Lyric Essays for Life’s Uninitiated
I imagine the lyric essay is liberating to the writer, unburdened by citations or counter-claims. But for readers, especially first time readers like myself, it’s disorienting. It’s like I’m invading someone’s thoughts—someone’s consciousness.
What is Identity? (The Namesake)
Molded with time like clay work, their identities are their personal qualities retaining the past, interacting with the present, and projecting into the future. Nothing was lost within themselves between the different timepoints, their identities were simply reworked, reshaped.
Moments, moments, moments
For 6 weeks I was home. Home, as in Florida, spending quality time with my family.
In July I tore
A nun and a young man
As a child, I used to imagine myself being the “first” to do something. Walking
to the park, I was
The New Yorker Stack
The same cannot be said for those that truly experience loss and pain. They plug their ears and still hear cries. They shut their eyes and still see catastrophe. And months after the media and public spotlight shifts, the pain of loss still etches deeper wounds—this is the tragedy after the tragedy.
The Letter, 1968
Poetry was always practice not leisure. Only for the sophisticated to enjoy—untethered by grammar or convention—poetry sits somewhere between classical music and abstract art.