tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post2587207183344178031..comments2023-12-16T02:44:20.427-06:00Comments on Reginald Shepherd's Blog: A Few Solutions for the Creative Writing ClassroomReginald Shepherdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11965170916626482963noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-71540648621936725512010-12-15T23:19:13.671-06:002010-12-15T23:19:13.671-06:00徵信社
徵信<a href="http://www.find007.com.tw" rel="nofollow">徵信社</a><br /><a href="http://www.find007.com.tw" rel="nofollow">徵信</a>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014415529871703586.post-69482241328708678762007-03-24T14:27:00.000-06:002007-03-24T14:27:00.000-06:00Hi,I like that you say that in class you encourage...Hi,<BR/><BR/>I like that you say that in class you encourage your students to "experience" the poem initially. I often think that I'm too quick, too eager to lead my students into labeling the poem (as lyric or narrative or something else), or identifying "surface complexities" and the anxiety to have something to say ruins the pleasure of the collective reading.<BR/><BR/>At the same time, I feel that often times students always want to experince the poem (whatever the poems' missions are as narrative, as part of a story.) Recently I was teaching poems by Paul Muldoon, and it was entertaining to see my students search for anything that appeared domestic and claim that they liked that poem (as opposed to other poems) because it was intimate, personal, accessible.<BR/><BR/>When we took a closer look at the poems, it became evident to some of the students that he isn't interested in autobiography, but is a poem who is concerned about form, form is content to him, and a lot of his poems are essentially jokes, games, this was very difficult for them to grasp. Some got it. A few.<BR/><BR/>But after he came to speak to my students, all their questions were of course questions about him and his family, etc.<BR/><BR/>As someone who is interested in narrative, I find myself figthing a constant war with myself. I think narrative is in a lot of ways the easiest and simple way of teaching some basic writing skills that need to be taught to our undergraduate, but at the same time become saddened that students often leave their program thinking that's the only worthy mission.<BR/><BR/>It's hard (even though I often do) to see ambitious students make sense of an Ann Lauterbauch poem (or someone like her) as narrative and have to say NO: it's not that tidy or not interested in that. What clues in the poem make us believe that something else might be at stake.<BR/><BR/>So I'm torn about teaching narrative as way for students to understnad some very basic skills, and then say, wait, you want to do other things in your writing than this (even though a lot of you are having a difficult time understanding the difficulty of vagueness and useless, unintersting abstractions.)<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the new post. It's fun.<BR/><BR/>Steve FellnerSteve Fellnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12181155226508233319noreply@blogger.com