Lapidaries--preview to Learning from Robin Hemley

I can't follow with the next lengthy post today (I have Michael Martone in my sights), so I am presenting a small preview of my learnings from Robin Hemley. Robin was the instructor to whom I apprenticed myself during the Writers at Work conference: I took part in his nonfiction workshop, I listened to him read and speak on panels, and I discovered many common interests. So many of his ideas have resonance for me that I am perhaps now more aware of why he selected my essay when judging the nonfiction fellowship competition.

In workshop, Robin introduced a simple exercise to write "the shortest travel essays in the world." He said Victor Hugo had a practice of writing miniature essays called "lapidaries" in four lines. The idea is to write quickly, saving polishing for later. The result is four lines of detail in haiku-like prose. The form takes its shape, and name, from the practice of carving an epitaph in stone. As a writing practice, it develops minutia awareness. The idea reminds me of something I do "out and about" to entertain myself. I look up at the ceiling of a church, for example, and notice the first thing I see. I keep looking and note what I see next. And next. I'm always astonished at the hidden details that emerge around step four.

Robin suggested a practice of writing 5-10 lapidaries per week: "One a day will be a collection."

So, I've tried it. I also did some mostly fruitless research into Victor Hugo and other possible lapidary writers. Web searching turns up the occasional literary site but also yields a lot of companies that sell stone-carving equipment. There's one famous quote by Hugo that uses the word lapidary (but about a stone-carver, not an essay form): "Nature has made a pebble and a female. The lapidary makes the diamond, and the lover makes the woman." (http://izquotes.com/quote/89064) I believe Robin really has something else in mind, though.

At my friend Cindy's garden last week, the place where I wrote ten lines of iambic pentameter (Ellen Bass, exercise 4), I wrote a few lapidaries, too. Sometimes I cheated a little in the length, and none of these are about travel. The below texts are very minimally "polished."

1

Voice trails in empty air--an erasure
Lulled consciousnesses stir in tiny alarm
Is it now--was that it? Do we need
to clap? Dry hands shuffle together
like canvas flapping in wind.

(from a note to myself: what does perfunctory clapping sound like?)


2

Canyon crack in dirt departs knapsack strap
carves nearly straight, then bends at rise
around tuft of grass in a quarter circle
before it splits into paths of wide divide.


3

Tongue-colored trumpet bells out
round and gentian violet; an only
bloom on a twine-held stalk
aiming toward the sun in open promise.


4

Empty chair: black mesh with shiny
charcoal armrests casts square shadow
on the grass, soaks in the rays of sun.
The seat would warm my thighs.


This practice is a lot of fun. I highly recommend giving it a try!