What is a lyric essay?
A lyric essay is a short prose form that borrows the compression, imagery and music of poetry while keeping the essay’s habit of thinking on the page. It argues by association and juxtaposition rather than by thesis and evidence.
How it differs from a normal essay
A conventional essay moves in a line: claim, support, conclusion. A lyric essay moves by leaps. It sets images and fragments beside each other and trusts the reader to feel the connection the writer will not spell out. The meaning lives in the gaps.
How it differs from a prose poem
The border is thin. A prose poem is usually a single compressed block; a lyric essay is longer and retains an essay’s sense of inquiry, of a mind working something out. The lyric essay wants to find something; the prose poem wants to be something.
A working definition
If it thinks like an essay but moves like a poem, and it would lose its meaning rewritten as a straight argument, it is a lyric essay.
Read one
The clearest way in is an example. Level End by Brian Oliu, on this shelf, is a lyric essay written as a video game walkthrough. For more, see lyric essay examples and how to write one.