Lyric essay books

1 Gloria E. Anzaldúa 2 Eula Biss 3 Giannina Braschi 4 Anne Carson 5 Hélène Cixous 6 John D'Agata 7 Danielle Cadena Deulen 8 Joan Didion 9 Annie Dillard 10 Forrest Gander More items...

The lyrical essay is a type of personal essay that combines both prose and poetry. It is often crafted like a prose poem. The writer uses a series of images or ideas, not a narrative or argument, to craft the essay. The image can be of a person, place, thing, or object. The idea can be anything.

The essays have names such as “Dream Logic,” “Impossible Time,” “Variations on Crying”; and they are short — three-to-seven-minute reads. They tend toward shallow rather than deep thinking and offer, as their cute names hint, the promise of pleasure without a lot of effort.