In the 2007 ‘Lyric Essay’ issue of the Seneca Review, a number of prominent nonfiction writers were asked to define the genre of the lyric essay. In that volume, Brian Lennon calls the lyric essay an act of ‘negation’.Eula Biss titles her short piece ‘It Is What It Is’. Dionisio D. Martínez terms the lyric essay ‘a story with a hangover’. Marcia Aldrich writes in her article that it ‘does not narrate a story so much as express a condition. … Its incompleteness is Romantic, revealed in lyric fragmentation, the infusion of imagination into the debris of fact, where the world’s last woman picks among the ruins.’ Lia Purpura answers the question of what the lyric essay is with a series of provisional responses, including ‘Ask Again Later.’ Perhaps most notably, though, Phillip Lopate – editor of the nearly ubiquitous anthology Art of the Personal Essay – writes frankly: ‘I mistrust the lyric essay; I welcome it; I don’t know what it is.’

These varied sentiments are not surprising. Though the term ‘lyric essay’ has been in wide circulation for over twenty years, the subgenre has had a complicated and sometimes contentious history. In this chapter, I will explore what it means to label an essay ‘lyric’ and will make a case for why the lyric essay is both distinct and essential in the nonfiction canon. To get at these bigger issues, this chapter will begin by casting back to a history of the term ‘lyric essay’, including its association with both lyric poetry and the traditional essay. From there, I will go on to discuss the formal qualities that lyric essays tend to possess: a move towards poetic rather than fictional techniques; juxtaposition and association in lieu of direct denotation; and the use of form to mirror and inform content. Finally, offering a range of textual examples, the chapter will argue for why the lyric essay is particularly generative of truth-telling when there are complex and fragmented situations; when there are gaps in knowledge, memory or experience; and when the reader’s perceptions, rather than the writer’s, must be centered.

History of the Lyric Essay

Most nonfiction readers trace the first mention of the genre of the ‘lyric essay’ to a conversation in the early 1990s between writers (and later, Seneca Review co-editors) John D’Agata and Deborah Tall.