One of my favorite forms of entertainment is that of Poems and more figurative language being used in a more audacious and professional format such as an Essay. These such things are called Lyrical Essays, and serve to be a sort of humor and education that blend the two drastically different styles of writing together.
The Lyrical Essay assignment challenged us to look at different forms of media and entertainment to find educational and provocative twists not usually seen in an essay format. We read many literary works for getting a stride of how people created these Essays, then were challenged to create our own.
One of our first readings was Citizen by Claudia Rankine. The book itself is a collection of short stories about being black in America and highlights the subtly of underlying racism. The book is also written as a lyrical essay, incorporating a lot of figurative language into what is ultimately an argumentative tale on how we as citizens need to address racism in our own small communities and notice the everyday racism we normally don’t notice or ignore.
drawing inspiration from the robot “GladOS” in the game portal, I decided to make a very philosophically induced rant about life, death, and how fear dwells below it all
It was a lot of fun to have the creative freedom to be able to write a poem-style work but in the context and description of the essay format. I found it immensely challenging and fun to try and incorporate both styles of writing so that they complement each other.
If I was to do this again, I would want to improve how my essay flows as I feel there are too many blocks of text to read and it becomes too repetitive at some parts. Overall though, I am very happy with how it turned out and hope to use these skills in College.