Conversation - Writing Poetry in a Composition Class

 

            Raymond was telling me about the ethnographic poems that his students are going to have to write soon for the methods in- / introduction to- ethnography class he’s teaching this semester, and I thought ethnography poems sounded intriguing, but in continuing the conversation I discovered that Raymond has had his composition students write poetry as well—and that he’s done this every time he’s taught comp. Because I am working on this blog, his mention of poetry in composition raised the stakes of the conversation for me (albeit imperceptibly to him, I hope). Why does Raymond have students write poetry in comp? When in the semester do they compose poetry? What prompting or guidelines does he supply? How does he introduce this project, and how extensive a project is it? Here’s the upshot.

            Raymond emphasized that we as instructors never know which of our students are fantastic poets. He was less oriented toward making the case that composition should teach poetry than he was toward underscoring the hiddenness of talent. For Raymond, the fact that he doesn’t ever know which students are going to produce knock-out poems is reason enough to prod them into it. I’m not sure this reasoning suffices—should I give my comp students the opportunity to butcher a moose? So that unknown meatcutter extraordinaires will discover themselves?—but Raymond’s idea here is connected to a basic pedagogical perspective of his, too, which is that research accumulates into knowledge that has an emotional dimension.

In practice, Raymond has assigned introductory poems at the start of the semester, the form of which are already set out (line beginnings/topics, etc.). But it gets more involved with artistry later in the semester: part of his students’ research papers involve a poetic component, partly to revitalize their investment in their topics, and partly to give life to an aspect of their developing knowledge that might not find expression in academic writing. To prep for this, Raymond assigns his students an article by Art Young, “Writing Across and Against the Curriculum.” He then gives no guidelines regarding length or form (although when I pressed him on this he said that yes, free verse is what he exposes them to and expects them to produce, but also that he emphasizes to students that “the form the poem wants to be is the form that [he] want[s] it to take”). Raymond has found further guidelines to be unnecessary: students produce “serious poems” he says, “consistently.” They also have to read their poetry in front of the class, about which Raymond is all smiles—many students slam, or adopt a performance element in some respect, and the class is always stunned by a few of the poems, as well as by which of their classmates produced the truly moving pieces.