Flowering into Strangeness: Building Association through Revision

          When approaching prose writing, I like to think first about what it means to journey from the province of poetry, replete with tiny detonations of experiment and lyric, into the province of the sentence, and how this move into linearity at the sentence level (grammatically and syntactically) can sometimes be more utilitarian. How can I move this sentence from the expectations of grammar into the unknown—the sentence performing metamorphosis into passerine? With this question, I changed the last sentence from the mundane into the avian: a bird emerges from the line.

          I often tell my poetry students that most associative writing (writing that links ideas and experiences without being overtly obvious) happens at the moment of editing: that attentiveness to attention trumps the need for intention. I am drawing here from Dean Young’s The Art of Recklessness in which he states that one should attend to—pay attention to—the poem in terms of what it wants to do, instead of intend to its meaning. In other words, pay attention to what meanings or associations might be imaginatively suggested, rather than reining in the lyric writing so much that it “proves” its intended or predetermined point without allowing that point to unfurl like a flower. But can this technique of privileging attention over intention also be used when editing narrative prose? Can the draft show the writer what it is paying attention to, what the interior of the speaker has to offer in terms of its wilding field? Isn’t there something that the writer attends to, some thing that must be communicated using the rhetoric of scientific reason? The beauty of the lyric essay is that the rules are not rules but a practice of aesthetics. I believe that the expectations of prose are upended by lyric’s very nature and willingness to step into the psychic world: association as pertaining to the way the psyche moves from thing to thing. Baudelaire says, “Le beau est toujours bizarre.” The beautiful is always strange. For me, the lyric strategy that allows for the bizarre is association, or perhaps to put a finer point on it, free association defined in Merriam-Webster as “the expression (as by speaking or writing) of the content of consciousness without censorship as an aid in gaining access to unconscious processes.” Such free association can unlock an essay’s mystery, its unexpected possibilities.

          My own obsession with delinking sense and sentence emerges from my own reading practice: I prefer to read poets in whose work one line associatively follows another without obvious, linear connection. The result is an accumulation of images that swirl together and give the reader a sense of wonder and allows them to come to their own conclusions by watching the speaker’s mind in action, to find the meaning lodged in the in-between. Not that this must be a puzzle, but rather, that through considering the lines, images, and associations the writer has provided, the reader makes their own emotional journey through the text. I am reminded of Julia Koets’ title essay from The Rib Joint (and her whole collection, for that matter) that blends information about octopus biology and lesbian relationships. Another lyric essay example is Julie Marie Wade’s “Cliff Notes for Coming Out.” She uses the frame of “Notes” and the refrain of the word “inclemency” as a jumping off point for an associative exploration of things that are inclement without overdetermining the examples or experiences she writes, either for herself or for her reader.

          Associative writing does not mean lack of organization, but rather an implicit as opposed to explicit organizational scheme. And here, the organizing principle could be just what the title of Wade’s piece says it is: We as readers enter the essay-poem knowing that the structure will be “notes” taken by the narrator. The compact between events and images are bound associatively through this idea. One event or image pours into the next, which then builds toward an accumulation of ideas. The reader moves through Wade’s associations to see “inclemency” defined and redefined through weather images as well as emotional examples of homophobia and queer self-love.

          As I write this, I am reminded of the Japanese zuihitsu form of writing, loosely connected fragments and ideas that often respond to an author’s surroundings—neither poetry nor prose but a chimera of both plus list, commonplace book, and more. In her 2021 American Poetry Review essay “The Zuihitsu and the Toadstool,” Kimiko Hahn says the zuihitsu has to feel spontaneous and random and uses “fragmentation, juxtaposition, varying lengths, disparate forms (observation, anecdote, journal, catalog, […] and hybrid text), and an organizing subject—it creates an impression of spontaneity and a quality of ‘imperfection.’” One of my favorites of hers is called “Sparrow” from The Narrow Road to the Interior.

          When drafting essays, it’s easier for me to think in these terms of loosened reins. I write as a genre traitor/trader. The hardest part, I tell my students, is to trust your ability to form associations between seemingly disparate things, and there are ways to trick this technique out a little from your prose that involve visiting the Oracle at Delphi—a journey into the fallow or the yet-untilled parts of the mind.

          Following the mind as you collect images and divining how they interact and incarnate into poems is not a spontaneous thing. When I say that you must write and revise and revise until the lyric essay breaks forth from the page, this is no exaggeration. I tell my students that the “lyric” happens during revision—I do not think this is completely accurate, but frequently the piece reveals itself to me through a series of cuts and additions. Think of a garden. Think of a fruit tree. Excessive branches and leaves can inhibit fruiting. The gardener must prune the plant for it to thrive. The same with the draft. The process of revision is akin to magic in that it requires a surrender to the subconscious mind. Instead of focusing on controlling the mind, notice what connections it makes without judgment. Let the peony emerge even if you were expecting raspberries. Do not be afraid—you do not have to show anyone your word experiments unless you want to. Be messy. Be a mess.

          Consider my piece of writing, “Quarrystone,” below. When writing “Quarrystone,” I gave myself a 10-to-15-minute freewriting prompt. I began writing using the title as a jumping off point. Quarrystone was the name of the building that I lived in in Malden, Massachusetts, and looking outside I could see the literal stone quarry in which the complex had been built. The crags stood faceted against the sky. Just beyond was the COVID-19 world.

          Obviously in this piece, my mind wandered through its associations and attentions into the realm of myth (whether personal experience or actual mythology), and this became an integral part of the list that I wrote. Here, I mean myth as the collected experiences of a life as narrated by the mind. After the initial free write, I made sure to return to the original image or thought—in the case of “Quarrystone,” the stone itself, the trees that grew on it—how it looked like a mountain.

          At the time of revision where I attended to my draft, I underlined all the parts that moved in interesting ways, where the language or idea was exciting to me. Then I rewrote them onto a separate document, mixing them up to create tension and release between the parts. This is where I offered libation to the god of chaos, beckoning the holy spirit of wildness in. By restructuring the elements in my lyric essay, by mixing up the original order in which I’d first drafted the lyric essay, the essay revealed itself to me: its stakes (emotional and political), its heart, and its discursive field and prairie.

          So much about wildness in writing is about letting it take you where it wants to go. That’s what Baudelaire’s assertion means to me. That I must step out of my own way and trust that my body, through holding a pen, can connect to my subconscious mind that’s already in overdrive—making links between thoughts and images that I don’t even realize. We are not going to clear a field but instead we are going to wander among the grass and trees. The life that’s already teeming in the spaces that we wander is worthy of being there in its own right. What if this field is your own interiority? Everything that wilds and rewilds inside you is worth meeting on its own terms. Honor it. Listen closely instead of batting away the things that you don’t want to think of because it’s emotionally easier somehow, or because they don’t conform to your preconceived intentions for the piece. Remember that the root system of grasses, like zoysia grass, grows like that of mushrooms: matted in a rhizomatic web. Trust your feet; let your writing connect and reveal the associative web of your own interiority.

A Lyric Essay Exercise

          Pick an image such as a rose, a flock of birds, or anything else that you see regularly. Set a timer. For 5 minutes, write the image you chose, devoid of any leading sentiments. After this, for 10 minutes expand the image into the personal and mythic—any free associations you have with that image—without heavy-handedly drawing the parallels between the original image and the memory/myth.

          Set a timer for another 10 minutes. Return to the image; look closer at it. What do you see? When it comes to revising, be audacious and indiscriminate. Let the draft flow as a poem does from association to association while still allowing it its prosaic foot. Mix up the sentences and thoughts so that it looks as though you are following your thoughts from one association to the next. Let the work be an essay in poem’s clothing. The result will be a lyric essay where, instead of tracing an intended meaning, the reader will track your attention through all its wild and strange sproutings, will enter the lyric experience of a mind in its process of discovering connections.

          This exercise is not necessarily about writing something. It’s about noticing where you are and allowing yourself the dignity of being in a place. It also, at least for me, works as a way to quell my anxiety by letting me focus my attention on something, some task external to me. Any writing that I manage during this time is a trail of breadcrumbs to follow later into something deeper and maybe longer if I am willing to be led. Or maybe I will leave it there for the crows to eat.

A Lyric Essay Example

“Quarrystone”

The slate stakes are cut out from the cliff.

The workers place nets to catch any falling rocks or stones that pelt down upon the cars below.

The trees in the courtyard were the last to burn in their orange and reds—orange the color of yellow and rose gold.

The color of wanting to put my arms around your neck to draw them close, to press my cheek on the cheek of some queer whom I want to greet with strained warmth.

Touch-thirst is species of burning.

The shock of winter again breaks in through the closed window.

Pfizer says Coronavirus Vaccine Is Safe and 95% Effective.

I have grown rooted to distrust; cold to any red source.

At eight years old, I wore a pair of sunglasses sold with personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut and told anyone who could hear that I loved them.

I remember the Gulf of Mexico then; we watched the sun burn its streaks against water.

The neon pink arms of the shades the color of a kiss, the slap of my father’s You only love me for buying you things, the truth of how I learned to love as an exchange.

The frostbit lip of a father’s words.

Rose gold. Viral.

Can I buy you, my love, any small thing that staves away winter or virus?

Remember when we used to have friends: that shade of yellow—or is it orange?

My toes curled against the carpet will show the traces of each strand of fiber woven together into mock string, not wool, but a finely spun plastic.

The cat climbs my lap and gouges me with 8 syringes.

You tell me I grow deep in you though it’s fall though it’s winter though it’s spring.

As an oak I am not Safe and 95% Effective.

What is a tree or a father or a lover—?

How have I become each one?