A Braided Heart: Shaping the Lyric Essay
Brenda Miller
Tell it Slant

This essay beyond being about the braided form was a "how to" guide in itself. The braid that wound through the piece felt very obvious in an instructional way.

Quality of Voice? “and his email reply said (in a voice so much like the rabbis of my youth! Slightly contemptuous, a little annoyed…) that the Sabbath bread…” This phrase really shows the style of voice the author uses. The parentheses, exclamation point, and ellipses, I think all lead to a very laid back, causal interpretation of her writing.

What are some of the specific words or phrases that bring this essay into focus for you? “the fragmentation, however, allowed me—almost forced me – not to approach the essay head-on but to search for a more circuitous way into the essay.” I also thought her advice on focusing on the silences, the caesuras was descriptive of the essay itself.

Where does this writer create images and or scenes? “ You take the sticky dough in your hands and knead, folding the dough toward you, then pushing away with the heel of your hand, turning and repeating, working and working your entire body—your legs, your abdomen, your strong heart.”

Where does this writer “tell?” “I love the fact their separate parts intersecting, creating the illusion of wholeness but with the oh-so-pleasurable texture of separation.”

What kinds of sentence variety, phrasing, etc. add to the quality of this piece? “Bread had always been a miracle. As has poetry, and language itself, this tremendous urge to communicate.” The incredibly informal attitude of the piece opens it up to creative sentence structure such as beginning with “and”.

Questions:

How obvious to like your thread to be?

How does using or not using headings for different sections effect a piece?