Kirjahaku

A collection of lyric essays that considers the way subjects, stories, facts, and memories are as interconnected as streams in a watershed, Heidi Czerwiec's Fluid States explores the interlocking issues created by the oilfields of North Dakota; the ephemerality of perfume, canning tomatoes, a fungus that infects and transforms mushrooms; and being the focus of internet hate. Short essays that present delightfully surprising facts with elegant and lyric language, her pieces all share underlying currents that question assumptions about gender, violence, reason, and intuition.

The first craft guide to the lyric essay form, this book combines hybrid craft essays that embody the key elements discussed, with more traditional craft essays that review relevant lyric theory, craft and history. An orientation to a form that is critical and creative, practical and accessible, Heidi Czerwiec centers the lyric essay on the lyre, on lyric mode, focusing on the resonances of sound, silence and image at the level of language. With topics including sound effects, imagery development, lateral movement, white space, fragmentation, using poetic craft and forms, and pedagogy, this book connects the dots between lyric theory and practice, offering the beginnings of a critical framework for a form that has been vastly undertheorized until now. An essential guide to this exciting and popular hybrid form, Crafting the Lyric Essay will invigorate the study and writing of creative non-fiction.

The first craft guide to the lyric essay form, this book combines hybrid craft essays that embody the key elements discussed, with more traditional craft essays that review relevant lyric theory, craft and history. An orientation to a form that is critical and creative, practical and accessible, Heidi Czerwiec centers the lyric essay on the lyre, on lyric mode, focusing on the resonances of sound, silence and image at the level of language. With topics including sound effects, imagery development, lateral movement, white space, fragmentation, using poetic craft and forms, and pedagogy, this book connects the dots between lyric theory and practice, offering the beginnings of a critical framework for a form that has been vastly undertheorized until now. An essential guide to this exciting and popular hybrid form, Crafting the Lyric Essay will invigorate the study and writing of creative non-fiction.

"If 'nuns fret not at their convent's narrow rooms / and hermits are contented with their cells, ' imagine the fun to be had in lacing pin-up icon Bettie Page into this 'scanty plot' of poetic corset, the sonnet. Rarely are form and content so well suited as in Heidi Czerwiec's wittily kinky peek-a-boo of a collection, almost-but-not-quite bursting at its seams with author/persona conflation/confusion, wide-ranging allusions, and wonderful word-play. Full of 'levity' and 'heft, ' the poems 'capture...in meter's narrow aperture' not only the biography/mythology of Bettie Page, but also a strong sense of an authorial coming to terms with her own formal ars poetica. Indeed, 'it's hard outside constraints that you construct, ' but it's easy as cheesecake to appreciate these poems, on the cutting edge of contemporary work that is keeping the seemingly ancient form of the sonnet smart, sexy, and ever so relevant." Moira E