walkingshadow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
walkingshadow) wrote2002-02-26 09:56 am
walkingshadow) wrote2002-02-26 09:56 am
(no subject)
Whenever my poetry class starts boring me, I take out my Sharpie and start doodling more triangles. I'll be able to wallpaper my dorm by the end of the semester. Because my poetry class is very. boring.
Charles, the grad student who teaches it, is a great guy, knows his stuff and loves it, and tries very hard to get the rest of the class into it; he leads them on like all your English teachers did when you were discussing poems, pointing things out and waiting for them to pick up on and expand them. But they never do. They just sit there. Why? Because they're dumb. Granted, I did manage to find a class with all the business finance and excercise therapy majors who need Gordon Rule and humanities gen. ed. credits, but they have had to write at some point, haven't they? I mean, they did make it through at least twelve years of school, and from what I can dimly remember there was some kind of writing involved no matter what classes you took, wasn't there? Am I being an English snob? I'm being an English snob. And probably with no justification whatsoever. But they aggravate me. And you don't have to read their poems. Well, except for Jules, who sometimes shares my pain.
I'm not claiming to be the next Shakespeare or anything -- but that brings me to the other thing I hate about this class. The assignments. I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that poetry writing, especially in traditional forms, is highly structured, complex, and labor-intensive. But his assignments suck. They have structure in all the wrong places. You would think that word choice would be one of the most important and effective tools a poet employs, but that's where he's placing all his restrictions. This week's gem? Write a sonnet: it has to be fourteen lines, ten syllables each, but not necessarily in iambic pentameter; and then he gives us all the end words. That is, your fourteen lines have to end with the following words (in this exact order): light, eye, sight, majesty, hill, age, still, pilgrimage, car, day, are, way, noon, son. I fume a bit. And then I think: Hmm. Shakespearean form...extensive use of slant rhyme...could Charles possibly... So I go home and check it out, and sure enough! Sonnet VII, straight out of the Collected Works. That's fine. As long as we're filling in someone else's poem, why not one of the Bard's? I'm sure we can all churn out sonnets at least as good, and probably better.
Am I wrong here? Am I sitting in the middle of the box? If you give me a pillow and turn off the light, I could go to sleep in here. Are these conventional creative writing class assignments? Should I be looking on this as an intellectual exercise and challenge for my creative powers? Really? Because at this point I'm only getting frustration. I end up spending my Wednesdays writing bad poetry and getting stress headaches. Then I lounge in class for two and a half hours, keeping all my mockery to myself, and finding small comfort in the familiar smell of permanent marker.
Charles, the grad student who teaches it, is a great guy, knows his stuff and loves it, and tries very hard to get the rest of the class into it; he leads them on like all your English teachers did when you were discussing poems, pointing things out and waiting for them to pick up on and expand them. But they never do. They just sit there. Why? Because they're dumb. Granted, I did manage to find a class with all the business finance and excercise therapy majors who need Gordon Rule and humanities gen. ed. credits, but they have had to write at some point, haven't they? I mean, they did make it through at least twelve years of school, and from what I can dimly remember there was some kind of writing involved no matter what classes you took, wasn't there? Am I being an English snob? I'm being an English snob. And probably with no justification whatsoever. But they aggravate me. And you don't have to read their poems. Well, except for Jules, who sometimes shares my pain.
I'm not claiming to be the next Shakespeare or anything -- but that brings me to the other thing I hate about this class. The assignments. I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that poetry writing, especially in traditional forms, is highly structured, complex, and labor-intensive. But his assignments suck. They have structure in all the wrong places. You would think that word choice would be one of the most important and effective tools a poet employs, but that's where he's placing all his restrictions. This week's gem? Write a sonnet: it has to be fourteen lines, ten syllables each, but not necessarily in iambic pentameter; and then he gives us all the end words. That is, your fourteen lines have to end with the following words (in this exact order): light, eye, sight, majesty, hill, age, still, pilgrimage, car, day, are, way, noon, son. I fume a bit. And then I think: Hmm. Shakespearean form...extensive use of slant rhyme...could Charles possibly... So I go home and check it out, and sure enough! Sonnet VII, straight out of the Collected Works. That's fine. As long as we're filling in someone else's poem, why not one of the Bard's? I'm sure we can all churn out sonnets at least as good, and probably better.
Am I wrong here? Am I sitting in the middle of the box? If you give me a pillow and turn off the light, I could go to sleep in here. Are these conventional creative writing class assignments? Should I be looking on this as an intellectual exercise and challenge for my creative powers? Really? Because at this point I'm only getting frustration. I end up spending my Wednesdays writing bad poetry and getting stress headaches. Then I lounge in class for two and a half hours, keeping all my mockery to myself, and finding small comfort in the familiar smell of permanent marker.