Early on in my introductory poetry workshop, we discuss the difference between sentiment (emotion) and sentimentality (mawkishness, Hallmark cards, Lifetime holiday movies). First we talk about the ways in which sentimentality undercuts our ability to imbue our poems with real sentiment—it leads us toward cliché, it looks for the easy or more palatable way into an experience, it doesn’t require the level of intellectual and creative engagement we expect from good poems.
Then we start making fun of poets.
Okay, I say, imagine that you’re writing a parody of a poem and you want to make it wonderfully bad—full of clichés and cringe-worthy sentimentality. What are some key words you might use? “Heart,” someone always offers. We look for a little more specificity. “What should a heart not do in a poem?” I ask. “Skip a beat,” says one student. “Break,” says another. “End up in your throat,” offers someone else. Once we exhaust the heart possibilities, we move on, looking for the big offenders. What are some other words or tropes that might lead to sentimentality? I can usually get someone to come up with “soul,” which affords me an opportunity to write the word “soul” on the board, then draw a giant X through it—something I always like leaving on the board for the next class to see and fret over what sorts of things are being taught in creative writing classrooms. Usually someone mentions roses. Someone mentions the single tear. All of these go on the board (and I always offer the disclaimer that none of these rules is absolute—certainly, fantastic poems can be written using any number of potentially problematic words or images, provided the poet is savvy about how he or she uses them). Finally we move on to animals—butterflies as symbols of innocence, a bird as a vision of freedom. And, of course, there’s cuteness to be reckoned with—puppies, kittens, any three-legged quadruped. Sometimes I tell my students that they can only use a kitten in a poem if the kitten is dead. Continue reading “Kill the Kitten: Helping Students Skirt Sentimentality”
Setting is essential to narrative, but it’s something that students often overlook. My experience with teaching literature is that students want to talk about what happens next and often something that’s vaguely like character motivation, but they need help moving beyond plot. Talking and writing about setting forces students to look at the details of the narrative and requires a careful examination of the words on the page.
I often introduce setting by showing students clips from particularly atmospheric movies—The Shining’s opening sequence; Fargo; almost anything by Tim Burton. While watching the brief clips, I have the students make a list of significant (or not-so-significant) details that they notice about the setting. We then talk about how all of these elements and details work together to set the tone of the movie. That long opening sequence of The Shining, for example, intensifies the feeling of dread, and highlights the sheer isolation—both physical and emotional—of the main character.
Moving from movies to literature itself can be a bit complicated. I want students to do more than simply explain how the setting establishes the tone, because setting is more important than simply being part of the atmosphere. To do this, we talk about symbolism, typically within Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. I have students come up with a list of symbols and have them work through what they might represent in the story. I try to steer discussion towards the physical objects—the items within the setting—as we work our way through the final act of the play. My favorite symbol is the mailbox: it is the way that information from outside of the home enters the Helmers’ apartment, the conduit between the public space and the private space. And only Torvald has the key. We discuss the way that this shows Torvald’s control over information and ultimately over Nora.
On a subsequent day, we read “Hills like White Elephants,” and we talk about the way that Hemingway describes the landscape. Students are pretty good at picking up on the importance of the train station setting – we talk about the difference between a train station and a fork in the road (and we’ve, of course, read Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”). We discuss the relevance of these elements to the characters’ lives. We also discuss the fact that “I’m-so-minimalist-I-don’t-need-speaker-tags”-Hemingway devotes an entire paragraph to describing the scenery of the Ebro valley. Continue reading “Writing about Setting”
I’m always surprised when, weeks into a semester, I’ll say something in class that prompts a student to tilt his head at me and say, “Wait—you write, too?”
Meaning—you don’t only teach this stuff, but you actually do it?
I’m not talking about my upper-level or graduate students, who enter class with a sense of their professors’ professional interests and activities. But my introductory students are often surprised to learn that when I’m not in the classroom or at office hours, I’m at home doing exactly what I’m asking them to do: writing.
We sometimes take it for granted that our undergraduates know what it is to teach at the college level—that creative writing instructors are also creative writers. That we, too, struggle for the right form for a poem or the best way to end a story or the most honest and vivid way to present an essay. We, too, drink coffee; we, too, stop ourselves from wasting time on the internet. We doubt ourselves, and then we think we’re brilliant, and then we realize that, no, we aren’t. We fret over deadlines. We fret over fretting. We worry that no one will “get” what we’re writing; we worry that everyone will. The biggest difference between us and our students is that we’ve read more books and written more words. We’re further along in an apprenticeship that only ends when we’re in the ground. Continue reading “You Write, Too?”
No, I’m not talking about the calorie-burning exercises we feel we must do in the days leading up to and following Thanksgiving, a.k.a. Day of Carbs. Rather, I’m talking about a favorite, and seasonally appropriate, writing exercise.
The first story in Bill Roorbach’s Flannery O’Connor Award-winning story collection Big Bend is titled “Thanksgiving.” The story begins with a phone call. Ted’s sister-in-law, Mary, is calling to convince him to come to Thanksgiving dinner this year. And because he has vowed to “become part of the family again,” he agrees to come—but he isn’t happy about it. By the end of the story, events have caused him, in a fury, to upend the Thanksgiving Day dinner table.
Roorbach’s story gives rise to a very straightforward writing assignment:
I often find myself weighing the degree to which the workshops I lead should concern themselves with things other than the manuscript up for discussion. On the one hand, I believe in a workshop—especially at the undergraduate level—that focuses on writing, and not on what one does with the writing once it’s finished. Put another way, there’s no better element of professionalization than learning to write well.
On the other hand, part of being a writer means giving readings and submitting work for publication, and I’m not doing my students any favors by pretending otherwise, or by withholding information or advice that could benefit them. Beyond that, I would argue that the very process of preparing a manuscript for a public reading or for submission to a journal makes one a better writer. When I know that I’ll be reading my work in front of actual, live human beings, I’m suddenly able to see the work with fresh eyes and less patience. I become a better self-editor. Imprecise words, flabby phrases, and lags in pacing—not to mention typos—announce themselves loudly.
Similarly, when I prepare to submit a piece for publication, I find myself reading it through the eyes of someone who doesn’t already know me and who has no reason—or time—to give me the benefit of the doubt. The piece, in other words, must stand on its own, and it must stand out. Continue reading “Professionalization and the Workshop”
To begin, two short memories. First, I’m sitting in my first undergraduate literature class. We’re reading Tobias Wolf’s In Pharaoh’s Armyand I am captivated by the text’s structure and enthralled by the provocative storytelling. But, despite the fact that I have done my reading, I am stuck in my chair not knowing how to contribute to the discussion. I read the assigned chapters, but simply don’t know what to say about them in the context of this class. They were beautiful, emotional, surprising, but I’m not sure how to translate my reading experience to this critical and curious conversation occurring around me. And so I sit, gripping my text, listening but feeling lost.
Second, it is years later and I am now sitting in my first graduate literature seminar. We’re reading Leslie Marmon Silko’s The Almanac of the Deadand again I feel lost. By the end of my undergraduate career I was fairly adroit in literary conversation, but that was for the undergrad classroom. What’s going on around me now is completely different, including the sound of the conversation. The words and sentences being used to describe the text sound almost foreign to me. Again, I loved the book; and again, I was completely captivated by the narrative; but again, I am essentially at a loss for how to contribute to this scholarly roundtable discussion.
I know that these memories of classroom difficulties are probably not universal. On the other hand, I know that many students, undergraduate and graduate alike, struggle with how to read a text for class. And not because they can’t read in the conventional sense of the word, but because reading for the sake of scholarly conversation is difficult and requires an understating of how to approach a text with practical and critical strategies. Continue reading “Do We Teach Students How to Read?”
Today’s guest blogger is John Schilb (PhD, State University of New York—Binghamton), a professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he holds the Culbertson Chair in Writing. He has coedited Contending with Words: Composition and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age, and with John Clifford, Writing Theory and Critical Theory. He is author of Between the Lines: Relating Composition Theory and Literary Theory and Rhetorical Refusals: Defying Audiences’ Expectations. Schilb is also the co-author of several literature texts for Bedford/St. Martin’s.
John Schilb teaches argument and academic writing—working with literature as the core texts for his course. “When you argue,” Schilb says, “you attempt to persuade an audience to accept your claims regarding an issue by presenting evidence and relying on warrants.” Literature is chock full of issues—but how can we get students (of our composition and introduction to literature courses) to identify and argue about them? Get some tips from Schilb’s recent webinar discussion to see how, working with William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper,” he helps students move from an obvious thesis to identifying issues in the text and developing a solid argument. Listen to the recording, view his slides, enjoy, and discuss.
Several years ago, a student of mine (we’ll call him James) stuck around after my introductory fiction-writing class because something was on his mind. This was around week three of the semester. He’d seemed highly engaged in the course so far, but today he was being quiet.
We waited while everyone else cleared out. I smiled reassuringly. He cleared his throat and looked at his shoes. When the room was empty except for us, I asked, “So what’s up?”
He told me that he would never be able to complete the exercise I’d assigned that day.
I had asked students to brainstorm some interesting details from their pasts, and to incorporate these details into a scene of fiction. The idea was to get students to use pre-existing knowledge as a way to give their work more authority.
I asked James what the trouble was.
He shrugged. “There’s nothing remotely interesting about any part of my life,” he said. Then, so I’d understand his dilemma, he elaborated. “I grew up on a farm, in a town of fifteen people, where everybody is related. The next largest town was ten miles away and there were only fifty or sixty people there.”
Every so often I find myself reflecting onthe most basic pedagogical questions: What is this course for? What do I hope my students will walk away with? (Apparently my reflections tend to end in prepositions.)
The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) recently came out with its 2011 Director’s Handbook, which contains a document that helped me think through some of these questions: “AWP Recommendations on the Teaching of Creative Writing to Undergraduates.” The document covers an array of key issues in the teaching of creative writing.
While I wasn’t sold on 100% of its recommendations, I was nodding my head a lot as I read—particularly when reading the part about the different aims of a graduate workshop versus an undergraduate one:
Whereas the general goal for a graduate program in creative writing is to nurture and expedite the development of a literary artist, the goal for an undergraduate program is mainly to develop a well-rounded student in the liberal arts and humanities, a student who develops a general expertise in literature, in critical reading, and in persuasive writing. Continue reading “The Big Picture: Teaching Creative Writing to Undergrads”
One of the trickiest—and most liberating—aspects of poetry is that there is no Gold Standard against which we measure its worth. Without this standard, it can also be difficult to evaluate when a poem is finished. Because each poem is trying to accomplish something different, it is up to us to decide when the poem has arrived. This is not easy to do, even when one has been writing for decades, but it sure is satisfying to practice!
The important thing to remember about revision is that it is a process by which we become better acquainted with the poem and push it farther toward its own potential. In the revision stage, we revisit and may reinvent the choices we’ve already made with language, image, voice, music, line, rhythm, and rhyme.
The tricky balance involves wildly experimenting with what might be possible in a poem—beyond what we first laid down on the page—without losing the integrity of idea or emotion that brought us to the poem in the first place. This is a skill that develops over time, through experience and largely by feel. If it seems like you’re groping around in the dark when revising, welcome to the club!
The process of revising poems is unique for each poet; often, each poem has its own, unprecedented trajectory. I’ve had a few “whole cloth” poems arrive nearly perfectly complete in one contiguous swoosh of pen to paper. And I have other poems that have taken me more than fifteen years to finish. More typically, I work on a poem for a few weeks or months. Sometimes, I think a poem is finished, but years later, it proves me wrong, demanding a new final verse or line structure or title.
For the purposes of establishing a revising practice, I recommend that you divide writing and editing into two completely separate acts that happen at two different sittings, preferably on different days. The goal of this checks-and-balances system is to give yourself the space to let it rip when you’re writing without fearing interference from your inner editor. Don’t worry: If it’s bad now, it will still be bad next week; you can fix it then.
Once you feel you’ve exhausted every last drop of poetic possibility in the writing of the first draft, or any time you get stuck and don’t know where to go next, put your poem aside for a while. The next time you return to it, you’ll be wearing your editor hat.
In my experience, time is the greatest of editors. The longer a poem sits untouched, the more likely you are to have a sense of how to proceed when you sit down to revise.
Activity:
Don’t know where to start with your revisions? Try asking yourself the following questions:
What is most alive in your poem? Underline the line(s), word(s), phrase(s), stanza(s) that seem to be the kindling feeding the fire of this poem so you can easily reference what’s working throughout the revision process.
Is there introductory information at the beginning or summary information at the end that could be trimmed?
Who is speaking? What would the poem be like if told from a different perspective? (For example, if a poem is about an experience shared by a mother and daughter, and told from the daughter’s point of view, try telling it from the mother’s point of view.)
Where is language weak and flabby? How can you give it more energy and muscle? Can passive verbs become active? Can modifiers be cut? Should “dropped” be changed to “plummeted”?
Verb tense: What would your poem be like in a different tense than it was written? Even if it happened in the past, try the present, and vice versa. See what gives it the most power and energy.
Does the shape of the poem (line length, stanza breaks, white space) mirror the emotion and rhythm of its content? Should it?
Are punctuation and capitalization consistent?
Is there good music of repeating sounds throughout the poem?
Does each line break create the desired interest, pause, movement, and focus on key moments or words?
Does the title serve the poem? How can the title take the poem further?
Remember that only you know the best way to craft your poem. Have fun, be willing to experiment, and you’ll learn a little more about revision each time you try.
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Sage Cohen
Sage Cohen is the author of Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry (Writers Digest Books, 2009) and the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World. An award-winning poet, she writes three monthly columns about the craft and business of writing, publishes the Writing the Life Poetic Zine and serves as Poetry Editor for VoiceCatcher 4. Sage has won first prize in the Ghost Road Press poetry contest and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She curates a monthly reading series at Barnes & Noble and teaches the online class Poetry for the People. To learn more, visit www.sagesaidso.com. Join the conversation about living and writing a poetic life at www.writingthelifepoetic.typepad.com!
