lyric threads + finding yourself in the "I"
They are ingenious. They are subtle. They are ways to outsmart the gods. And they are a way to outsmart ourselves. Writing a lyric, reading a lyric makes us more capacious and subtle. They trick
In just a few weeks, 6 - 10 poets and lyric essayists will be meeting on Sundays for close feedback and generating new work together. This first cohort of lyric threads lab is called the cloud cohort — for the writers who pull threads of image and emotional urgency from the sky. For the writers who put the sky into form. If you’re one of these writers, apply to take part by August 20th here.
THE LYRIC MODE
But what is the lyric mode? You know a poem is written in the lyric mode when it sings — when the “speaker” of the poem could be anyone, could be you.
Jane Hirshfield says of the lyric mode in her Tracing the Lyric lecture:
The lyric as I imagined is how we name poems usually shorter rather than longer which are of personal feeling, personal relationship to every kind of experience, interior discovery, expression, investigation,
As a hand, offers us a way to touch, hold, and question the outer world. The lyric gives us a way to touch, hold, and question our ideas, values, griefs, hopes, longings — all that is also inner.
The lyric is also always language infused by and changed by its own music. It works by music’s pleasures and by music’s alterations.
In the West, it is named after the lyre. In many other cultures, the word for lyric simply translates as song and so far as we know these poems were originally accompanied by drum, koto, flute, hand — some sound.
The work of the lyric is in part memorability. It is a way to keep in place by musical patterns and fabulously, intensively interesting words that might otherwise escape holding. Often the heart of lyric is something so volatile we cannot remember it without the poem that creates it and recreates it.
Like music itself the work of lyric is also the enactment of transformation. A song is not one note repeated over and over. Over its course something happens where we are left changed. In every culture, poetry’s birth story is connected to the trickster
In Greek culture, as a one day old infant, Hermes breaks every rule. He kills a tortoise. He steals Apollo’s cows. He kills a couple of them. He uses the intestines to string the first lyre. And then his first song is something he uses to trade the furious Apollo in exchange for the 48 remaining cattle.
Lyric poems change the deal and the condition of the status quo. They do this from their beginning. They have always done it.
We may feel the lyric as heartfelt outpourings but they do other work as well and part of that is because of what musical awareness does to our minds. They are ingenious. They are subtle. They are ways to outsmart the gods. And they are a way to outsmart ourselves. Writing a lyric, reading a lyric makes us more capacious and subtle. They trick us into knowing more than we know, feeling more than we knew we felt.
And over time the lyric poem itself has become larger if you trace its history it has over time taken in more and more as its subject.
Can you feel yourself in Heather Christle’s “I”?
Lyric poetry can condense all human experience in a small space — but it also can offer a specificity that helps the reader identify themselves even further. Susan Firer writes with delicious diction that gives the sense that we’re in a specific place and time, and we’re feeling it as if we’re there too.
Even if we don’t have a Jim of our own, we have Jupiter and the moon.
And June Jordan writes toward Haruko all the grief and urgency that that universal experience of losing a love holds. She writes of longing — what we all know about. And she puts language in formation of music and visual sumptuousness.
It’s with Sappho that lyric poetry seems to begin — of course, lyric is ancient and always but we have her fragments to show us that humans have felt in these ways forever. Such is the lyric mode: urgently now and always.
I’ll be focusing on the lyric mode in the lyric essay form in my next Substack post. It’s important that those who write lyric poetry and those who write lyric essays (an elusive form!) feel free to experiment in the same space. Often, the lyric creates its own container.
IN-PERSON EVENTS (Milwaukee, Wisconsin area!)
On September 14, I’m leading a writing workshop that combines processing climate grief in a small group and writing elegies. We begin with a contemplative walk through the Lynden Sculpture Garden’s labyrinth (created by
and dozens of staff and volunteers) — this is where we feed the nonverbal parts of ourselves with appreciation and noticing of our natural surroundings — and then we settle in for an intimate discussion guided by writing prompts, examples of elegies, and writing elegies ourselves.Center Street Daze is this weekend! I’ll be offering short astrology readings in person. Come by! Center Street Daze is definitely one of my favorite Milwaukee street festivals :)
VIRTUAL EVENTS
lyric threads lab — we begin Sept. 8 and meet virtually every Sunday until Oct. 20. Apply by August 20 to be considered for this small and transformative cohort.
KP Kaszubowski (she/her) is a poet and filmmaker. Her debut poetry collection “somnieeee” was published in 2019 by Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, and her debut feature film “Ringolevio” premiered in 2020 at Dances With Films in Los Angeles. As narrative designer and producer, her first feature length documentary “My First and Last Film” (director: Tracey Thomas) premiered in 2019. Her previous poetry has been published (as Kristin Peterson) by TriQuarterly, pitymilk press, Great Lakes Review, dancing girl press, Juked, ICHNOS, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing through Eastern Washington University in 2023. KP Kaszubowski is also a practicing archetypal and ancient astrologer. In her practice, she seeks the patterns in her clients’ charts for affirming and life-enriching pathways. She lives close enough to the Lake to pretend she can hear it. When she lived in Spokane, she could hear Lake Michigan there too.