Month: April 2021

An English prof offers some thoughts on what an English degree does to poetry that basically makes people hate it.

It’s funny, because as I read this, I really thought the problem is with both the teaching of “English” and the teaching of “Creative Writing”. It’s two-fold: the academy (as English) teaches readers to search for hidden meanings and symbols and whatnot and (as Creative Writing) teaches writers to go with the flow and “experience” the muse and find their own meanings, etc. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

I just started an online poetry school where I teach practical craft–lining, rhythm, creating tension, turns, sound-bonding, form, etc.–but we often go through our lectures first as readers. We read a poem straight, decide on what it imparted, then take the poem apart to find out which pieces of craft helped make this poem more than the sum of its parts.

Then we use those pieces of craft as practice for making our own. A watchmaker can’t make their own watch until they’ve taken someone else’s apart to study how it works on a practical level. Why should that be any different for another art like poetry?

In class I ask: how do we take a reader from a state of distraction or mundanity (they’re on a work lunch, or it’s been a long day of kids and they’re sitting down after doing the dishes with everyone finally asleep) and lead them through to, at best, a transcendent experience, at worst, a new way of looking at an idea you once jotted down in a notebook?

Shouldn’t that sort of work/analysis be the job of the poet, not the reader? The reader should really just get to “experience” the moment, no? Much like a homeowner experiences and lives in a house, with the architect, engineers, and craftspeople having done the work of making it stand up and function as a shelter. Readers should be invited to search for deep layers and meanings, not required to. Joy and curiosity should lead them to look deeper, not a letter grade.

As an English professor, I will be the first to say that what happens in college classrooms is part of the problem (and perhaps what happens in high school classrooms is as well, but that’s something I’m less familiar with). I can see how the problem develops. My job is to help students learn how to be better readers and writers, and so it seems natural to focus on analysis, on breaking poems down into parts and searching for hidden meanings. I want them to learn the vocabulary necessary for understanding poetry — similes, rhyme schemes, alliteration, etc. — so they can get practice applying these terms and using them to find meaning. I want them to know — and my college wants them to know — how to write thesis statements and find evidence and form correct sentences and use quotations correctly.

…

Poetry is about experiencing language more than understanding it, it’s about playing with language rather than mastering it, it’s about creativity and expression rather than knowledge. These are not things we emphasize in our classrooms! Schools teach us how to take tests, how to learn facts, how to organize an argument, how to research — all good things, except perhaps for tests — but they aren’t as good at teaching us how to experience and enjoy.

• 20 Canadian students shortlisted for CBC’s The First Page writing challenge;
• UK translators call for diversity and equality in translation;
• Patrick deWitt is working on things… harrowing, dark things by his expression;
• Why are we still shelving Mein Kampf? (When I worked in my teens at a bookstore, I used to hide copies of the book, then strip them a couple months later as returns);
• Deesha Philyaw wins PEN/Faulkner;
• Jemisin takes BSFA award for novel;
• Voynich: every few years this subject comes back… I always enjoy it;
• On how being “anti-media” became the GOP identity;
• Haruki interviewki at NPR;
• Today’s fluff quiz: What does your book shelving system say about you?;
• Will read: Dave Grohl memoir coming this fall;
• Aren’t most poetry “movements” hoaxes, at some level?;
• The history of everything you need to press shift on your keyboard to get to;

My dad often sends mail to this house addressed to “George and Elisabeth Murray“. Actually, “Elizabeth”, because, you know: my dad. On the other hand, I often answer without hesitation to “Mr. de Mariaffi” when I’m her +1 at an event or taking a telemarketing call, because, let’s face it, hers a classier name. Thinking of myself as Mr. de Mariaffi makes me feel like I’m in Casablanca trying to find a particular arcane book in a forgotten library. That said, everyone in this house has their own name, which is as it should be.

While I am now surprised at the number of people in my generation (X) who either chose (or in the case of men, asked their fiancées) to change their names on getting married, at the time, it seemed not wholly unreasonable, if a little backward thinking.

A woman keeping her birth name was very rare in my parent’s generation. But it never even crossed mind my mind that my future wife would change their name. Especially not from something as glorious as “de Mariaffi”.

But I imagine things are even more complicated when you’re a writer. I know some authors who have changed their name on paper, but still publish under their “maiden” name. And I know others who have changed their name on the fly. And I know some who changed their names, published books under the new name, then got divorced. Ouch.

I don’t know, man. I can barely find my deodorant on the shelf if they rebrand the package. The chances of me finding a favourite author in the 1/2 of the floor space dedicated to books in a Chapters once they’ve changed their name? Low.

But I digress; read this article on the whole thing and tell me what you think.

The expectation that a woman should take her husband’s name—and the startling fact that despite a recent uptick in “maiden” names, the majority of women still take their husband’s name—is a continual negotiation of women’s identity, and of their visibility in public life. Every time I see that other woman’s name in reference to myself I am reminded of all the women whose names are missing or have been erased from history—of what it does to one’s sense of identity when you cannot attach your own name to what you write or create. Women have had to conceal and contort their identities in order to be visible in public since the advent of printed text.

• Former Bookninja writer Claire Cameron lands in the NYer with a piece on Marian Engel’s Bear… GO CLAIRE GO!;
• Back, and bigger and better: Canadian Independent Bookstore Day;
• Novel written by Weinstein juror (before the jury) may lead to new trial;
• Interview with the biographer: Philip Roth (pictured in Jordan Peterson cosplay) discussed;
• London 2021: final decision due in a couple weeks;
• Rolling Stone is the latest formerly progressive Boomer to fall to conservatism… Time to boycott?;
• American book banning efforts shift from sexuality to race… Stay classy, USA;
• On choosing to write “happy” books as a light against the darkness;
• Reading murder mysteries is like doing science… huh;
• Today in fluff: bookish bullet journals;
• Inaugural Gotham Book Prize for NYC-centred book handed out;
• Shakespeare: providing yokel-level conspiracy theories for the over-educated since 1613;
• The Cure’s Robert Smith names favourite books and teen-me is here for it, even though it reads like it was cribbed from a google search on “what people say their favourite books are”;
• RIP: Giancarlo DiTrapano, founder of The New York Tyrant, dead at 47;
• Ralph Nader wants to reverse the decline in letter writing;