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Components of a

Lyrical Essay

The Lyrical Essay

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Inventive and dextrous* language

*Demonstrating neat skill, esp. with the hands.

Mentally adroit; clever. Synonyms: adroit - deft - skillful - skilful - handy

Infinitesimal chests

Race-car hearts

Apple breath

living a life of fusion and flame

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A perceptible voice

Tone of voice: attitude toward the topic. I love

March! vs: I just love March.

Syntax: word order

Diction: word choice

Intensity

Directness

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Examples of voice

Consider the hummingbird for a long moment

Deeper still. The peritoneum, pink and gleaming and

membranous, bulges into the wound.

I must confess that the priestliness of my profession has everbeen impressed on me.

I learned, though I couldnt comprehendindeed, I still cannot

how incredibly far away they all were.

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Metaphors

One holds the knife as one holds the bow of a cello or a tulip--by

the stem.

Their cataclysmic dying, brilliant supernovae that light up

deathbeds which become nurseries for the next generation,

are reproductions of the true event, like a movie filmed after

the fact but true to every detail.

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Extended metaphorWhen I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of

my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, Ive never been

seized by it since. For some reason I always hid the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk

up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off

piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block,

draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write Ilabeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this

arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way,regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. But I never lurked about. I would go straight

home and not give the matter another thought, until, some months later, I would be grippedagain by the impulse to hide another penny.

Read the 3rdparagraph: I used to be able to see [.]

Searching, I couldnt spot one. I wandered downstream to force them to play their hand, buttheyd crossed the creek and scattered. One show to a customer. These appearances catch at mythroat; they are the free gifts, the bright coppers at the roots of trees.

--From the Opening to Seeing excerpt from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

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Unexpected Leaps

Mammals and birds have hearts with four chambers. Reptilesand turtles have hearts with three chambers. Fish have heartswith two chambers. Insects and mollusks have hearts with onechamber. Worms have hearts with one chamber, although theymay have as many as eleven single-chambered hearts.Unicellular bacteria have no hearts at all; but even they havefluid eternally in motion, washing from one side of the cell tothe other, swirling and whirling. No living being is withoutinterior liquid motion. We all churn inside.

So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in

a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one inthe endnot mother and father, not wife or husband, notlover, not child, not friend.

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Amazing long sentences

As [the stars] age, fires burning hotter and hotter, expanding to ever

more gargantuan sizes, big enough to swallow thousands or even

millions of Earths, they cook hydrogen into helium, helium into

lithium, and so on down to iron, fatal iron. Iron is a poison for these

heavenly bodies, building up like a cancer until they start to die:

Giants engorging larger still until they burst, flinging raw matter out

into the universe to form more stars, planets, comets, asteroids;

smaller stars collapsing in on themselves, losing heat so slowly and

painfully, dimming first to white dwarves, then black dwarves, thenblack holesgraves marking the stars passing with a rift in the fabric

of reality, sucking in everything and keeping it there greedily as if

hoping to re-form the dead star.

The Lyrical Essay