about serious subjects: loss, heartbreak, grief, abuse, etc. Are there any funny collage or braided essays?’

I thought surely there must be but scanning Brevity and other online journals I could not come across a single ‘funny’ collage or braided essay. There are numerous funny Hermit Crab Essays but do you know of any funny/humorous Braided or Collage Essays?

I can also be reached at [email protected] (should you want to respond or have a response).

Sorry for the long comment here. Really enjoyed reading this! Thanks again.

I’m working on a braided essay for my class at the moment and its about mud and magic. Not a funny story but a fun story about childhood and imagination.

Have you looked up David Sedaris (Santaland Diaries) or Dave Barry? Off the top of my head, I’m sure they’d have something!

[…] writing styles, and this one is called a braided or woven essay. A braided essay is where you take two seemingly dissimilar topics and weave them together into one. In this case, I describe the physical and psychological strength my adoptive mother required to […]

I’m writing my memoir and can see a few threads that I could use for the braided structure, Does braiding work just as well for a book (80,000 words) as for an essay?

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Jonathan Lethem to speak, "The Novel as Lyric Essay and Stage Play"

The Society for the Humanities  welcomes Jonathan Lethem, Roy Edward Disney '51 Professor of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Pomona College, to present his talk "The Novel as Lyric Essay and Stage Play."

Out of his twenty-five years’ experience as creative writing instructor, Lethem will present his eccentric personal account of the elements and development of the basic forms of literary fiction – an account which, while possibly a kind of fiction itself, may prove a useful model for writers and readers to consider.

Celebrated for his novels, short stories and essays, Jonathan Lethem is recognized today as one of America’s foremost contemporary writers. His works include nine novels, five short-story collections, six non-fiction books and an array of essays published in such publications as Rolling Stone, Harper’s and The New Yorker.

His novel Motherless Brooklyn was named Novel of the Year by Esquire magazine and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Salon Book Award, as well as the Macallan Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005. At Pomona, he teaches classes in creative writing and contemporary fiction.

Following his talk, a selection of Lethem's books will be available to purchase from PM Press. 

In addition to his visit to the Society for the Humanities, Lethem will be participating in the Ithaca is Books festival on Friday , September 13 and Saturday, September 14 in downtown Ithaca. More information on the festival's events can be found here:  https://www.ithacaisbooks.org/schedule . 

Registration not required. Free and open to the public. Reception to follow the lecture. 

Event Details. 

Announcing the 2025-26 Focal Theme: Scale

Peter Loewen named dean of Arts and Sciences

National Humanities Center selects two A&S professors as 2024-25 Fellows

Ghosh to lead Cornell’s Society for the Humanities