“That My Plain Clothes Hid Hooves and Haunches”: The Relation Between Lyric & Narrative [by Lindsay Daigle]

In his poem “Now You’re An Animal,” Mark Doty asks, “What is lyric?” This question remains worthy of asking again and again (—which might be why what follows here is extremely underdeveloped…!). Lyric poetry shifts seemingly at the rate that our communication methods shift. And I don’t just mean from horse-and-messenger to postal snail mail to e-mail to text message. I mean the way we also speak to each other’s faces, the words we choose in order to express ourselves (personally or digitally), the rhetoric of the self. Traditionally, the lyric takes up personal human emotion. (But not always in a direct way.) It values sound, rhythm, the image, the line, and not necessarily chronological logic or sentence structure. (But not all these things, and not all the time.) The lyric poem has a musical cadence. (But not always.)

So what is it, really? There’s a lot to be said about it, to the point at which the lyric becomes undefinable. The easiest answer to the question “What is lyric?” is simply “Not narrative.”

I struggle when having this conversation with my Introduction to Creative Writing students. I can provide a multitude of examples showing what might be considered “lyric poetry” (“Remember when we read James Tate? Yeah, not that.”). It seems though that presenting many examples only confuses them, causes them to wonder why this category exists if there are so many different forms/methods/sub-genres that fit it. It isn’t until we read Doty’s poem in tandem with some in-class writing that they really start to get it, and I start to see some of the most exciting and substantive poems produced from those undergrads that I’d seen all semester.

First, I write this on the board:

I thought, This is the relation between narrative

and lyric: one minute you're on 23rd Street

trying to find an address, and the next

you're naked under a wet crown of horns.

 

Then, I read the poem to them aloud (after they’ve read it on their own as homework):

 

Now You're An Animal [by Mark Doty]

I'd expected to sit for my portrait

in the photographer's studio—

chilly morning, fierce April wind on Sixth

slicing through my jacket and sweater,

 

new blur of the trees overhead—

but at the loft, a huge roll of white paper

hung from the ceiling, blocking a wall of windows;

 

he handed me a bucket of black paint

and brushes and said, Now, how would you

like to represent yourself? I wasn't ready

for that. It wasn't noon, I'd hurried across

 

the city, and didn't feel awake to the task

of metaphor. Then we were talking, easy, about

what others had done—he photographed painters,

 

actors, whoever he liked in the arts—

and how dancers often leapt before the white field

he'd offered them. And I said,

I've always wanted antlers, and began to paint

 

high on the big page black reindeer horns,

in thick strokes, the paint dripping nicely,

and when I finished I could stand

 

beneath them and the serious, branching

architecture seemed to spring from my head.

He stood at the other end of the room,

framing me upside down in his lens. He said,

 

That's wonderful, what do you want to wear?

I didn't know. He said, Take off your shirt,

and I did, and he said, Now you're an animal!

 

I ripped open the buttons of my jeans

so as to be a lustful beast, and he cried,

Yes, that's it! And though it was a joke

still I was seized by a sort of heat;

 

I took deep breaths, tilted my head up,

stood in the center of my own authority

while he lifted sheets of film and pushed

 

others in again, and clicked the lens.

He said, That's good, what else? I don't know

how else to do it unless you're naked.

And I said, I'm okay with that, and without

 

even my watch or ring, only the arching

crown tangling high into the air above me,

I felt the up-pushing pulse of some originating flame.

 

I thought, This is the relation between narrative

and lyric: one minute you're on 23rd Street

trying to find an address, and the next

you're naked under a wet crown of horns.

 

That's how fast we slip into the underlife.

Later, out in the daylight, I thought,

What if my students see this picture?

 

or the Dean of Liberal Arts?—but only

after I'd walked back out into

the elevator and the lobby, onto the sidewalk

with an odd warmth banked inside me,

 

creaturely: the undertime, beneath

the new haze of trees overhead,

bud time, the sharp spring wind

 

equal parts ice and green. What is lyric?

I wanted the animal seen

that I might know him. Even

waiting at the blustery intersections,

 

I was warmed by the incipient leaves,

and I held the antlers high in the wind,

their heart radiating down into my face,

 

and on the street a few men knew what I wished:

that my plain clothes hid hooves and haunches.

Then, I underline in different colors on the board: narrative and on 23^rd Street trying to find an address; lyric and naked under a wet crown of horns. Then, together we generate lists of characteristics of “narrative” and “lyric” based on what they read/heard from the poem, as well as the specifics underlined in the passage. As with most large group discussions based around list-making, after a couple suggestions are written, students shout out more and more amazing additions more and more rapidly. They become confident in their understanding. They take chances, which start mini-discussions along the way.

Once the lists seem exhaustive, it’s their turn to write. First, I ask them to write some lyric lines—“If you were given a blank canvas and a bucket of paint, how would you represent yourself with it?” Next, some narrative lines—“Recall a time in which you were trying to find an address. Tell us about it.” Then, I ask them to rewrite both sets of lines intertwined together – first lyric line, first narrative line, second lyric line, second narrative line, and so on – with attention to revision into a cohesive piece (i.e. changing bits of grammar and syntax so that the lines are fluid from one to the next). Then, they pass their completed piece to the left. Their classmates read the completed piece with a pencil handy. They’re on the lookout for striking moments and surprising bits of language that they’ll then share with the class.

What results is truly extraordinary – the kind of language that balls the fists in delight, asking for more. Through this exercise, my students gather that lyric and narrative do not have to be so disparate. It’s a relation, not a difference. The most exciting moments in poetry happen when lyric and narrative intersect, plain clothes hiding hooves and haunches.

Doty says, “I wanted the animal seen that I might know him.” Lyric is how we reveal ourselves to ourselves. Narrative is the attempt to find the animal’s address.

Comments

[Donna Steiner]

Fantastic poem, fantastic exercise.

[Surazeus]

To me the difference between narrative and lyric poetry is very simple.

A lyric poem is when one character is speaking for itself lone, expressing feelings about memories, in a static speech, as if they are sitting somewhere talking to someone.

A narrative poem is when a narrator is telling a story that presents a series of scenes with actions in a variety of settings that depict several characters talking to each other, in which causes result in effects, so there is a transformation.

[Surazeus]

I have slightly modified my comment:

To me the difference between narrative and lyric poetry is very simple.

A lyric poem is when one character is speaking for itself alone, expressing feelings about memories, in a static speech, as if they are sitting somewhere talking to someone.

A narrative poem is when a disinterested narrator is telling a story that presents a series of scenes with actions in a variety of settings that depict several characters talking to each other, in which causes result in effects, so there is a transformation.