Quick Notes On Lyric Prose by Fanny Howe

Aiming to come upon, or utter, a truth, it's important to be artless, because the artificial is inappropriate to this situation.

To be artless, however, you have to possess a crafty intelligence, a thorough sense of design. While truth is still beauty, embellishments are often like snares aimed to distract or conceal the truth.

The ideal prose would be fixed and not fiction. For instance, the essay can be a very lyrical form with its own aesthetic, but is undermined because of its non-ego-centered focus. Given the essayist's generosity in discussing a subject outside her historical self, the work sustains a moral luminosity.

Found at Rutgers/however/print archive