lyrical essay tagalog

Writing Without Limits: Understanding the Lyric Essay

Sean Glatch  |  February 28, 2023  |  7 Comments

In literary nonfiction, no form is quite as complicated as the lyric essay. Lyrical essays explore the elements of poetry and creative nonfiction in complex and experimental ways, combining the subject matter of autobiography with poetry’s figurative devices and musicality of language.

For both poets and creative nonfiction writers, lyric essays are a gold standard of experimentation and language, but conquering the form takes lots of practice. What is a lyric essay, and how do you write one? Let’s break down this challenging CNF form, with lyric essay examples, before examining how you might approach it yourself.

Want to explore the lyric essay further? See our lyric essay writing course with instructor Gretchen Clark. 

What is a lyric essay?

The lyric essay combines the autobiographical information of a personal essay with the figurative language, forms, and experimentations of poetry. In the lyric essay, the rules of both poetry and prose become suggestions, because the form of the essay is constantly changing, adapting to the needs, ideas, and consciousness of the writer.

Lyric essay definition: The lyric essay combines autobiographical writing with the figurative language, forms, and experimentations of poetry.

Lyric essays are typically written in a poetic prose style . (We’ll expand on the difference between prose poetry and lyric essay shortly.) Lyric essays employ many of the poetic devices that poets use, including devices of repetition and rhetorical devices in literature.

That said, there are few conventions for the lyric essay, other than to experiment, experiment, experiment. While the form itself is an essay, there’s no reason you can’t break the bounds of expression.

One tactic, for example, is to incorporate poetry into the essay itself. You might start your essay with a normal paragraph, then describe something specific through a sonnet or villanelle , then express a different idea through a POV shift, a list, or some other form. Lyric essays can also borrow from the braided essay, the hermit crab, and other forms of creative nonfiction .

In truth, there’s very little that unifies all lyric essays, because they’re so wildly experimental. They’re also a bit tricky to define—the line between a lyric essay and the prose poem, in particular, is very hazy.

Rather than apply a one-size-fits-all definition for the lyric essay, which doesn’t exist, let’s pay close attention to how lyric essayists approach the open-ended form.

There are few conventions for the lyric essay, other than to experiment, experiment, experiment

Personal essay vs. lyric essay: An example of each

At its simplest, the lyric essay’s prose style is different from that of the personal essay, or other forms of creative nonfiction.

Personal essay example

Here are the opening two paragraphs from Beth Ann Fennelly’s personal essay “ I Survived the Blizzard of ’79. ”

“We didn’t question. Or complain. It wouldn’t have occurred to us, and it wouldn’t have helped. I was eight. Julie was ten.

We didn’t know yet that this blizzard would earn itself a moniker that would be silk-screened on T-shirts. We would own such a shirt, which extended its tenure in our house as a rag for polishing silver.”

The prose in this personal essay excerpt is descriptive, linear, and easy to understand. Fennelly gives us the information we need to make sense of her world, as well as the foreshadow of what’s to come in her essay.

Lyric essay example

Now, take this excerpt from a lyric essay, “ Life Code ” by J. A. Knight:

“The dream goes like this: blue room of water. God light from above. Child’s fist, foot, curve, face, the arc of an eye, the symmetry of circles… and then an opening of this body—which surprised her—a movement so clean and assured and then the push towards the light like a frog or a fish.” 

The prose in Knight’s lyric essay cannot be read the same way as a personal essay might be. Here, Knight’s prose is a sort of experience—a way of exploring the dream through language as shifting and ethereal as dreams themselves. Where the personal essay transcribes experiences, the lyric essay creates them.

Where the personal essay transcribes experiences, the lyric essay creates them.

For more examples of the craft, The Seneca Review and Eastern Iowa Review both have a growing archive of lyric essays submitted to their journals. In essence, there is no form to a lyric essay—rather, form and language are experimented with interchangeably, guided only by the narrative you seek to write.

Lyric Essay Vs Prose Poem

Lyric essays are commonly confused with prose poetry . In truth, there is no clear line separating the two, and plenty of essays, including some of the lyric essay examples in this article, can also be called prose poems.

Well, what’s the difference? A prose poem, broadly defined, is a poem written in paragraphs. Unlike a traditional poem, the prose poem does not make use of line breaks: the line breaks simply occur at the end of the page. However, all other tactics of poetry are in the prose poet’s toolkit, and you can even play with poetry forms in the prose poem, such as writing the prose sonnet .

Lyric essays also blend the techniques of prose and poetry. Here are some general differences between the two:

• Lyric essays tend to be longer. A prose poem is rarely more than a page. Some lyric essays are longer than 20 pages.
• Lyric essays tend to be more experimental. One paragraph might be in prose, the next, poetry. The lyric essay might play more with forms like lists, dreams, public signs, or other types of media and text.
• Prose poems are often more stream-of-conscious. The prose poet often charts the flow of their consciousness on the page. Lyric essayists can do this, too, but there’s often a broader narrative organizing the piece, even if it’s not explicitly stated or recognizable.

The two share many similarities, too, including:

• An emphasis on language, musicality, and ambiguity.
• Rejection of “objective meaning” and the desire to set forth arguments.
• An unobstructed flow of ideas.
• Suggestiveness in thoughts and language, rather than concrete, explicit expressions.
• Surprising or unexpected juxtapositions .
• Ingenuity and play with language and form.

In short, there’s no clear dividing line between the two. Often, the label of whether a piece is a lyric essay or a prose poem is up to the writer.

Lyric Essay Examples

The following lyric essay examples are contemporary and have been previously published online. Pay attention to how the lyric essayists interweave the essay form with a poet’s attention to language, mystery, and musicality.

“Lodge: A Lyric Essay” by Emilia Phillips

Retrieved here, from Blackbird .

This lush, evocative lyric essay traverses the American landscape. The speaker reacts to this landscape finding poetry in the rundown, and seeing her own story—family trauma, religion, and the random forces that shape her childhood. Pay attention to how the essay defies conventional standards of self-expression. In between narrative paragraphs are lists, allusions, memories, and the many twists and turns that seem to accompany the narrator on their journey through Americana.

“Spiral” by Nicole Callihan

Retrieved here, from Birdcoat Quarterly . 

Notice how this gorgeous essay evolves down the spine of its central theme: the sleepless swallows. The narrator records her thoughts about the passage of time, her breast examination, her family and childhood, and the other thoughts that arise in her mind as she compares them, again and again, to the mysterious swallows who fly without sleep. This piece demonstrates how lyric essays can encompass a wide array of ideas and threads, creating a kaleidoscope of language for the reader to peer into, come away with something, peer into again, and always see something different.

“Star Stuff” by Jessica Franken

Retrieved here, from Seneca Review .

This short, imagery -driven lyric essay evokes wonder at our seeming smallness, our seeming vastness. The narrator juxtaposes different ideas for what the body can become, playing with all our senses and creating odd, surprising connections. Read this short piece a few times. Ask yourself, why are certain items linked together in the same paragraph? What is the train of thought occurring in each new sentence, each new paragraph? How does the final paragraph wrap up the lyric essay, while also leaving it open ended? There’s much to interpret in this piece, so engage with it slowly, read it over several times.

5 approaches to writing the lyric essay

This form of creative writing is tough for writers because there’s no proper formula for writing it. However, if you have a passion for imaginative forms and want to rise to the challenge, here are several different ways to write your essay.

1. Start with your narrative

Writing the lyrical essay is a lot like writing creative nonfiction: it starts with getting words on the page. Start with a simple outline of the story you’re looking to write. Focus on the main plot points and what you want to explore, then highlight the ideas or events that will be most difficult for you to write about. Often, the lyrical form offers the writer a new way to talk about something difficult. Where words fail, form is key. Combining difficult ideas and musicality allows you to find the right words when conventional language hasn’t worked.

Emilia Phillips’ lyric essay “ Lodge ” does exactly this, letting the story’s form emphasize its language and the narrative Phillips writes about dreams, traveling, and childhood emotions.

2. Identify moments of metaphor and figurative language

The lyric essay is liberated from form, rather than constrained by it. In a normal essay, you wouldn’t want your piece overrun by figurative language, but here, boundless metaphors are encouraged—so long as they aid your message. For some essayists, it might help to start by reimagining your story as an extended metaphor.

A great example of this is Zadie Smith’s essay “ The Lazy River ,” which uses the lazy river as an extended metaphor to criticize a certain “go with the flow” mindset.

Use extended metaphors as a base for the essay, then return to it during moments of transition or key insight. Writing this way might help ground your writing process while giving you new opportunities to play with form.

3. Investigate and braid different threads

Just like the braided essay , lyric essays can certainly braid different story lines together. If anything, the freedom to play with form makes braiding much easier and more exciting to investigate. How can you use poetic forms to braid different ideas together? Can you braid an extended metaphor with the main story? Can you separate the threads into a contrapuntal, then reunite them in prose?

A simple example of threading in lyric essay is Jane Harrington’s “ Ossein Pith .” Harrington intertwines the “you” and “I” of the story, letting each character meet only when the story explores moments of “hunger.”

Whichever threads you choose to write, use the freedom of the lyric essay to your advantage in exploring the story you’re trying to set down.

4. Revise an existing piece into a lyric essay

Some CNF writers might find it easier to write their essay, then go back and revise with the elements of poetic form and figurative language. If you choose to take this route, identify the parts of your draft that don’t seem to be working, then consider changing the form into something other than prose.

For example, you might write a story, then realize it would greatly benefit the prose if it was written using the poetic device of anaphora (a repetition device using a word or phrase at the beginning of a line or paragraph). Chen Li’s lyric essay “ Baudelaire Street ” does a great job of this, using the anaphora “I would ride past” to explore childhood memory.

When words don’t work, let the lyrical form intervene.

5. Write stream-of-conscious

Stream-of-consciousness is a writing technique in which the writer charts, word-for-word, the exact order of their unfiltered thoughts on the page.

If it isn’t obvious, this is easier said than done. We naturally think faster than we write, and we also have a tendency to filter our thoughts as we think them, to the point where many thoughts go unconsciously unnoticed. Unlearning this takes a lot of practice and skill.

Nonetheless, you might notice in the lyric essay examples we shared how the essayists followed different associations with their words, one thought flowing naturally into the next, circling around a subject rather than explicitly defining it. The stream-of-conscious technique is perfect for this kind of writing, then, because it earnestly excavates the mind, creating a kind of Rorschach test that the reader can look into, interpret, see for themselves.

This technique requires a lot of mastery, but if you’re keen on capturing your own consciousness, you may find that the lyric essay form is the perfect container to hold it in.

Closing thoughts on the lyric essay form

Creative nonfiction writers have an overt desire to engage their readers with insightful stories. When language fails, the lyrical essay comes to the rescue. Although this is a challenging form to master, practicing different forms of storytelling could pave new avenues for your next nonfiction piece. Try using one of these different ways to practice the lyric craft, and get writing your next CNF story!

[…] Sean “Writing Your Truth: Understanding the Lyric Essay.” writers.com. https://writers.com/understanding-the-lyric-essay published 19 May, 2020/ accessed 13 Oct, […]

[…] https://writers.com/understanding-the-lyric-essay […]

I agree with every factor that you have pointed out. Thank you for sharing your beautiful thoughts on this. A personal essay is writing that shares an interesting, thought-provoking, sometimes entertaining, and humorous piece that is often drawn from the writer’s personal experience and at times drawn from the current affairs of the world.

[…] been wanting to learn more about lyric essay, and this seems a natural transition from […]

thanks for sharing

Thanks so much for this. Here is an updated link to my essay Spiral: https://www.birdcoatquarterly.com/post/nicole-callihan

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The Secrets To Tagalog Writing: #1 Helpful Guide

• , May 2, 2024

When you are trying to learn a new language, it is not enough that you know the basic words, phrases, and expressions by heart. In order to create a more authentic experience, you must also know the history behind it and how it is actually written.

To help you get started on your journey, we will be discussing the Tagalog writing system used in the Philippines.

Table of Contents

What Is The Tagalog Writing System?

Have you ever just stopped to admire the distinct writing systems that you can usually find scripted in other international brands? Contrary to common belief, the Philippines also has its own indigenous writing system that is constantly being revived in some places in Manila.

Filipino, the national language of the Philippines, is heavily reliant on the Tagalog language. Unfortunately, very little is known about its history since the country has massively suffered under different rulers and governments. Each conqueror has its own version of the “standard” language that must be spoken in the country, which is why even modern Tagalog has been consistently modified to accommodate all those historical influences.

At present, the Philippines is using the Latin alphabet in order to have a smoother transition between Tagalog and English, the official languages of the country. But hey, allow me to just share with you a brief introduction to another writing system that is also purely Filipino.

What Is The Baybayin Alphabet?

In the past, Tagalog is written in an alpha syllabary known as the Baybayin script, which has been developed by the natives based on the old Kawi script of Java, Sumatra, and Bali. Prior to the arrival of the Spaniards, Filipinos used this to write poetry and announcements.

If Japan has Hiragana and Katakana, the Philippines have the very special Baybayin. This system of writing is based on sounds, so whenever you want to translate a word, you simply just need to look at the chart ad write it down based on the syllable.

Unlike other languages, the Baybayin has 14 consonants and three vowels. Basically, each letter is already a syllable, and to signify a change in the sound of the vowel, you can use a special character known as kudlit.

The kudlit is like a punctuation mark that looks like a small cut or incision placed above the letter to know whether the sound should be an I, E, O, or U. It can take any form may it be a dot, a tick, or even an apostrophe. When the Spanish knew of this writing system, they invented a new type of kudlit which is shaped like a cross and is now supposed to be added at the lower part of the letter.

Today, this alphabet is only used for decorative purposes, but a huge number of young Filipinos are starting to rekindle a love for this due to its distinct ethnic look. Just last year, millennials started a movement to bring back this script and be used once again in order to create a more unified identity for the country.

How Do You Say Tagalog Writing In Tagalog?

Try These Vocabulary Words When Talking About Tagalog Writing

After knowing a bit more about the background of Tagalog writing, let’s take a look at some Tagalog phrases as examples that you could practice. If you want to know more about Tagalog vocabulary, then use the Ling app to continue your daily lessons.

We’ve written the best guide on how to follow the correct Tagalog sentence structure. If you’re planning to write to a loved one or a Filipino friend, it’s best to check that article first!

Frequently Asked Questions About Tagalog Writing

Why is baybayin not used anymore.

The Baybayin script fell out of importance during the time that the Spaniards conquered the Philippines. Once they abolished all native script and culture related to the Philippines, the Spaniards started teaching Spanish and their culture, it died down. As years went by, the Philippine writing system has evolved from different regional scripts. Today, we have Filipino which was derived from the Tagalog writing system.

On the other hand, many Filipinos are advocating the use of Baybayin again to revive the identity and ancient culture of the once revered Philippine script.

Why Was Tagalog Changed To Filipino?

The history of Tagalog language tells us that Filipino has replaced Tagalog to unify the once diverse and “mutually intelligible” Tagalog and other Philippine languages and dialects. The Filipino language aims to incorporate these words in one vocabulary database.

To recall, Filipino became the official language of the Philippines after replacing Abakada in 1987.

What Does Written Tagalog Look Like?

Tagalog follows the Phonetic alphabet (A,B,C,D, etc.) with additional letters NG and Ñ. In total, there are 20 letters making up the whole Tagalog alphabet .

What Is The Tagalog Language?

Have you ever wondered why Filipinos are good at English? It is because English is considered as one of the neutral languages that you can use and still be understood by whoever you are speaking with. In truth, not everyone in the Philippines can even speak Tagalog. To compensate, people usually use English or a combination of it in the form of Taglish.

Officially, Tagalog is used by over a quarter of the population of the Philippines- more so in major cities like Manila and the provinces bordering it. The term Tagalog is derived from the endonym taga-ilog which directly translates to “river dweller.” According to linguists, there is a big possibility that the first Tagalog-speaking people were from Northern Mindanao or Eastern Visayas, where there are huge bodies of water.

Learn More About The Philippines

The Philippines is definitely one country that you should never miss out on in your life. Aside from being ranked as the 45 th best country in the world in 2019, the scenic spots in Tagalog , amazing Filipino cuisine , and cultural influence are totally magnetizing. This archipelagic state in Southeast Asia consists of about 7,641 islands, and almost every region there has a native language of its own!

In fact, if we base it under the official curriculum of the DepEd (the executive department in the Philippines responsible for high-quality education), there are over 19 regional languages that are consistently taught under the Mother-Tongue Based Multi-Lingual Education strategy. In this sense, Filipinos can become more confident about the grasp of their mother language while also learning about Tagalog and English.

And you know what is even more interesting about that? The number of regional languages being taught officially in schools just keeps on growing! This is because aside from Tagalog, there are some 120 to 180 languages spread out and used in the country. However, if you intend to visit the Philippines and spend some time traversing some of the top tourist destinations and cultural attractions, we highly recommend that you arm yourself with some Tagalog!

Practice Your Tagalog Writing Daily

Are you enjoying learning about the history behind the Tagalog writing system and its vocabulary? Then I bet it is time that I introduce to you why you should learn Tagalog , a unique Asian language. The Tagalog language is Easy to learn and is fascinating enough in the sense that it prides itself on an ever-growing set of words and phrases day by day!

And you know what is even more special? These Tagalog words and slang are slowly being embedded into international English dictionaries too!

Unlike other foreign languages, Tagalog is definitely viewed in a positive light since it is easier to remember (because of the Latin alphabet) and does not have complicated grammar rules.

With thousands of Filipinos stationed all over the world, we bet that finding someone to converse with in using this as the target language will be easy. Check out native expressions like how to ask how are you in Tagalog or express  goodbye in Tagalog right now!

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The Literary Forms in Philippine Literature

The diversity and richness of Philippine literature evolved side by side with the country’s history. This can best be appreciated in the context of the country’s pre-colonial cultural traditions and the socio-political histories of its colonial and contemporary traditions.

The average Filipino’s unfamiliarity with his indigenous literature was largely due to what has been impressed upon him: that his country was “discovered” and, hence, Philippine “history” started only in 1521.

So successful were the efforts of colonialists to blot out the memory of the country’s largely oral past that present-day Filipino writers, artists and journalists are trying to correct this inequity by recognizing the country’s wealth of ethnic traditions and disseminating them in schools and in the mass media.

The rousing of nationalistic pride in the 1960s and 1970s also helped bring about this change of attitude among a new breed of Filipinos concerned about the “Filipino identity.”

Pre-Colonial Times

Owing to the works of our own archaeologists, ethnologists, and anthropologists, we are able to know more and better judge information about our pre-colonial times set against a bulk of material about early Filipinos as recorded by Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, and other chroniclers of the past.

Pre-colonial inhabitants of our islands showcase a rich past through their folk speeches, folk songs, folk narratives and indigenous rituals, and mimetic dances that affirm our ties with our Southeast Asian neighbors.

The most seminal of these folk speeches is the riddle which is tigmo in Cebuano, bugtong in Tagalog, paktakon in Ilongo and patototdon in Bicol.

Central to the riddle is the talinghaga or metaphor because it “reveals subtle resemblances between two unlike objects,” and one’s power of observation and wit are put to the test. While some riddles are ingenious, others verge on the obscene or are sex-related:

Gongonan nu usin y amam If you pull your daddy’s penis

Maggirawa pay sila y inam. Your mommy’s vagina, too,

( Campana ) screams. (Bell)

The proverbs or aphorisms express norms or codes of behavior, community beliefs, or they instill values by offering nuggets of wisdom in short, rhyming verses.

The extended form, tanaga , a mono-riming heptasyllabic quatrain expressing insights and lessons on life is “more emotionally charged than the terse proverb and thus has affinities with the folk lyric.”

Some examples are the basahanon or extended didactic sayings from Bukidnon and the daraida and daragilon from Panay.

The folk song is a form of folk lyric that expresses the hopes and aspirations, the people’s lifestyles, and their loves. These are often repetitive and sonorous, didactic and naive, as in the children’s songs or Ida-ida (Maguindanao), tulang pambata (Tagalog) or cansiones para abbing (Ibanag).

A few examples are the lullabyes or Ili-ili (Ilongo); love songs like the panawagon and balitao (Ilongo); harana or serenade (Cebuano); the bayok (Maranao); the seven-syllable per line poem, ambahan of the Mangyans that are about human relationships, social entertainment and also serve as a tool for teaching the young; work songs that depict the livelihood of the people often sung to go with the movement of workers such as the kalusan (Ivatan), soliranin (Tagalog rowing song) or the mambayu , a Kalinga rice-pounding song; the verbal jousts/games like the duplo popular during wakes.

Other folk songs are the drinking songs sung during carousals like the tagay (Cebuano and Waray); dirges and lamentations extolling the deeds of the dead like the kanogon (Cebuano) or the Annako (Bontoc).

A type of narrative song or kissa among the Tausug of Mindanao, the parang sabil , uses for its subject matter the exploits of historical and legendary heroes. It tells of a Muslim hero who seeks death at the hands of non-Muslims.

Folk Narratives

The folk narratives, i.e., epics and folk tales, are varied, exotic, and magical. They explain how the world was created, how certain animals possess certain characteristics, why some places have waterfalls, volcanoes, mountains, flora or fauna, and, in the case of legends, an explanation of the origins of things. Fables are about animals, and these teach moral lessons.

Our country’s epics are considered ethno-epics because, unlike, say, Germany’s Niebelunginlied, our epics are not national, for they are “histories” of varied groups that consider themselves “nations.”

The epics come in various names: Guman (Subanon), Darangen (Maranao), Hudhud (Ifugao), and Ulahingan (Manobo). These epics revolve around supernatural events or heroic deeds and they embody or validate the beliefs and customs, and ideals of a community.

These are sung or chanted to the accompaniment of indigenous musical instruments and dancing performed during harvests, weddings, or funerals by chanters.

The chanters who were taught by their ancestors are considered “treasures” and/or repositories of wisdom in their communities. Examples of these epics are the Lam-ang (Ilocano); Hinilawod (Sulod); Kudaman (Palawan); Darangen (Maranao); Ulahingan (Livunganen-Arumanen Manobo); Mangovayt Buhong na Langit (The Maiden of the Buhong Sky from Tuwaang–Manobo); Ag Tobig neg Keboklagan (Subanon); and Tudbulol (T’boli).

The Spanish Colonial Tradition

While it is true that Spain subjugated the Philippines for more mundane reasons, this former European power contributed much to the shaping and recording of our literature.

Religion and institutions that represented European civilization enriched the languages in the lowlands and introduced theater which we would come to know as komedya, the sinakulo, the sarswela, the playlets, and the drama.

Spain also brought to the country, though at a much later time, liberal ideas and an internationalism that influenced our own Filipino intellectuals and writers for them to understand the meanings of “liberty and freedom.”

Literature in this period may be classified as religious prose and poetry and secular prose and poetry.

Religious Prose and Poetry

Religious lyrics written by ladino poets or those versed in both Spanish and Tagalog were included in the early catechism and were used to teach Filipinos the Spanish language.

Fernando Bagonbanta’s “ Salamat nang walang hanga/gracias de sin sempiternas ” (Unending thanks) is a fine example that is found in the Memorial de la vida cristiana en lengua tagala (Guidelines for the Christian life in the Tagalog language) published in 1605.

Another form of religious lyrics is the meditative verses like the dalit appended to novenas and catechisms. It has no fixed meter nor rhyme scheme, although a number is written in octosyllabic quatrains and has a solemn tone and spiritual subject matter.

But among the religious poetry of the day, it is the pasyon in octosyllabic quintillas that became entrenched in the Filipino’s commemoration of Christ’s agony and resurrection at Calvary.

Gaspar Aquino de Belen’s “ Ang Mahal na Passion ni Jesu Christong Panginoon natin na tola ” (Holy Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Verse) put out in 1704 is the country’s earliest known pasyon .

Other known pasyons chanted during the Lenten season are in Ilocano, Pangasinan, Ibanag, Cebuano, Bicol, Ilongo and Waray.

Aside from religious poetry, there were various kinds of prose narratives written to prescribe proper decorum. Like the pasyon , these prose narratives were also used for proselytization.

Some forms are: dialogo (dialogue), Manual de Urbanidad (conduct book); ejemplo (exemplum) and tratado (tratado). The most well-known are Modesto de Castro’s “ Pagsusulatan ng Dalawang Binibini na si Urbana at si Feliza ” (Correspondence between the Two Maidens Urbana and Feliza) in 1864 and Joaquin Tuason’s “ Ang Bagong Robinson ” (The New Robinson) in 1879, an adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s novel.

Secular Prose and Poetry

Secular works appeared alongside historical and economic changes, the emergence of an opulent class, and the middle class who could avail of European education. This Filipino elite could now read printed works that used to be the exclusive domain of the missionaries.

The most notable of the secular lyrics followed the conventions of a romantic tradition: the languishing but loyal lover, the elusive, often heartless beloved, the rival.

The leading poets were Jose Corazon de Jesus( Huseng Sisiw ) and Francisco Balagtas. Some secular poets who wrote in this same tradition were Leona Florentino, Jacinto Kawili, Isabelo de los Reyes, and Rafael Gandioco.

Awit and Korido

Another popular secular poetry is the metrical romance, the awit and korido in Tagalog. The awit is set in dodecasyllabic quatrains while the korido is in octosyllabic quatrains. These are colorful tales of chivalry from European sources made for singing and chanting, such as Gonzalo de Cordoba (Gonzalo of Cordoba) and Ibong Adarna (Adarna Bird).

There are numerous metrical romances in Tagalog, Bicol, Ilongo, Pampango, Ilocano, and in Pangasinan. The awit as a popular poetic genre reached new heights in Balagtas’ “Florante at Laura” (ca.1838-1861), the most famous of the country’s metrical romances. Again, the winds of change began to blow in the 19th century Philippines.

Filipino intellectuals educated in Europe called ilustrados began to write about the downside of colonization.

This, coupled with the simmering calls for reforms by the masses, gathered a formidable force of writers like Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Mariano Ponce, Emilio Jacinto, and Andres Bonifacio.

This led to the formation of the Propaganda Movement, where prose works such as the political essays and Rizal’s two political novels, Noli Me Tangere and the El filibusterismo helped usher in the Philippine revolution resulting in the downfall of the Spanish regime and, at the same time planted the seeds of national consciousness among Filipinos.

But if Rizal’s novels are political, the novel Ninay (1885) by Pedro Paterno is largely cultural and is considered the first Filipino novel. Although Paterno’s Ninay gave impetus to other novelists like Jesus Balmori and Antonio M. Abad to continue writing in Spanish, this did not flourish.

Other Filipino writers published the essay and short fiction in Spanish in La Vanguardia , El Debate , Renacimiento Filipino , and Nueva Era .

The more notable essayists and fictionists were Claro M. Recto, Teodoro M. Kalaw, Epifanio de los Reyes, Vicente Sotto, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, Rafael Palma, Enrique Laygo (Caretas or Masks, 1925) and Balmori who mastered the prosa romantica or romantic prose.

But the introduction of English as a medium of instruction in the Philippines hastened the demise of Spanish so that by the 1930s, English writing had overtaken Spanish writing.

During the language’s death throes, however, writing in the romantic tradition, from the awit and korido, would continue in the novels of Magdalena Jalandoni. But patriotic writing continued under the new colonialists. These appeared in the vernacular poems and modern adaptations of works during the Spanish period and further maintained the Spanish tradition.

The American Colonial Period

A new set of colonizers brought about new changes in Philippine literature. New literary forms such as free verse [in poetry], the modern short story, and the critical essay were introduced.

American influence was deeply entrenched with the firm establishment of English as the medium of instruction in all schools and with literary modernism that highlighted the writer’s individuality and cultivated consciousness of craft, sometimes at the expense of social consciousness.

The poet and later National Artist for Literature, Jose Garcia Villa, used free verse and espoused the dictum, “Art for art’s sake,” to the chagrin of other writers more concerned with the utilitarian aspect of literature.

Another maverick in poetry who used free verse and talked about illicit love in her poetry was Angela Manalang Gloria, a woman poet described as ahead of her time. Despite the threat of censorship by the new dispensation, more writers turned up “seditious works,” and popular writing in the native languages bloomed through weekly outlets like Liwayway and Bisaya.

Modern Verses

The Balagtas tradition persisted until the poet Alejandro G. Abadilla advocated modernism in poetry. Abadilla later influenced young poets who wrote modern verses in the 1960s, such as Virgilio S. Almario, Pedro I. Ricarte, and Rolando S. Tinio.

Modern Short Story

While the early Filipino poets grappled with the verities of the new language, Filipinos seemed to have taken easily to the modern short story as published in the Philippines Free Press , the College Folio, and the Philippines Herald. Paz Marquez Benitez’s “Dead Stars,” published in 1925, was the first successful short story in English written by a Filipino. Later on, Arturo B. Rotor and Manuel E. Arguilla showed exceptional skills with the short story.

Dali or Pasingaw

Alongside this development, writers in the vernaculars continued to write in the provinces. Others like Lope K. Santos, Valeriano Hernandez Peña, and Patricio Mariano were writing minimal narratives similar to the early Tagalog short fiction called dali or pasingaw (sketch).

The romantic tradition was fused with American pop culture or European influences in the adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan by F. P. Boquecosa, who also penned Ang Palad ni Pepe after Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield even as the realist tradition was kept alive in the novels by Lope K. Santos and Faustino Aguilar, among others.

It should be noted that if there was a dearth of the Filipino novel in English, the novel in the vernaculars continued to be written and serialized in weekly magazines like Liwayway, Bisaya, Hiligaynon, and Bannawag.

Modern Essays

The essay in English became a potent medium from the 1920s to the present.

Some leading essayists were journalists like Carlos P. Romulo, Jorge Bocobo, Pura Santillan Castrence, etc., who wrote formal to humorous to informal essays for the delectation by Filipinos.

Among those who wrote criticism developed during the American period were Ignacio Manlapaz, Leopoldo Yabes, and I.V. Mallari. But it was Salvador P. Lopez’s criticism that grabbed attention when he won the Commonwealth Literary Award for the essay in 1940 with his “Literature and Society.” This essay posited that art must have substance and that Villa’s adherence to “Art for Art’s Sake” is decadent.

New Criticism

The last throes of American colonialism saw the flourishing of Philippine literature in English at the same time, with the introduction of the New Critical aesthetics, which made writers pay close attention to craft and “indirectly engendered a disparaging attitude” towards vernacular writings — a tension that would recur in the contemporary period.

The Contemporary Period

The flowering of Philippine literature in various languages continues, especially with the appearance of new publications after the Martial Law years and the resurgence of committed literature in the 1960s and the 1970s.

Filipino writers continue to write poetry, short stories, novellas, novels, and essays, whether these are social, committed, gender/ethnic related, or personal in intention or not. Of course, the Filipino writer has become more conscious of his art with the proliferation of writers’ workshops here and abroad and the bulk of literature available to him via the mass media, including the internet.

The various literary awards, such as the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, the Philippines Free Press, Philippine Graphic, Home Life, and Panorama literary awards, encourage him to compete with his peers and hope that his creative efforts will be rewarded in the long run.

With the new requirement by the Commission on Higher Education for the teaching of Philippine Literature in all tertiary schools in the country emphasizing the teaching of the vernacular literature or literature of the regions, the audience for Filipino writers is virtually assured. And perhaps, national literature finding its niche among the literature of the world will not be far behind.

This handout can be accessed from its original site, cited below:

www.seasite.niu.edu/Tagalog/Literature/literary_forms_in_philippine_lit.htm

If you’re looking for more resources about  literature , then make sure to browse my  website .

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An Introduction to the Lyric Essay

Rebecca Hussey

Rebecca holds a PhD in English and is a professor at Norwalk Community College in Connecticut. She teaches courses in composition, literature, and the arts. When she’s not reading or grading papers, she’s hanging out with her husband and son and/or riding her bike and/or buying books. She can't get enough of reading and writing about books, so she writes the bookish newsletter "Reading Indie," focusing on small press books and translations. Newsletter: Reading Indie Twitter: @ofbooksandbikes

View All posts by Rebecca Hussey

Essays come in a bewildering variety of shapes and forms: they can be the five paragraph essays you wrote in school — maybe for or against gun control or on symbolism in The Great Gatsby . Essays can be personal narratives or argumentative pieces that appear on blogs or as newspaper editorials. They can be funny takes on modern life or works of literary criticism. They can even be book-length instead of short. Essays can be so many things!

Perhaps you’ve heard the term “lyric essay” and are wondering what that means. I’m here to help.

What is the Lyric Essay?

A quick definition of the term “lyric essay” is that it’s a hybrid genre that combines essay and poetry. Lyric essays are prose, but written in a manner that might remind you of reading a poem.

Before we go any further, let me step back with some more definitions. If you want to know the difference between poetry and prose, it’s simply that in poetry the line breaks matter, and in prose they don’t. That’s it! So the lyric essay is prose, meaning where the line breaks fall doesn’t matter, but it has other similarities to what you find in poems.

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Lyric essays have what we call “poetic” prose. This kind of prose draws attention to its own use of language. Lyric essays set out to create certain effects with words, often, although not necessarily, aiming to create beauty. They are often condensed in the way poetry is, communicating depth and complexity in few words. Chances are, you will take your time reading them, to fully absorb what they are trying to say. They may be more suggestive than argumentative and communicate multiple meanings, maybe even contradictory ones.

Lyric essays often have lots of white space on their pages, as poems do. Sometimes they use the space of the page in creative ways, arranging chunks of text differently than regular paragraphs, or using only part of the page, for example. They sometimes include photos, drawings, documents, or other images to add to (or have some other relationship to) the meaning of the words.

Lyric essays can be about any subject. Often, they are memoiristic, but they don’t have to be. They can be philosophical or about nature or history or culture, or any combination of these things. What distinguishes them from other essays, which can also be about any subject, is their heightened attention to language. Also, they tend to deemphasize argument and carefully-researched explanations of the kind you find in expository essays . Lyric essays can argue and use research, but they are more likely to explore and suggest than explain and defend.

Now, you may be familiar with the term “ prose poem .” Even if you’re not, the term “prose poem” might sound exactly like what I’m describing here: a mix of poetry and prose. Prose poems are poetic pieces of writing without line breaks. So what is the difference between the lyric essay and the prose poem?

Honestly, I’m not sure. You could call some pieces of writing either term and both would be accurate. My sense, though, is that if you put prose and poetry on a continuum, with prose on one end and poetry on the other, and with prose poetry and the lyric essay somewhere in the middle, the prose poem would be closer to the poetry side and the lyric essay closer to the prose side.

Some pieces of writing just defy categorization, however. In the end, I think it’s best to call a work what the author wants it to be called, if it’s possible to determine what that is. If not, take your best guess.

Four Examples of the Lyric Essay

Below are some examples of my favorite lyric essays. The best way to learn about a genre is to read in it, after all, so consider giving one of these books a try!

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine’s book Citizen counts as a lyric essay, but I want to highlight her lesser-known 2004 work. In Don’t Let Me Be Lonely , Rankine explores isolation, depression, death, and violence from the perspective of post-9/11 America. It combines words and images, particularly television images, to ponder our relationship to media and culture. Rankine writes in short sections, surrounded by lots of white space, that are personal, meditative, beautiful, and achingly sad.

Calamities by Renee Gladman

Calamities is a collection of lyric essays exploring language, imagination, and the writing life. All of the pieces, up until the last 14, open with “I began the day…” and then describe what she is thinking and experiencing as a writer, teacher, thinker, and person in the world. Many of the essays are straightforward, while some become dreamlike and poetic. The last 14 essays are the “calamities” of the title. Together, the essays capture the artistic mind at work, processing experience and slowly turning it into writing.

The Self Unstable by Elisa Gabbert

The Self Unstable is a collection of short essays — or are they prose poems? — each about the length of a paragraph, one per page. Gabbert’s sentences read like aphorisms. They are short and declarative, and part of the fun of the book is thinking about how the ideas fit together. The essays are divided into sections with titles such as “The Self is Unstable: Humans & Other Animals” and “Enjoyment of Adversity: Love & Sex.” The book is sharp, surprising, and delightful.

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

Bluets is made up of short essayistic, poetic paragraphs, organized in a numbered list. Maggie Nelson’s subjects are many and include the color blue, in which she finds so much interest and meaning it will take your breath away. It’s also about suffering: she writes about a friend who became a quadriplegic after an accident, and she tells about her heartbreak after a difficult break-up. Bluets is meditative and philosophical, vulnerable and personal. It’s gorgeous, a book lovers of The Argonauts shouldn’t miss.

It’s probably no surprise that all of these books are published by small presses. Lyric essays are weird and genre-defying enough that the big publishers generally avoid them. This is just one more reason, among many, to read small presses!

If you’re looking for more essay recommendations, check out our list of 100 must-read essay collections and these 25 great essays you can read online for free .

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Lyric Essays

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Because the lyric essay is a new, hybrid form that combines poetry with essay, this form should be taught only at the intermediate to advanced levels. Even professional essayists aren’t certain about what constitutes a lyric essay, and lyric essays disagree about what makes up the form. For example, some of the “lyric essays” in magazines like The Seneca Review have been selected for the Best American Poetry series, even though the “poems” were initially published as lyric essays.

A good way to teach the lyric essay is in conjunction with poetry (see the Purdue OWL's resource on teaching Poetry in Writing Courses ). After students learn the basics of poetry, they may be prepared to learn the lyric essay. Lyric essays are generally shorter than other essay forms, and focus more on language itself, rather than storyline. Contemporary author Sherman Alexie has written lyric essays, and to provide an example of this form, we provide an excerpt from his Captivity :

"He (my captor) gave me a biscuit, which I put in my

pocket, and not daring to eat it, buried it under a log, fear-

ing he had put something in it to make me love him.

FROM THE NARRATIVE OF MRS. MARY ROWLANDSON,

WHO WAS TAKEN CAPTIVE WHEN THE WAMPANOAG

DESTROYED LANCASTER, MASSACHUSETS, IN 1676"

"I remember your name, Mary Rowlandson. I think of you now, how necessary you have become. Can you hear me, telling this story within uneasy boundaries, changing you into a woman leaning against a wall beneath a HANDICAPPED PARKING ONLY sign, arrow pointing down directly at you? Nothing changes, neither of us knows exactly where to stand and measure the beginning of our lives. Was it 1676 or 1976 or 1776 or yesterday when the Indian held you tight in his dark arms and promised you nothing but the sound of his voice?"

Alexie provides no straightforward narrative here, as in a personal essay; in fact, each numbered section is only loosely related to the others. Alexie doesn’t look into his past, as memoirists do. Rather, his lyric essay is a response to a quote he found, and which he uses as an epigraph to his essay.

Though the narrator’s voice seems to be speaking from the present, and addressing a woman who lived centuries ago, we can’t be certain that the narrator’s voice is Alexie’s voice. Is Alexie creating a narrator or persona to ask these questions? The concept and the way it’s delivered is similar to poetry. Poets often use epigraphs to write poems. The difference is that Alexie uses prose language to explore what this epigraph means to him.

A Guide to Lyric Essay Writing: 4 Evocative Essays and Prompts to Learn From

Poets can learn a lot from blurring genres. Whether getting inspiration from fiction proves effective in building characters or song-writing provides a musical tone, poetry intersects with a broader literary landscape. This shines through especially in lyric essays, a form that has inspired articles from the Poetry Foundation and Purdue Writing Lab , as well as become the concept for a 2015 anthology titled We Might as Well Call it the Lyric Essay.  

Put simply, the lyric essay is a hybrid, creative nonfiction form that combines the rich figurative language of poetry with the longer-form analysis and narrative of essay or memoir. Oftentimes, it emerges as a way to explore a big-picture idea with both imagery and rigor. These four examples provide an introduction to the writing style, as well as spotlight tips for creating your own.

1. Draft a “braided essay,” like Michelle Zauner in this excerpt from Crying in H Mart .

Before Crying in H Mart became a bestselling memoir, Michelle Zauner—a writer and frontwoman of the band Japanese Breakfast—published an essay of the same name in The New Yorker . It opens with the fascinating and emotional sentence, “Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.” This first line not only immediately propels the reader into Zauner’s grief, but it also reveals an example of the popular “braided essay” technique, which weaves together two distinct but somehow related experiences. 

Throughout the work, Zauner establishes a parallel between her and her mother’s relationship and traditional Korean food. “You’ll likely find me crying by the banchan refrigerators, remembering the taste of my mom’s soy-sauce eggs and cold radish soup,” Zauner writes, illuminating the deeply personal and mystifying experience of grieving through direct, sensory imagery.

2. Experiment with nonfiction forms , like Hadara Bar-Nadav in “ Selections from Babyland . ”

Lyric essays blend poetic qualities and nonfiction qualities. Hadara Bar-Nadav illustrates this experimental nature in Selections from Babyland , a multi-part lyric essay that delves into experiences with infertility. Though Bar-Nadav’s writing throughout this piece showcases rhythmic anaphora—a definite poetic skill—it also plays with nonfiction forms not typically seen in poetry, including bullet points and a multiple-choice list. 

For example, when recounting unsolicited advice from others, Bar-Nadav presents their dialogue in the following way:

I heard about this great _____________.

a. acupuncturist

b. chiropractor

d. shamanic healer

e. orthodontist ( can straighter teeth really make me pregnant ?)

This unexpected visual approach feels reminiscent of an article or quiz—both popular nonfiction forms—and adds dimension and white space to the lyric essay.

3. Travel through time , like Nina Boutsikaris in “ Some Sort of Union .”

Nina Boutsikaris is the author of I’m Trying to Tell You I’m Sorry: An Intimacy Triptych , and her work has also appeared in an anthology of the best flash nonfiction. Her essay “Some Sort of Union,” published in Hippocampus Magazine , was a finalist in the magazine’s Best Creative Nonfiction contest. 

Since lyric essays are typically longer and more free verse than poems, they can be a way to address a larger idea or broader time period. Boutsikaris does this in “Some Sort of Union,” where the speaker drifts from an interaction with a romantic interest to her childhood. 

“They were neighbors, the girl and the air force paramedic. She could have seen his front door from her high-rise window if her window faced west rather than east,” Boutsikaris describes. “When she first met him two weeks ago, she’d been wearing all white, buying a wedge of cheap brie at the corner market.”

In the very next paragraph, Boutskiras shifts this perspective and timeline, writing, “The girl’s mother had been angry with her when she was a child. She had needed something from the girl that the girl did not know how to give. Not the way her mother hoped she would.”

As this example reveals, examining different perspectives and timelines within a lyric essay can flesh out a broader understanding of who a character is.

4. Bring in research, history, and data, like Roxane Gay in “ What Fullness Is .”

Like any other form of writing, lyric essays benefit from in-depth research. And while journalistic or scientific details can sometimes throw off the concise ecosystem and syntax of a poem, the lyric essay has room for this sprawling information.

In “What Fullness Is,” award-winning writer Roxane Gay contextualizes her own ideas and experiences with weight loss surgery through the history and culture surrounding the procedure. 

“The first weight-loss surgery was performed during the 10th century, on D. Sancho, the king of León, Spain,” Gay details. “He was so fat that he lost his throne, so he was taken to Córdoba, where a doctor sewed his lips shut. Only able to drink through a straw, the former king lost enough weight after a time to return home and reclaim his kingdom.”

“The notion that thinness—and the attempt to force the fat body toward a state of culturally mandated discipline—begets great rewards is centuries old.”

Researching and knowing this history empowers Gay to make a strong central point in her essay.

Bonus prompt: Choose one of the techniques above to emulate in your own take on the lyric essay. Happy writing!

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• The Newsletter 95 Summer 2023

From Zarzuela to "Sarswela": Scenes from Filipino Lyrical Theater

The genre of lyrical theater known as zarzuela developed greatly during the 19th century, becoming an important mode of entertainment in Spain. Part of its development occurred thanks to the trips it took to other parts of the Spanish-speaking world. Furthermore, zarzuela reached the Spanish colony of the Philippines, where the most relevant works of the repertoire were played. This form of Spanish lyrical theater (already an adaptation from European operas) coexisted in the Philippines with other performing arts such as European opera and a Tagalog form of popular theater. Local artists were trained to perform the new genre onstage, which, in turn, would later give way to a local creation called sarswela .

The arrival of the zarzuela

In the 19th century, Cuba and the Philippines were the two overseas geographies that remained part of the Spanish Empire after the independence of the colonies in the American continent. This circumstance kept the Philippines in touch with Europe and thus with a great deal of Western artistic expressions. Dramatic and lyrical theater companies performed during this period and made known the current repertoire of the West in the East. The first complete zarzuela staging in the Philippines was El duende [The Fairy], which occurred at the Teatro de Binondo in Manila on February 22, 1851. With a libretto by Luis Olona (1823-1863) and music by Rafael Hernando (1822-1888), it belongs to what is known as a restored zarzuela and was premiered at Teatro de Variedades in Madrid on June 6, 1849. In 1848, a group of political deportees arrived in Manila, among them Álvaro Carazo and Narciso de la Escosura (?-1875), the latter of whom took over the Teatro de Binondo and began to stage works from the Spanish repertoire. On his return to Spain, Escosura encouraged the director of the theater company known as the Teatro del Balón de Cádiz, Manuel López de Ariza, to travel to the Philippines to carry out a few seasons of lyrical and dramatic theater. López de Ariza arrived in Manila in 1852, and naturally, the place where they performed was at Teatro de Binondo [Fig. 1]. They performed a repertoire that included mostly dramatic pieces: Isabel La Católica [Isabel, the Catholic Queen], Diego Corrientes, and some short theatrical pieces by Ramón de la Cruz (1731-1794) of humorous theme and usually of popular characters called sainetes . Additionally, a small work with music was staged: El Tío Caniyitas [Uncle Caniyitas] by Mariano Soriano (1817-1880). In the years 1878 and 1879, two of the most representative zarzuelas were performed in Asia: Jugar con fuego [Playing with Fire] and El barberillo de Lavapiés [The Little Barber of Lavapiés], both by Francisco Asenjo Barbieri (1823-1894). From then on, the history of zarzuela in the Philippines would be linked to the person of Darío Céspedes (?-1884), who, in 1881, created a zarzuela company at the space known as Coliseo Artístico, merely a kiosk that was suitable as a performance theater in the area known as Arroceros.

As press reviews from this period demonstrate, the most important titles of the Spanish zarzuela began to be known in 1855, when Los diamantes de la corona [The Diamonds of the Crown] by Barbieri premiered in Tondo, and Emilio Arrieta’s Marina began to be played in 1860. It is significant that in 1877, the performing of Arrieta’s El Potosí submarino [The Submarine Treasure], shows the presence of the Spanish teatro bufo – a genre of popular satirical musical theater transplanted from France to Spain by Francisco Arderius (1835-1886) in 1866 – into the insular repertoire. One of the best-known anecdotes around zarzuela in Manila concerns Guillermo Cereceda’s Pascual Bailón [Pascual the Dancer]. It turns out that the “daring” dance scene performed in August 1886 (the French can-can ) caused a reaction from the church, whose top representatives published a press note criticizing the performance.  

A second breath for the zarzuela

The second phase of the zarzuela began in 1881 with the arrival in Manila of two Spanish artists who had made significant careers in the theaters of Spain: Alejandro Cubero (1825-1888) and Elísea Raguer. Cubero worked in the Philippines from April 1881 until March 1887, establishing one of the most important periods of the zarzuela in the Philippines. He died in Spain at the beginning of 1888. With the return of Cubero and Raguer to Spain, this episode came to an end, although Raguer returned to the Philippines in March 1888 and stayed until 1897, when she returned to Spain permanently. Not only they performed new plays, but they also helped professionalize Filipino actors and actresses that already had a certain career on the stages of the time. These included Práxedes Fernández, Patrocinio Tagaroma, Nemesio Ratia, and José Carvajal, among others.

Práxedes Fernández de Pastor (1871-1919), better known as Yeyeng, began her career at a very young age. She joined the Cubero’s troupe and later organized her own company called FERSUTA, using the first syllables of three of its members surnames (Fernández, Suzara, and Tagaroma). On August 12, 1894, on the eve of her marriage to Ricardo Pastor y Panadés, she said goodbye to her audience at Teatro Zorrilla in Manila with a performance of Edmond Audran's La Mascota [The Mascot]. On August 18, she married and moved to Iloilo, where she lived until March 1899. After spending the next three years in Spain, she returned to Manila in February 1902. She was highly appreciated by the Filipino public and in the first two decades of the 20th century, she maintained the presence of the Spanish zarzuela and introduced the Viennese operetta, with plays such as The Count of Luxembourg and The Merry Widow . Patrocinio Tagaroma (1874-1926) also began her theatrical career at an early age. When Yeyeng married and retired from the theater, Tagaroma became the favorite of the public. Nemesio Ratia (1854-1910) was the only Filipino actor to seek a career in Spain. In March 1889, he embarked for Barcelona, later going to Madrid. On September 17, 1889, he had his debut at the Teatro Felipe in Madrid with El lucero del alba [The Morning Star]. By November of the same year, he returned to Manila, appearing at the Teatro Filipino on December 22. José Carvajal (1862-1928) was a Spanish mestizo who became notable as a comedian. On February 8, 1904, at Teatro Zorrilla, he premiered the zarzuela Ligaya, which he authored. At that time he became the director of the Hispano-Tagalog Theater Company. He also worked in the Company of Fernández Pastor. What Yeyeng became as a female performer, he achieved as a male. He was called the Prince of Filipino artists. It is possible to affirm that these two performers were the ones who continued the tradition of Spanish lyrical theater in Asia and made possible the transition to what would later become Filipino sarswela .

The creation of local plays

Among the development of lyrical activities, evidence of an artistic syncretism started to occur. Some texts of zarzuelas began to be translated into Tagalog, such as Buenas noches, Sr. Don Simón [Goodnight, Mr. Don Simon]. Apparently the first such translation into Tagalog, it was performed at Teatro de Tondo in February 1854. One year later, El duende was also performed in the Teatro de Sibacon. The zarzuelas that were showing during the second half of the 19th century were mostly works composed in Spain. But the zarzuela genre was so well received that some playwrights and musicians who settled on the islands began to compose works in Spanish with Filipino themes and characters. These local elements included a genre of traditional Filipino love song written in Tagalog, known as the kundiman , as well as texts in languages such as Tagalog or Chabacano.

The number of zarzuelas translated into Tagalog accompanied by vernacular music increased, but so did the number of local plays written and performed in Castilian. Salir a tiempo de pobre [Get Out of Poverty in Time] by Antonio Robles made its debut at Teatro de Binondo on May 18, 1852. Other outstanding zarzuelas written in Spanish from the Philippines included El viaje redondo [Round Trip], a one-act piece written in verse by Regino Escalera and Federico Casademunt with music by Ignacio Massaguer (Teatro del Circo in Manila, December 12, 1878); Cuadros filipinos [Filipino Scenes] by Francisco de Paula Entrala, which pointed out the excesses of Tagalog comedy and was premiered by the Alejandro Cubero’s company in 1882; Una novia de encargo [A Custom Bride] in one act and in verse by Ricardo Castro Ronderos with music by Alfredo Goré (Teatro Filipino, March 1, 1884); and El diablo mundo [The Devil World], also a one-act  piece by Emilio and Rafael del Val with music by José Estella (Teatro Zorrilla, October 25, 1893) [Fig. 2].

Fig. 2: El diablo mundo front page. ( Source )

There were also plays in Spanish which premiered outside of Manila. Such is the case of the following piece (whose subtitles were even longer than the main title): A 7 con 7 el pico o La llegada del “peso insular” y el fin de los contratos usurarios [To 7 with 7, or The Arrival of “Island Pesos” and the End of Precarious Contracts], which was performed at the theater of Iloilo on March 22, 1896. The main title of this piece refers to seven Mexican pesos with seven Spanish reales , and pico was a unit of weight equivalent to 63 1/4 kilograms. This zarzuela is about the introduction of the island peso, or Philippine peso, an initiative implemented in 1896 by Minister D. Tomás Castellanos. The plan was meant to get rid of the Mexican peso, whose widespread presence caused a deep economic crisis in Philippine trade. At the end of the play, the Mexican peso, impersonated by an actor, is kicked out by the island peso and other allegorical characters.

In addition to zarzuela, there were theater performances in Spanish accompanied by music organized by arts and culture associations. Perhaps the best known example is the interpretation of José Rizal’s piece Junto al Pasig [Next to the Pasig River], a short piece composed on request, to be performed by students of the Ateneo de Manila and staged at 6pm on Wednesday, December 8, 1880, at the academic institution. The few musical interventions that appeared in the performance were composed by Blas Echegoyen.

What is relevant about these works is the intention to include Filipino characters, situations, and customs, as well as the mixing of words and expressions in vernacular languages in the dialogue and the combination of Western musical genres and local ones. During this period there were many plays which did not include musical parts, but still tried to expose the diversity of Filipino society.

Local customs and practices

One of the peculiarities of zarzuela in Asia has to do with the general organization of the performances. This varied from paying homage to the actors to changes according to the weather conditions. The función de beneficio , for example, was a special performance designed to show admiration and support to the actors by providing them with splendid and lavish gifts offered by the public or government authorities. Additionally, there were the “hooks” to attract attendees, which consisted of either organizing raffles at the end of the show or providing free transportation if the theater was far from Manila, in a suburb of Tondo, for instance. This was especially important because performances used to end late at night.

Shows were also subjected to the weather conditions. Theater organizers arranged a practical communication system when it came to climate contingencies: if the performance was suspended because of bad weather, the public were notified by means of a red lantern placed at the top of the theater’s flagpole. Additionally, a white lantern was placed on the two bridges over the Pasig River, the Puente Grande (later renamed Puente de España ) and Puente de Santa Cruz . The former connected the areas of Binondo and Ermita, while the latter connected Ermita and Santa Cruz. Those on their way could find out before arriving to the show (crossing the river) that it had been cancelled.

The Teatro de Variedades in Manila had a particular building structure which made it possible for people to hear the show from outside. Consequently, those who did not enter for some reason, could stand and listen in from the outside without having to buy a ticket. The theater organization instructed the doormen to ask people to keep walking in order to avoid crowds outside the theater.

Filipino sarswela

In 1898, the Philippines ceased to be part of the Spanish Crown. With the beginning of a new century and the US occupation, the growth of a new identity began. In this quest for a national character, the community of theater people (singers, composers, musicians) were committed to incorporating the Tagalog language more assiduously in their works. The radical change was to compose works in Tagalog, within the format of the Spanish zarzuela, whose plots portrayed and reflected the sociopolitical discourses of the moment. This resulted in a syncretic genre called sarswela . Outstanding works thus emerged, such as Walang Sugat [Without Wound] by Severino Reyes (1861-1942) with music by Fulgencio Tolentino (1872-1940), which premiered at Teatro Libertad in Manila in 1902. Another was Dalagang Bukid [The Country Maiden] in 1917, featuring a libretto by Hermogenes Ilagan (1873-1943) and music by Leon Ignacio (1882-1967). Dalagang Bukid would later become the script for what has been considered the first Philippine feature film: a silent film of the same title, accompanied by subtitles in English, Spanish, and Tagalog. It was directed by José Nepomuceno (1893-1959) and released in 1919. Walang Sugat was made into a feature film in 1939. It was directed by Enrique Herrera-Dávila [Fig. 3].

Fig. 3: Walang Sugat poster, Filippine Productions, 1939, directed by Enrique Herrera-Dávila. (Photo courtesy of Video48)

With the arrival of new musical genres such as jazz and other artistic tendencies in the second and third decades of the 20th century, a genre from vaudeville , locally known as bodabil, began to take shape in Filipino theaters . Its best representative was Luis Borromeo ( ca. 1879-?), better known as Borromeo Lou, who since the early 1920s promoted the genre. The bodabil consisted of short light plays that interspersed singing, dancing, and comedians, whose purpose was merely to entertain and expand the type of leisure activities on offer for the population. Its political potential was also diminished. Unlike the sarswela , which could contain political manifestos and social criticism, the bodabil did not cause concern as a politically subversive activity. This new theatrical form and the commodification of cinema, which led to a notable increase in the number of theaters and to the transformation of existing theaters into spaces for film screening, brought an end to the sarswela , a Western pilgrim genre that was able to find its own voice in the East.

Mario Roger Quijano Axle works as professor and researcher at the College of Music at the Universidad Veracruzana (Mexico). His areas of study, along with Mexican music, are French and Spanish music of the 19th and 20th centuries, opera and zarzuela, and artistic and cultural exchanges. Email: [email protected]

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The Philippine Literature

The literary forms in philippine literature.

by: Christine F. Godinez-Ortega

The diversity and richness of Philippine literature evolved side by side with the country’s history. This can best be appreciated in the context of the country’s pre-colonial cultural traditions and the socio-political histories of its colonial and contemporary traditions. The average Filipino’s unfamiliarity with his indigenous literature was largely due to what has been impressed upon him: that his country was “discovered” and, hence, Philippine “history” started only in 1521.

So successful were the efforts of colonialists to blot out the memory of the country’s largely oral past that present-day Filipino writers, artists and journalists are trying to correct this inequity by recognizing the country’s wealth of ethnic traditions and disseminating them in schools and in the mass media.

The rousings of nationalistic pride in the 1960s and 1970s also helped bring about this change of attitude among a new breed of Filipinos concerned about the “Filipino identity.”

Pre-Colonial Times

Owing to the works of our own archaeologists, ethnologists and anthropologists, we are able to know more and better judge information about our pre-colonial times set against a bulk of material about early Filipinos as recorded by Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and other chroniclers of the past.

Pre-colonial inhabitants of our islands showcase a rich past through their folk speeches, folk songs, folk narratives and indigenous rituals and mimetic dances that affirm our ties with our Southeast Asian neighbors.

The most seminal of these folk speeches is the riddle which is tigmo in Cebuano, bugtong in Tagalog, paktakon in Ilongo and patototdon in Bicol. Central to the riddle is the talinghaga or metaphor because it “reveals subtle resemblances between two unlike objects” and one’s power of observation and wit are put to the test. While some riddles are ingenious, others verge on the obscene or are sex-related:

Gongonan nu usin y amam If you pull your daddy’s penis

Maggirawa pay sila y inam. Your mommy’s vagina, too,

(Campana) screams. (Bell)

The proverbs or aphorisms express norms or codes of behavior, community beliefs or they instill values by offering nuggets of wisdom in short, rhyming verse.

The extended form, tanaga, a mono-riming heptasyllabic quatrain expressing insights and lessons on life is “more emotionally charged than the terse proverb and thus has affinities with the folk lyric.” Some examples are the basahanon or extended didactic sayings from Bukidnon and the daraida and daragilon from Panay.

The folk song, a form of folk lyric which expresses the hopes and aspirations, the people’s lifestyles as well as their loves. These are often repetitive and sonorous, didactic and naive as in the children’s songs or Ida-ida (Maguindanao), tulang pambata (Tagalog) or cansiones para abbing (Ibanag).

A few examples are the lullabyes or Ili-ili (Ilongo); love songs like the panawagon and balitao (Ilongo); harana or serenade (Cebuano); the bayok (Maranao); the seven-syllable per line poem, ambahan of the Mangyans that are about human relationships, social entertainment and also serve as a tool for teaching the young; work songs that depict the livelihood of the people often sung to go with the movement of workers such as the kalusan (Ivatan), soliranin (Tagalog rowing song) or the mambayu, a Kalinga rice-pounding song; the verbal jousts/games like the duplo popular during wakes.

Other folk songs are the drinking songs sung during carousals like the tagay (Cebuano and Waray); dirges and lamentations extolling the deeds of the dead like the kanogon (Cebuano) or the Annako (Bontoc).

A type of narrative song or kissa among the Tausug of Mindanao, the parang sabil, uses for its subject matter the exploits of historical and legendary heroes. It tells of a Muslim hero who seeks death at the hands of non-Muslims.

The folk narratives, i.e. epics and folk tales are varied, exotic and magical. They explain how the world was created, how certain animals possess certain characteristics, why some places have waterfalls, volcanoes, mountains, flora or fauna and, in the case of legends, an explanation of the origins of things. Fables are about animals and these teach moral lessons.

Our country’s epics are considered ethno-epics because unlike, say, Germany’s Niebelunginlied, our epics are not national for they are “histories” of varied groups that consider themselves “nations.”

The epics come in various names: Guman (Subanon); Darangen (Maranao); Hudhud (Ifugao); and Ulahingan (Manobo). These epics revolve around supernatural events or heroic deeds and they embody or validate the beliefs and customs and ideals of a community. These are sung or chanted to the accompaniment of indigenous musical instruments and dancing performed during harvests, weddings or funerals by chanters. The chanters who were taught by their ancestors are considered “treasures” and/or repositories of wisdom in their communities.

Examples of these epics are the Lam-ang (Ilocano); Hinilawod (Sulod); Kudaman (Palawan); Darangen (Maranao); Ulahingan (Livunganen-Arumanen Manobo); Mangovayt Buhong na Langit (The Maiden of the Buhong Sky from Tuwaang–Manobo); Ag Tobig neg Keboklagan (Subanon); and Tudbulol (T’boli).

The Spanish Colonial Tradition

While it is true that Spain subjugated the Philippines for more mundane reasons, this former European power contributed much in the shaping and recording of our literature. Religion and institutions that represented European civilization enriched the languages in the lowlands, introduced theater which we would come to know as komedya, the sinakulo, the sarswela, the playlets and the drama. Spain also brought to the country, though at a much later time, liberal ideas and an internationalism that influenced our own Filipino intellectuals and writers for them to understand the meanings of “liberty and freedom.”

Literature in this period may be classified as religious prose and poetry and secular prose and poetry.

Religious lyrics written by ladino poets or those versed in both Spanish and Tagalog were included in early catechism and were used to teach Filipinos the Spanish language. Fernando Bagonbanta’s “Salamat nang walang hanga/gracias de sin sempiternas” (Unending thanks) is a fine example that is found in the Memorial de la vida cristiana en lengua tagala (Guidelines for the Christian life in the Tagalog language) published in 1605.

Another form of religious lyrics are the meditative verses like the dalit appended to novenas and catechisms. It has no fixed meter nor rime scheme although a number are written in octosyllabic quatrains and have a solemn tone and spiritual subject matter.

But among the religious poetry of the day, it is the pasyon in octosyllabic quintillas that became entrenched in the Filipino’s commemoration of Christ’s agony and resurrection at Calvary. Gaspar Aquino de Belen’s “Ang Mahal na Passion ni Jesu Christong Panginoon natin na tola” (Holy Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Verse) put out in 1704 is the country’s earliest known pasyon.

Other known pasyons chanted during the Lenten season are in Ilocano, Pangasinan, Ibanag, Cebuano, Bicol, Ilongo and Waray.

Aside from religious poetry, there were various kinds of prose narratives written to prescribe proper decorum. Like the pasyon, these prose narratives were also used for proselitization. Some forms are: dialogo (dialogue), Manual de Urbanidad (conduct book); ejemplo (exemplum) and tratado (tratado). The most well-known are Modesto de Castro’s “Pagsusulatan ng Dalawang Binibini na si Urbana at si Feliza” (Correspondence between the Two Maidens Urbana and Feliza) in 1864 and Joaquin Tuason’s “Ang Bagong Robinson” (The New Robinson) in 1879, an adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s novel.

Secular works appeared alongside historical and economic changes, the emergence of an opulent class and the middle class who could avail of a European education. This Filipino elite could now read printed works that used to be the exclusive domain of the missionaries.

The most notable of the secular lyrics followed the conventions of a romantic tradition: the languishing but loyal lover, the elusive, often heartless beloved, the rival. The leading poets were Jose Corazon de Jesus (Huseng Sisiw) and Francisco Balagtas. Some secular poets who wrote in this same tradition were Leona Florentino, Jacinto Kawili, Isabelo de los Reyes and Rafael Gandioco.

Another popular secular poetry is the metrical romance, the awit and korido in Tagalog. The awit is set in dodecasyllabic quatrains while the korido is in octosyllabic quatrains. These are colorful tales of chivalry from European sources made for singing and chanting such as Gonzalo de Cordoba (Gonzalo of Cordoba) and Ibong Adarna (Adarna Bird). There are numerous metrical romances in Tagalog, Bicol, Ilongo, Pampango, Ilocano and in Pangasinan. The awit as a popular poetic genre reached new heights in Balagtas’ “Florante at Laura” (ca. 1838-1861), the most famous of the country’s metrical romances.

Again, the winds of change began to blow in 19th century Philippines. Filipino intellectuals educated in Europe called ilustrados began to write about the downside of colonization. This, coupled with the simmering calls for reforms by the masses gathered a formidable force of writers like Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Mariano Ponce, Emilio Jacinto and Andres Bonifacio.

This led to the formation of the Propaganda Movement where prose works such as the political essays and Rizal’s two political novels, Noli Me Tangere and the El filibusterismo helped usher in the Philippine revolution resulting in the downfall of the Spanish regime, and, at the same time planted the seeds of a national consciousness among Filipinos.

But if Rizal’s novels are political, the novel Ninay (1885) by Pedro Paterno is largely cultural and is considered the first Filipino novel. Although Paterno’s Ninay gave impetus to other novelists like Jesus Balmori and Antonio M. Abad to continue writing in Spanish, this did not flourish.

Other Filipino writers published the essay and short fiction in Spanish in La Vanguardia, El Debate, Renacimiento Filipino, and Nueva Era. The more notable essayists and fictionists were Claro M. Recto, Teodoro M. Kalaw, Epifanio de los Reyes, Vicente Sotto, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, Rafael Palma, Enrique Laygo (Caretas or Masks, 1925) and Balmori who mastered the prosa romantica or romantic prose.

But the introduction of English as medium of instruction in the Philippines hastened the demise of Spanish so that by the 1930s, English writing had overtaken Spanish writing. During the language’s death throes, however, writing in the romantic tradition, from the awit and korido, would continue in the novels of Magdalena Jalandoni. But patriotic writing continued under the new colonialists. These appeared in the vernacular poems and modern adaptations of works during the Spanish period and which further maintained the Spanish tradition.

The American Colonial Period

A new set of colonizers brought about new changes in Philippine literature. New literary forms such as free verse [in poetry], the modern short story and the critical essay were introduced. American influence was deeply entrenched with the firm establishment of English as the medium of instruction in all schools and with literary modernism that highlighted the writer’s individuality and cultivated consciousness of craft, sometimes at the expense of social consciousness.

The poet, and later, National Artist for Literature, Jose Garcia Villa used free verse and espoused the dictum, “Art for art’s sake” to the chagrin of other writers more concerned with the utilitarian aspect of literature. Another maverick in poetry who used free verse and talked about illicit love in her poetry was Angela Manalang Gloria, a woman poet described as ahead of her time. Despite the threat of censorship by the new dispensation, more writers turned up “seditious works” and popular writing in the native languages bloomed through the weekly outlets like Liwayway and Bisaya.

The Balagtas tradition persisted until the poet Alejandro G. Abadilla advocated modernism in poetry. Abadilla later influenced young poets who wrote modern verses in the 1960s such as Virgilio S. Almario, Pedro I. Ricarte and Rolando S. Tinio.

While the early Filipino poets grappled with the verities of the new language, Filipinos seemed to have taken easily to the modern short story as published in the Philippines Free Press, the College Folio and Philippines Herald. Paz Marquez Benitez’s “Dead Stars” published in 1925 was the first successful short story in English written by a Filipino. Later on, Arturo B. Rotor and Manuel E. Arguilla showed exceptional skills with the short story.

Alongside this development, writers in the vernaculars continued to write in the provinces. Others like Lope K. Santos, Valeriano Hernandez Peña and Patricio Mariano were writing minimal narratives similar to the early Tagalog short fiction called dali or pasingaw (sketch).

The romantic tradition was fused with American pop culture or European influences in the adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan by F. P. Boquecosa who also penned Ang Palad ni Pepe after Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield even as the realist tradition was kept alive in the novels by Lope K. Santos and Faustino Aguilar, among others.

It should be noted that if there was a dearth of the Filipino novel in English, the novel in the vernaculars continued to be written and serialized in weekly magazines like Liwayway, Bisaya, Hiligaynon and Bannawag.

The essay in English became a potent medium from the 1920?s to the present. Some leading essayists were journalists like Carlos P. Romulo, Jorge Bocobo, Pura Santillan Castrence, etc. who wrote formal to humorous to informal essays for the delectation by Filipinos.

Among those who wrote criticism developed during the American period were Ignacio Manlapaz, Leopoldo Yabes and I.V. Mallari. But it was Salvador P. Lopez’s criticism that grabbed attention when he won the Commonwealth Literay Award for the essay in 1940 with his “Literature and Society.” This essay posited that art must have substance and that Villa’s adherence to “Art for Art’s Sake” is decadent.

The last throes of American colonialism saw the flourishing of Philippine literature in English at the same time, with the introduction of the New Critical aesthetics, made writers pay close attention to craft and “indirectly engendered a disparaging attitude” towards vernacular writings — a tension that would recur in the contemporary period.

The Contemporary Period

The flowering of Philippine literature in the various languages continue especially with the appearance of new publications after the Martial Law years and the resurgence of committed literature in the 1960s and the 1970s.

Filipino writers continue to write poetry, short stories, novellas, novels and essays whether these are socially committed, gender/ethnic related or are personal in intention or not.

Of course the Filipino writer has become more conscious of his art with the proliferation of writers workshops here and abroad and the bulk of literature available to him via the mass media including the internet. The various literary awards such as the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, the Philippines Free Press, Philippine Graphic, Home Life and Panorama literary awards encourage him to compete with his peers and hope that his creative efforts will be rewarded in the long run.

With the new requirement by the Commission on Higher Education of teaching of Philippine Literature in all tertiary schools in the country emphasizing the teaching of the vernacular literature or literatures of the regions, the audience for Filipino writers is virtually assured. And, perhaps, a national literature finding its niche among the literatures of the world will not be far behind.

source: http://www.seasite.niu.edu

In Taylor Swift's 'Tortured Poets,' the torture is in the songwriting

'the tortured poets department' further complicates my feelings surrounding the pop star, and proves that taylor swift could benefit greatly from a more communal, creative approach..

When Taylor Swift announced her new album, “ The Tortured Poets Department, ” earlier this year at the Grammys , I was equal parts curious and unaffected. Even as a lifelong fan, I wasn’t fond of her previous effort, “Midnights,” cause I found most of it overwhelmingly uninspired – despite it winning Album of the Year. 

Nevertheless, Swift’s command over the zeitgeist makes her inescapable, and as a fan of most of her work, I’m bound to engage with her offerings regardless. The quality and acclaim of her previous works made me cling to the futile hope that “Midnights” was just a fluke. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has those days. 

That hope died, though, as soon as I saw the album credits.

To my dismay, Swift keeps her usual creative ensemble on “The Tortured Poets Department”: Jack Antonoff, every indie-pop girl’s go-to producer, and Aaron Dessner, of The National fame, who previously worked with her on her “Folklore” and “Evermore,” and “Midnights (3 a.m. Edition).” She also brings on Post Malone and longtime friend Florence Welch as new collaborators. 

Swift is known for writing songs based on her own life experiences. This artistic choice has made her synonymous with a certain brand of relatability and bestowed her with scrutiny and acclaim alike. Her fans in particular, “Swifties” for the uninitiated, use this to justify that sometimes unwarranted acclaim and discredit artists who choose a more collaborative approach to creating. “The Tortured Poets Department” further complicates my feelings surrounding the pop star and proves that Swift could benefit greatly from a more communal, creative approach. 

Beyoncé reclaims country music: Beyoncé pushes the confines of genre with 'Cowboy Carter.' Country will be better for it.

Taylor Swift has already won. Swifties don't need to banish criticism.

It’s not all bad, though. Moments of her past brilliance find a way to break through the crest every now and again, especially on “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology,” the second installment of what appears to be a double album, which she released at 2 a.m. on Friday .

“The Black Dog” builds into a heart ache roar as she laments why memories of her don’t mar a lover’s mind while he visits the places they used to share. On “The Albatross,” she makes clever allusions to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798), referring to herself as both the saboteur and savior of her past relationships. 

As a singer-songwriter, Swift is often perceived as a “singular” artist with her personhood at the center. Much of her discography is akin to intimate diary entries. The fact that she is so singular, often credited as the sole writer on many of her tracks, and her life is so large allows fans to decode her songs like scripture and attach them to moments in her life and relationships.

Conservatives are 'Down Bad': Taylor Swift is an American icon, regardless of what you think

The beauty of her older music is that listeners can take her tales of sneaking out late to tap on a lover’s window, her journey out of the woods or the regret that takes her back to a fateful December night and apply them to happenings in their own lives. It’s why I admire “Folklore” and “Evermore” so deeply. The way she blurred the lines between fact and fiction, making it hard to determine when she was chronicling her own life or one she’s concocted, offered universality in its specificity. Now, it seems that her celebrity has eclipsed her.

“The Tortured Poets Department” will undoubtedly be the best-selling album of 2024 and will be nominated, and possibly win, the big awards at next year’s Grammys. The record has been universally praised by publications like Rolling Stone. Her previous album broke almost every record imaginable and won every award. She embarked on one of the most lucrative tours of all time.

By most metrics, she’s the biggest pop star in the world , possibly of all time. Taylor Swift has won.

But so much of the discourse surrounding Swift exists in extremes. Anything less than unabashed praise is shunned. And some of her most ruthless dissenters obviously do so in bad faith. Engaging with any art without nuance is a fruitless endeavor. 

She keeps her ink and quill tightly to her chest, but this individualist and self-centered way of creating has led to an uninteresting product, unless you are obsessed with the innards of her personal life. I doubt she’ll ever run out of stories to tell. Life always gives us new inspiration. The trick lies in whether she’ll find interesting ways to tell them. 

Nevertheless, I still love Taylor Swift. I went to see the Eras Tour in New York with my best friend. I have countless memories of a younger me belting “Mine” and “Our Song” out of car windows down I-95. I remember the first time I heard “Cruel Summer” in my friend’s bright red Honda Fit and knowing I’d be obsessed with that song forever.

I spent so much of quarantine shattered and painstakingly introspective from the beautiful prose on “Folklore” and “Evermore.” My heart broke with hers on “All Too Well,” first in 2012 and again in 2022. Swift has soundtracked the lives of so many, chronicling the beauty of falling in love and the hurt thereafter. My only wish now is that she’d see beyond herself and relinquish her powerful pen to someone new – someone who could reignite the fire in her.

Kofi Mframa is a music and culture writer and opinion intern at the Louisville Courier Journal. 

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10 books that remind us there is no singular Asian American experience

• Kristin T. Lee

As a kid, the only Asian American literature that crossed my path was heavily stylized and historical. Books like Laurence Yep’s “ Dragonwings ” and Ed Young’s “ Lon Po Po ” were important, but felt radically different from my own American life in Iowa in the 1990s. My invisibility and illegibility to others were echoed back to me by the resounding absence of books that reflected my experiences at school and at the public library. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I finally recognized parts of myself in literature, starting with books like Lisa Ko’s “ The Leavers ”, Nicole Chung’s “ All You Can Ever Know ”, and Charles Yu’s “ Interior Chinatown ”. Getting that taste made me voracious for more.

Thankfully, in the past several years, more books by Asian American authors have been published as reader demand has grown and publishing houses have hired more people of color . With this upsurge has come the development of leitmotifs beyond the immigrant parent-child dynamics and interracial romantic relationships that dominate the narrative landscape. While those themes deserve exploration, they can serve to reinforce stereotypes when read in isolation.

It's my joy to discover and recommend books that go beyond the usual tropes to probe the depths and breadth of the Asian American experience. As someone who could be a poster child for the so-called model minority (I’m a Chinese American physician), reading has been a key starting place for me to expand my conception of community and solidarity and break out of the scripts we’re given by society.

“ The Sense of Wonder ” by Matthew Salesses does just this by following the sensational rise of fictional NBA star Won Lee, whose basketball skills are questioned by the press, his teammates, his coach and the public. Salasses’s characters, including Won’s girlfriend Carrie, a K-drama producer, wrestle with others not having a “frame of reference” for them; they’re not STEM nerds or quiet sycophants, but brash, bold innovators carving out spaces for themselves in industries where Asian Americans aren’t often represented. Books like this help me “imagine otherwise” for myself and for my children, spurring me to pursue my creative side and even become a writer.

Elaine Castillo’s “ America is Not the Heart ” also pushes against the model minority myth in its raw, unapologetic ode to the Filipino American community of the Bay Area. The protagonist, Hero De Vera, has gone from privileged scion of a powerful family to injured resistance fighter in the anti-Marcos rebellion by the time she washes up in the U.S. to try to start over. The prologue, told from Hero’s aunt’s perspective, contains some of the most emotionally impactful writing I’ve ever read about why we — or our parents or ancestors — come to America: for survival.

“ Tell Me How to Be ” by Neel Patel is an intimately told story of how a queer songwriter struggles with coming out to his mother while his mother attempts to hide her own secrets. It’s a humanizing portrait of immigrant parenthood, rendered with vulnerability and undergirded by a soulful R&B soundtrack, reminding me that my parents are people with their own interiority, too. Lamya H’s “ Hijab Butch Blues ” is a memoir-in-essays that explores the earnest quest of a queer Muslim girl to find belonging and acceptance. She refuses to give up either her devout faith or her sexuality, and the way she wrestles with God and the Quran is both honest and hopeful, reminiscent of my own grappling with American evangelicalism.

Stepping back into the historical, “ Straw Dogs of the Universe ” by Ye Chun highlights the role of Chinese American workers in building the transcontinental railroad and the violent backlash they faced. With lyrical prose, this novel reminds us that Asian Americans have been in this country for a long time. Sadly, it also reminds us that anti-Asian racism is nothing new. In his wildly experimental and vigorously researched “ Same Bed Different Dreams ,” Ed Park pieces together episodes of Korean and Korean American history to craft a mind-bending symphony that won’t fail to astound. Park questions history itself and does his darndest to remind readers that the U.S. has its fingerprints all over Korea. So many Americans — myself included — were never taught Asian or Asian American history in school, leaving huge holes in how we understand the world. Books like these start to fill in the gaps.

Closer to home, Megan Kamalei Kakimoto reveals a kaleidoscopic portrait of Hawaiian life that is too often overlooked in her fiercely feminist short story collection, “ Every Drop is a Man’s Nightmare ”. Though the stories cover the gritty concerns of modern life for mixed native Hawaiian and Japanese women, the aftermath of U.S. annexation of the kingdom is the backdrop. “ The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories ” by Jamil Jan Kochai is a blazingly written short story collection that examines the lives of Afghans and Afghan Americans in the wake of the U.S. war on terror. My hope is that more Americans will read this and be moved to support those whom we abandoned when we withdrew from Afghanistan.

Two memoirs published this past year add complexity and insight to readers’ understanding of Asian American experiences. In “ Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America ,” Julia Lee situates Asian Americans within the racial dualism of the U.S., informed by her childhood amidst the Korean-Black community tensions of the 1992 Los Angeles riots as well as by the mentorship by two renowned Black scholars: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Jamaica Kincaid. She delineates a distinct Asian American existence that preserves authentic solidarity with other marginalized people, giving me hope.

Lee’s memoir pairs perfectly with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “ A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial .” With clarity, wit and historical grounding, Nguyen captures the hypocrisy of American exceptionalism, racialization, the U.S.’s devastating war in Vietnam and his own family’s refugee story. While he excoriates America’s role in global bloodbaths and ongoing racism, he also engages in sharp self-examination, making for a profound amalgamation of personal narrative and cultural commentary. If only we could all see ourselves and our country so honestly.

Reading just one Asian American-authored book is never going to capture the full range of stories coming out of the diverse communities that make up Asian America today. But after decades of being rendered invisible by majority culture, the sheer talent and storytelling genius of these books give readers an opportunity to expand their historical understanding and reject pigeonholing our communities — an opportunity that I hope many will seize.

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Kristin T. Lee Cognoscenti contributor Kristin T. Lee is a primary care physician and writer living in Cambridge, MA.

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