Poems, Essays, "Lore"

And David Byrne

Recently, I was on a plane and wanted something low-key but engaging to listen to while I closed my eyes. Somehow I hit upon the idea of listening to Remain in Light, which used to be one of my very favorite albums, but which I hadn’t listened to in its entirety in a few years, probably. As I listened, I realized that I hadn’t heard the whole album through headphones in I don’t know how long. It was wonderful and hypnotic. I felt like I was hearing it anew, and I also had a very strong sense memory of being 15 in 1986, on a road trip back from Tennessee to Kansas with my mom, lying flat on the farthest back seat in a similar state of semi-conscious reverie. I’ve been listening to this album for 40 years, I realized. This is part of my lore. Or is it?

“Lore” as it’s used these days by Gen Z is a term borrowed from fantasy narratives and comics and video games, and it refers to someone’s backstory. Parents who don’t usually drink might “drop lore” after one glass of wine at Thanksgiving. “Dad lore” is apparently an internet trend. Lore can be the bizarre, interesting details about you that you don’t usually reveal but that might come up unexpectedly in a conversation, surprising and maybe delighting those around you. NSS Magazine claims, “For Gen Z, ‘lore’ is a way to narrativize everyday life, transforming ordinary experiences into micro-stories.” I love the ideas this affirms— that maybe we’re all interesting characters on a series of personal side quests. We’re protagonists of our own lives, but we’re also picaresque.

So, is it part of my “lore” that I’ve been listening to Remain in Light for 40 years? Maybe not in any way that makes sense to other people, but from the perspective of an introverted Gen X poet-type-person, it is. It’s part of my life of the mind, and it also connects me to others around my age who may have discovered the Brian Eno produced Talking Heads a few years after the fact. In addition to that, I could weave together some of the details of my coming of age, my discovery of boys, my discovery of a love of the weird, and the first time I ever saw Stop Making Sense (age 14?)— there are some lore-like micro-stories there that might pique the interest. (Maybe I’ll write some soon.) The discovery of our musical sensibilities is part of many people’s personal lore, and for the Gen X among us, there’s an interwoven beauty and melancholy, solitude and togetherness that some of it evokes.

Here’s an older poem of mine that builds on some of that feeling:

A Poem of Personal Excellence for Halloween

I’m excelling at vibrating at all the different levels of consciousness

all at the same time, the level where I plan a Stop Making Sense

zombie costume, but don’t have a huge suit and so don’t

follow through, the level where I scowl out the window at red

leaves and think deep thoughts about the academy, and also

the value-added level where I wake up to a ghost twitching

the bed and it’s the sleep-hiccups of a boyfriend sleeping

in his jeans and flannel shirt because he fell asleep halfway

through scary movies about hypnotism night. Personal excellence

means putting on your glasses to make sure a ghost in a Stop

Making Sense suit isn’t watching you wake up to sleep-

hiccups over by the bookcase. Happy Halloween.

Don’t worry ‘bout me. Don’t you worry about me.

A diary comic of David Byrne playing on Colbert. (Had the captions on. Ha.)

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Upcoming Workshop

I’m teaching two workshops this summer, both through writers.com. The first one starts next week, and it’s an extended version of my personal essay course Stringing the Beads. (The original version was four weeks long, and this one is six weeks long.)

If you’d like to use some of your personal lore as seeds for compelling scenes, which you then shape into a personal narrative, this is the workshop for you! The class is perfect for those returning to writing; those perhaps branching out into a new genre; and/or those looking for some structure, guidance, and writing community this summer!

Stringing the Beads: Craft Your Personal Essay

with Joanna Penn Cooper, Ph.D.

Opens June 3, 2026

Length: 6 Weeks
Intermediate, Open to All

Text and Live Video

(Zoom call June 6 & July 11 at 12pm Eastern)

Course description:

In this course, you’ll learn to more powerfully shape your life-based personal essays. We will focus on identifying that which moves us (or baffles us) as seeds for our writing; grounding our writing in specific images and scenes; learning how to make conscious choices about how and where the essay will “move”; and revising drafts to make them really compelling for a reader, in terms of voice, style, and subject matter.

As Phillip Lopate notes in his introduction to The Art of the Personal Essay, “The essay is a notoriously flexible and adaptable form. It possesses the freedom to move anywhere, in all directions…. This freedom can be daunting.”

Together, we will confront the two main challenges of the personal essay form: 1. allowing ourselves to really notice and contemplate what we’re interested in—those ideas and observations that tug at our interest as seeds for possible essays; and 2. shaping our ideas, observations, and memories into compelling scenes (which become the building blocks for compelling essays).

The course will run asynchronously in the Wet Ink platform, meaning that you don’t have to be available to meet at any specific times. Instead, you can access the materials on the online platform and work with them at your own pace. There will also be two optional Zoom meetings.