Obstructions and following the brush 🔥 / lyric threads lab: week 2
On the tenth muse, the lyric poem vs. the lyric essay, and writing with the brush
Follow along for the next 6 weeks as the first lyric threads lab discusses, writes, examines, and de-constellates lyric poetry and lyric essays. We will practice writing in new ways. We will offer transformative responses to one another in an intimate container. Here, on Substack, I (the guide, the host, the gardener) will detail what we discuss for you and share our generative writing activities.
How the first session went for the 6-person cloud cohort:
In our first session, we collectively used the word “astounding” at least 12 times throughout — and we read a poem that ended with the line “are you
hungry, awake, astonished enough?” (from Jane Wong’s After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly).
I shared the hope for the cohort to be both formed enough for shared context and fluid enough for play. And with each person introducing themselves with their places, their contradictions, their hopes, concerns, and writing journeys, the sense of soulful astonishment grew.
We’re ready to form and evaporate together, I feel. I do feel it 🔥.
🌩️ lyric threads lab [the cloud cohort] 🌩️ Week Two:
Each session begins with a discussion grounded in a collection of poems and/or essays. Then, we move into generative writing and feedback sessions after that. This Sunday, we’ll be discussing Katie Peterson’s poetry collection “A Piece of Good News” — a collection of poems that, to me, feels like following the brush.
Following the brush comes from the word and poetic form of the zhiuhitsu. Though, traditionally, the zhiuhitsu’s metaphor for writing doesn’t include fire, I feel the nature of fire — flitting, flickering — is so related to the experience of the zhiuhitsu.
Zuihitsu is a form that originated in Japan, composed largely of interwoven writings in prose and poetry on ideas or subjects that typically respond to the author’s surroundings. — poets.org
This metaphor of following the brush resounds close to home — I grew up in and currently live in Wisconsin where prairies and fields abound. With the prairies, controlled burns to promote future growth are often conducted in the Spring or the Fall, seasons where fire is more easily focused. Controlled burns are more successful when it’s not too hot, not too dry, not too humid, and so on. But fire is one of the least controllable elements, which feels like its greatest allure. Personally, writing feels like I’m either following the movement of fire through a vast field of possible pieces of language and ideas — or — I am running out in front of the path of fire, hoping to continue outrunning it before it “gets me.”
I’m curious if this feels like writing does for you, too? Will you talk to me about it in the comments?
So, for Katie Peterson’s “A Piece of Good News” writing discussion:
I want to ask you, how do you experience her poems?
Do you sense what flicker or impulse she’s following?
Here’s a scan of her poem “Honeymoon Suite”:
Tell me, what did you notice?
What “rules” do you think Katie Peterson gave herself for this collection?
Imagine you’re writing these poems — what impulse did Katie Peterson follow in creating these poems? Impulse — or inspiration — or how did she “follow the brush”?
What did she do that you’d want to try with your own writing?
Lyric poetry vs. lyric essay
Because this cloud cohort is focusing on both lyric poetry and lyric essay, we’re going to cover some of the origins or paradigms related to these two forms of writing. On our call, the cohort will select one of the following three to discuss:
1. The 10th Muse
There are many origins of lyric poetry. And, in the Western world, we look to Sappho as one of the most significant progenitors. I’m particularly fond of her writing for a couple of reasons.
The first: As a freshman, I came upon her work in the library of my college, not fully ready to receive the potency of her language. I was so consumed by this magic in the randomness of rifling through the stacks and remember sitting down in the middle of the aisle because I couldn’t stop reading her. I checked the book out and ran to where the majority of my friends hung out, which was the basement of my Midwestern 2-year college that had tunnels underground to connect the buildings and what my our friend group lovingly called “The Pit.” I didn’t find any of the people I knew well enough to talk to (or scream at about Sappho’s brilliance) and so I called upon a mostly familiar face and asked him if he would want to read her poems with me some more. This stranger said yes and we wrote some of the fragments on the whiteboard inside a study room. This person is Kevin and he quickly became one of my best friends. His willingness to share in the delight of Sappho’s lyric poems with me set the tone for a friendship, and will always feel connected to Sappho for me.
The second reason I am so fond of Sappho is that Anne Carson translated her poetry in a way that acknowledged how fragmented her work is for us — we have but a fraction of her writing available to us, after many burnings of her work and much loss through time — and Anne Carson also exhibits how full each lyrical phrase is. With the brackets, we see there was something missing, and we can make meaning in between for ourselves.
Sappho was a queer woman who lived on the island of Lesbos, Greece around 620 BCE. She was a teacher, a lyricist, and likely a musician too. Well-educated, well-respected. Plato hailed her as "the tenth Muse.” Her poems paint her interior spaces for us, connecting them to the natural world (don’t get me started on the heartbreak poem and the lizard!). Her “I” becomes us and her lovers become our lovers. Her goddesses, her fruits, her ships. In her lyrics, we begin to connect our personal, specific experiences with the reality that most humans experience the same things, at different times.
2. The speaker vs. the writer
And so I think it’s important to talk about the separation for the speaker and the writer. What we know about Sappho is mostly from her writings. But what if her writings were from the perspective of an invented voice?
What if what we write is not necessarily our factual experience, but our imaginal or archetypal experience?
The lyric poem or essay leans toward the interior experience (of longing, of grief, of desire, of lament). It’s an exercise in empathy, reading lyrical writing. For the lyric, it both matters and does not matter who is speaking.
Experimenting with voice, the permeability of speaker and audience, and who is being addressed by the speaker is a subject better for its own post. But I think it is important to bring up at this moment in the lyric threads lab before we jump into our writing prompt.
Questions I intend to pose for discussion:
How do you choose the perspective of your speaker?
Who is your intended audience?
How do you convey how close the speaker is to you, the writer?
When do you think it is inappropriate to write from the perspective of someone far from your personal experience?
How important is it that lyrical writing be autobiographical? And when do we know lyrical writing is “fictional”?
3. Essai (fr): “to make an attempt” / essay
I’m thinking about how the voice, in academic essay writing, is advised to be “invisible.” In academic writing, we eliminate any pronouns referring to the writer, though it is clear there is a writer (or many) and the writer’s experiences and identities inform the writing. I have a lot of opinions about this that I’ll write about another day.
Here, I’ll say that the lyric essay requires the “I” — and it is distinguishable from lyrical poetry in only nebulous ways (which is the exciting part, no?!). It’s impossible to differentiate, truly, the difference between them, as lyric poetry often includes prose and argument and fact and biography, too.
But what I’m curious about is the origins of the word “essay” as coming from the French word “essai” which means to make an attempt, to try, to trial. An essay is where ideas are worked out in real time, for the reader to experience as well and to “check the math” of the writer.
I am curious what lyrical writing does when it is actively making an attempt toward something — and look forward to reading examples of lyric essays and discussing how the lyrical mode brightens and enlivens the lyric essay.
This Week’s Writing Prompt:
This prompt is adapted for your use. In our little group meeting I’ll be asking each person to offer 1 obstruction. The desired effect would be to be surprised by each invented obstruction by someone outside of yourself. It’s likely we will groan by the accumulating constrictions. Though, I believe in the magic that occurs when we’re “forced” into a pathway we would not have chosen for ourselves consciously.
Because the surprise element seems important for this prompt, would you be open to texting 6 friends, asking for an obstruction or rule? When all 6 of the friends reply, you have your list of parameters you have to write within.
Here are examples of what an obstruction might look like:
Write a poem without using the letter “t” in any of the words.
Write a poem without any pronouns (it, he, they, she, them, our, etc.) at all.
Write a poem that acts as a “diorama” of an epoch, era, setting, or otherwise significant ecosystem / system.
Write a poem that uses elements of a recipe (ingredients, cooking processes, timing).
Write a poem that uses only 4 letter long words.
A student a couple years ago delightfully blurted “no words!” as an obstruction and so we created poems from images on the whiteboard, laughing and squirming as we took 10 minutes to create within our group of obstructions (the rest of which I forget, but do remember the other obstructions were already difficult enough).
Share your poem in the comments or in a direct message! I’d love to see and feel your writing <3
Recent news / what I’m looking forward to:
I started CrossFit this week after a couple years of hearing from friends how this environment is not the aggressive, gains-focused place that I thought it was. And, honestly, no shade to people focused on building muscle and tracking personal bests. But I learned from David Pope about CrossFit’s functional fitness philosophy — about gaining greater mobility, flexibility, and strength with all types of people. In my first session, my trainer and I focused on squats, push ups and burpees, movements essential to living a long and healthy life. My trainer referred to the burpee as the “help I have fallen and cannot get up” remedy. I highly suggest following David Pope for his videos on increasing fitness in ways that really listen to your own body and your own desires. Astrologically speaking, my Mars is in Libra (squaring my chart ruler Saturn in Capricorn and the Master of my Nativity: Jupiter in Cancer), and I really do get my best workouts in a group settings where everything feels jovial, social, and with longevity in mind. I feel so supported by adding CrossFit to my yoga practice.
In less than a month, my production company begins filming our next feature film called “Raffle” in Wisconsin (written and directed by Martin Kaszubowski). I’m ready to be back on set, shuffling between the “hurry up and wait” energy of set life and reading my students’ essays during the quiet moments. A lot of the actors and crew from EARLYBIRD are returning and it will be so nice to reconnect.
My dear friend—one of my Pleiades sisters—Ruth Ellen Kocher has a new poetry book coming out soon called Archon / After. This book is surreal and full of mite. The book begins at the end and walks us through time with comments on friendships, imagined futures, and emerging from collapsing relationship(s). It’s, frankly, astounding writing. Highly recommend pre-ordering it!
Thank you for reading, darling people. Head over to my website www.kpkaszu.com for more details about lyric threads lab and astrology readings.