The Practice of Poetry

Consider the following observation about persuasive writing by Don Rothman, an English professor at University of California Santa Cruz:

“My students, for the most part, think of persuasion as coercion and, therefore, are reluctant to embrace the challenge to write persuasively. Like the rest of us, they have been bombarded by advertising and many do not want to intrude on others’ spaces in an effort to change their minds or urge them to act in certain ways. It’s as though persuasion is an ugly word that reveals a desire to abuse others rather than an act of social responsibility that can be performed with respect, even love. I try to direct students’ attention to the humane aspects of persuasion” (43).

Rothman nicely re-orients the intention of persuasive rhetoric. Language that is imbued with intelligence, respect, and benevolence should indeed be powerful and wise. In an ideal world, it would be more common than the free-for-all tactics of, say–ruthless, dollar-focused salesman. We hear evasive, tricky, story-telling often, don’t we? Respectful, socially responsible rhetoric should be the language of our democratic dialogues. But, how often do we hear it? How can we encourage it in our students’ writing, and our own?

“The Writing Classroom as a Laboratory for Democracy,” is a compelling interview in which Rothman addresses his philosophy behind the approach he uses to teach persuasive writing. Even if we aren’t teachers, there is something to think about here. For instance, he explains one of his motivations as “I want to persuade them to notice the pleasure in moving between the poles of personal experience and public discourse; the pleasure that comes from thinking with other people whose ideas fill your brain like dreams. I’ve come to assume that my students need new ways of thinking about themselves as learners in order to become more fully, thoughtful makers of the world” (44). He discusses the importance of teaching students to wear another writer’s shoes and feel what it feels like to believe what they believe. Good poets are deft with this imaginative leap into the other.

Most poetry aims to transform the internal experience into a shared experience, but I wonder if we emphasize enough to young poets that poetry can be a powerful leveraging tool for social justice, for mindful persuasion? This may be where our current, common tendency towards confessional poetry has a serious limitation: we don’t always move the poetry beyond self-revelation–new poets often stop before the final step into other, into the universal experience.

“Unfortunately, writing is rarely taught in schools as a tool for nonviolent persuasion or as a multifaceted activity whose effectiveness often requires us to enhance our empathy. It is rarely taught as a tool for exploring ways to live together” (48). This seems particularly apropos in the face of such blatant lying, deception, and inauthentic language in the election chatter.

How can poetry be one of the tools for “explor[ing] ways to live together?” Poet Pattiann Rogers’ collection, Firekeeper, explores includes a poem titled, “The Laying on of Hands” which addresses this issue superbly. Beat poet Anne Waldman performs poetry that shakes, sweats and hollers in the face of deception, violence, and power. Many teachers offer such templates and tools for developing young poets everyday. However, composition theory and creative writing theory are often such separate realms that sometimes it is helpful to read what the others are doing and reflect on our how it squares with own practices.

If you want to read the full interview with Rothman, you can find it at: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/2474

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I have always been cautious of the tourist’s gaze; writing about new, exotic, foreign things is a dangerous endeavor. The tourist’s gaze is the gaze of the outsider. Yet sometimes, the outsider’s gaze is exactly what is needed.

It seems like a very basic concept that we need new perspectives to keep our ideas flowing. The average sandwich is re-invented fairly regularly: the classic grilled cheese sandwich morphed into a “panini” and recently, it was reintroduced as a “flat-iron sandwich.” Papayas strike my fancy because I don’t eat them as often as bananas. So, slight variations can shift the angle just enough to give us a new perspective, or a new appetite.

Elizabeth Bishop lived in Brazil for years, yet much of her work still focused on the sturdy, northern landscape of her childhood. She had a pet toucan, but I can’t remember any poems of hers that include toucans. She thrived in the tropics, but she didn’t overuse it in her writing. I often wonder if this was an intentional avoidance on her part–a shtick she didn’t want to take up.

Must we avoid the tourist poems altogether for fear of a naive poem? Or alternatively, how do we switch to the outsider perspective in our own cities, communities, or homes so that we can find inspiration in the common day? Traveling to Greece to eke out a new piece of writing is cost-prohibitive, especially with the oil crisis.

If we can hold both the outsider and insider perspective simultaneously we have a much broader and deeper perception. It is a balancing act, a teeter-totter between being fully intimate with a subject and knowing it from the inside, and being separated enough to see with unblurred scrutiny.