Girl

By Jamaica Kinkaid


More on the lyric Essay.

We continue this week reading some essays from The Next American Essay
series by John D’Agata. Here is a short one by Jimaica Kinkaid, who I
know in a roundabout way is an important writer, whatever that means.
Whatever that means. That may come across as condescending. I guess
what I mean to say is, I know her writing is significant, but I
haven’t read anything about her, and I haven’t yet had the chance to
(over) analyze her work in an academic setting, or on more leisure
terms, maybe including her in a cache of writers to bring up in bars
or cafes or putting on my sleeve when getting to know somebody. In
doing so, and I know I spoke about this similarly with Susan Griffin,
I experience her writing, thus far, in a pure sense; by just reading
it and experiencing it. Just reading it for the joy. Reading as a
blank slate, or something malleable, in which I am at the complete
mercy or joy of the writers intent.

This particular essay is short. Here is a glimpse. To give you some idea:

Don’t pick peoples flowers –you might catch something; don’t throw
stones at black birds because it might not be a blackbird at all; this
is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukana; this is
how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a
cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before
it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to
throw back a fish you don’t like, and that way something bad wont fall
on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you;
this is how to love a man, and if this doesn’t work there are other
ways and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up…

The segment above was taken from the latter part of the essay towards
the end. First noticeable things are the semicolon, which in this
poem, is used, well as a junction, or the essay never really takes a
breath, or comes to a complete stop. What is lyrical about this essay?
What about this essay lends credence to the lyric form? Well for one
thing, Kinkaid uses this is or Don’t as a metre in her prose. The
verbs are declerative. She is speaking directly to the reader and
telling her to do something. You get the idea very quickly, that an
older figure, maybe a mother or an older female sibling, is telling a
younger woman, how it is. The do’s and don’ts of life. Knowledge to
pass down. Important stuff. At some points, in contrast to the main
voice in the essay, which is telling us, or the young woman in the
essay how to do stuff, somebody asks a question. In Kinkaids essay,
this separate voice, constantly obscured by the more dominant voice in
the prose, is represented in italics, feeling small and nimble, and a
little defiant, feeling like some adolescent who doesn’t want to be
told what to do, but would rather make her own mistakes:

This is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it’s
fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to
say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who
the baker won’t let near the bread?

Here, in the exchange above, is the first official exchange of
communication between the two people. Is this significant somehow?
Well, another important question comes to mind actually. What
separates this essay above from poetry, or even fiction for that
matter, and what, if anything, even makes it an essay?

No easy answer we’ve learned really. Only more questions. Actually, at
this point, lets continue to throw out any search for easy answers, or
research for the sake of some answer reward. No answers here. Only
more questions. So lets assume it’s an essay. And, as far as we know,
without any formulaic device to stifle the creative achievements of
any of these pieces, the lyric essay has full reign of creative
licence, and isn’t stymied by form. The essay, is hanging out on the
periphery of our creative and intellectual scope and is tryin’ hard to
focus on those obscure shapes that we can barely see just outside of
our line of site. Or the essay is swimming out just a little bit
further, to the danger zone, where there are bad things lurking, away
from that dock of safety where our parents are, where we can, swim
back to safety, should we get cramps and drowned.

Would the essay be as effective, without the use of a semicolon? Yeah
sure. This is an aesthetic grammatical thing. Kurt Vonnegut hated
semicolons. Said they make you seem more esoteric and stuffy, but
Kinkaid has authority here, because it works.

In the spirit of obscurity, in the part of his introductory essay for
Kinkaid’s essay, D’Agata just asks a question, or something like a
question even though it doesn’t end with a question mark, so maybe he
is just making a statement:

Or: Maybe the essay is just a conditional form of literature –less a
genre in it’s own right than an attitude that’s assumed in the midst
of another genre.