Jessica Hendry Nelson | Nick Adams
This craft talk will explore effective approaches to the lyric essay, from poetic language to juxtaposition and white space. We'll discuss some of the forms a lyric essay may take, including the braid, wherein a steady accretion of key imagery and associations build meaning. The lyric essay is an ancient form—Montaigne, Seneca, St. Augustine, and Sei Shonogan are early practitioners—with modern applications and implications. We'll discuss the context from which the lyric essay arises and subjects that lend themselves well to the form. By analyzing successful models and exploring the contours, elements, and language of the lyric essay, we'll come to a deeper understanding of its purposes and pleasures.
Jessica Hendry Nelson is the author of the memoir If Only You People Could Follow Directions (Counterpoint Press, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Tin House, The Threepenny Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Columbia Journal, PANK, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFA Program in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts and the MFA Program at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, and serves as the Managing & Nonfiction editor of Green Mountains Review.