The Lyric Essay
S07 
Mark Wunderlich
The lyric essay is, by its own fence-sitting name, neither wholly poem nor wholly essay: It is a hybrid in which the essayist may begin breaking into lines of verse, or in which the poet considers a lengthier argument too rangy for the confines of a syllable count. In this course we will read Whitman’s Specimen Days, Dickinson’s Letters, Milosz’s ABC’s, short essays by Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, Julio Cortazar, Anne Carson, and a score of other very contemporary writers whose work is uncomfortable with typical genre labels. Students will write critical papers, give brief presentations, and create their own lyric essays.