Lyric essay

What is a lyric essay?

A lyric essay is a cross between an essay and a lyric poem. In "Knit One,"  Suzanne Cody writes in Eastern Iowa Review about a woman's sorrow and dejection by using the metaphor of knitting:

"Sorrow ravels the sweater from the bottom--a slow, slow process. He appears to think the young woman doesn't notice. But she does. He may well know this, but likes to pretend." 

Their relationship is becoming unraveled just like the sweater:

"If you don't make time for this, eventually the pulling will go faster than the stitching and there will be nothing left between you and me but a pile of tangled wool"

The term lyric essay was invented by the late Deborah Tall, a professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Tall wrote A Family in Strangers in which she employed the lyric essay, a form she has been obsessed with for thirty years. 

Resources:
http://outofboundsradioshow.com/exc_audio_post/deborah-tall-poet-writer-and-professor-of-english-at-hobart-william-smith-colleges-geneva-ny/

The Brigands by Parris Afton Bonds

Set in Matamoros, this exciting romance explores the events that led to the formation of Texas. Filled with real and fictional characters, the basic outline of the story remains faithful to the historical record. The provisional government was rife with tension. Land speculation or “Matamoros fever” resulted in some land titles to be sold illegally. 

While there’s no record of a double agent, like the nefarious Chaparral Fox, the provisional government had many factions and dissenters. James Fannin’s decision to capture the port of Matamoros divided the Texas army, weakening the forces at the Alamo.

Against the brewing unrest in Tejas y Coahuila, many strong-willed characters come into conflict with each other. Rafaela, who was raised in England, learns that she must marry a man she loathes, Paladin. Her father arranged for her to marry Paladin, a Baron, for his title. In return, the Baron would receive a dowry and the ability to pay off debts.  The dark brooding Baron clearly prefers the Fiona, the feisty Irish woman hired to become Rafaela’s companion.

Fiona, wonderfully delineated by Bonds, is the kind of humorous, hard scrabble character that is a joy to discover. Deprived of many things in childhood, Fiona determines to get her due. Gutsy and determined, she will not back down to Paladin who claims ownership to the same rich parcel of land that she does.

Rafaela appear altogether different, yet in many ways, she is similar to Fiona. She wants a home more than riches; she desires true love and not an arranged marriage to a dilettante. Though Rafaela tries to resist the charms of Niall, Paladin’s friend, she finds herself inevitably drawn to the penniless Irish Traveler. 

What makes this novel exciting is the expert pacing.  In scene after scene, these characters risk everything for a chance at true love and happiness.  In one of the most pivotal scenes, Fiona, with Rafaela’s help, turns her carriage around, as a bridge goes up in flames. By choosing to turn her carriage around, she’s throwing in her lot with Paladin and the revolutionaries. The plight of the mismatched lovers is not dissimilar to the plight of the ragtag Texas army that defies the odds.

Coding with music

If your students like music and coding, there are great new ways to combine both interests.

Tutorial--composing Music
https://www.datacamp.com/community/tutorials/using-tensorflow-to-compose-music


Made with Code's Music Mixer
https://www.madewithcode.com/projects/music
The Music Mixer from Made with Code is possibly the simplest way to play with code and virtual musical instruments.

Made with Code's Mentor Video (Ebony Oshunrinde)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOdkfOhUtjs

DiscoverE Engineering
http://www.discovere.org/
Sound Proof Box activity.

GrooveCoders
https://groovecoders.com/
While this isn't free, it gives students and coding clubs the opportunity to create songs.

Earsketch
https://earsketch.gatech.edu/landing/#/
Use python or javascript to mix music in a DAW. Free.

The Lost Words by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris

MacFarlane takes words that were dropped from children's dictionaries and creates poetic anagrams. Words like acorn, adder, bluebell, bramble, conker, fern, heather were replaced with technological terms e.g. "cut and paste."

Conker, the shiny dark nut encased within the green spiky fruit, was used in children's games throughout the British isles. The horse chestnut or "conker" has an odd shape and would be hard to duplicate. Thus, MacFarlane's anagram includes the question, "Cabinet-maker, could you craft me a conker? He decided that neither Cabinet-maker nor King nor engineer could make one.

He calls a dandelion a little "sun-of-the-grass," and a kingfisher a "colour-giver, fire-bringer, flame-flicker, river's quiver."

All of these descriptions are worked beautifully into an anagram stanzas and illustrated with oversized images by Jackie Morris. For "starling," he writes,

Should green-as-moss be mixed with
  blue-of-steel be mixed with gleam-of-gold
     you'd still fall short by far of the--

Tar-bright oil-slick sheen and
    gloss of starling wing.

And if you sampled sneaker-squeaks
   and car alarms and phone ringtones
        you'd still come nowhere near the --

Rooftop riprap street-smart
    hip-hop of starling song.

Let shade clasp coal clasp pitch
    clasp storm clasp witch,
       they'd still be pale beside the --

In-the-dead-of-night-black, cave-black,
  head-cocked, fight-back gleam of starling eye.

Northern lights teaching shoaling fish teaching
   swarming flies teaching clouding ink
        would never learn the --

Ghostly swirling surging whirling melting
   murmuration of starling flock.


The Lost Words is a visual and verbal treat. 

Writer's League of Texas podcast episode 39-- Great first pages and Chapters

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash

What makes a good opening page to a novel?

Some really good reminders in Episode #39.

Stacey Swann believes the voice draws readers in and makes readers want to keep listening. The opening gives some sense of who the character is and who they want.

The opening page is a little like a "first date." The first page tells the readers whether the character is someone they want to spend time with.

They also discuss "psychic distance."


In Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, odd details give a creeping, subtle feeling that something's not right.

The novel does a great job cultivating mystery.

https://soundcloud.com/writersleagueoftexas
(Episode 39)

Tony Hoagland

Don’t Tell Anyone

BY TONY HOAGLAND

We had been married for six or seven years

when my wife, standing in the kitchen one afternoon, told me

that she screams underwater when she swims—

that, in fact, she has been screaming for years

into the blue chlorinated water of the community pool

where she does laps every other day.  

Buttering her toast, not as if she had been

concealing anything,

not as if I should consider myself

personally the cause of her screaming,

nor as if we should perform an act of therapy  

right that minute on the kitchen table,

—casually, she told me,

and I could see her turn her square face up

to take a gulp of oxygen,

then down again into the cold wet mask of the unconscious.

For all I know, maybe everyone is screaming

as they go through life, silently,

politely keeping the big secret

that it is not all fun

to be ripped by the crooked beak

of something called psychology,

to be dipped down

again and again into time;

that the truest, most intimate

pleasure you can sometimes find

is the wet kiss

of your own pain.

There goes Kath, at one pm, to swim her twenty-two laps

back and forth in the community pool;

—what discipline she has!

Twenty-two laps like twenty-two pages,

that will never be read by anyone.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2012)

The Changeling Myth in Eggshells

In Eggshells, Catriona Lally uses the changeling myth to characterize Vivian, a mentally disabled woman who has just inherited her great Aunt's house in Dublin.

The death of her Aunt leaves Vivian more vulnerable than ever. Her only other relatives is a condescending sister. 

Accepting her parents' myth about her--that she is a changeling, Vivian,  embarks on journeys by foot and bus to find a portal to the fairy world.

Vivian is undeniably lonely. One of the first things Vivian does after her Aunt dies is seek a friend. Lacking social skills, she puts out an advertisement for friend named Penelope. 

Incredibly, someone answers the ad. Penelope, an artist who is just a little less madcap than Vivian, assists Vivian her with her eccentric schemes.

Though the pace can be slow, this novel will appeal to those who like quirky characters. 

She walks around libraries, museums, bridges, cafes and looks for small doors that might lead to a fairy world.

"I pass underneath Merchant's Arch and close my eyes, hoping for a transformation---an arch is surely as good a portal as any--but the smell of stale piss doesn't fade to flowers, and the noise of the traffic doesn't change to fairy bells."

Superbass [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Much of the charm of the novel is that the character visits real places with odd place names. There really is a Yellow road and Emerald street in Dublin. She copies graffiti into her notebook, looking for patterns and "thin places" where the real world and the fairy world intersect. 

She walks up the quays towards O'Connell Bridge and Bride street near the place where St. Patrick baptized local inhabitants. She goes to the Chester Beatty Library to look at magical things and the dervish dance. Yet, even doing a whirling dervish dance doesn't result in a transformation. 

Eggshells was the 2018 winner of the Rooney Prize for Literature.