My students think they have all the answers. If they don't have the answers, they think they can look them up online and get those answers with 100% accuracy. Their poems have all the answers, too:
1. The couple gets together or they don't.
2. A young person dies and eventually the family moves on.
3. The man in the poem ultimately realizes that he is to blame for all his own misery .
Ah, the speed of our culture! How easy to get to a resolution . . . how readily available our answers, yes?
Well, today I won't be preaching from the pulpit in the Church of Closure. Today, Keats is my pal. . .
I've been reading poems written by my students and many of them veer towards the slamming door. Today we'll be working towards mystery-making. Let's be baffled, unsure, and uncertain today.
***
In other news, there is no other news. I'm humming . . . listening for the next poem to smack me up-side the head.
12 hours ago
5 comments:
The notion of mystery was a kind of unofficial theme at the last residency at Warren Wilson. It came up over and over in various lectures.
That's great! I'd love to hear what was said . . . anything to help me help my students understand this idea would be beneficial.
One of the things I remember from Richard Hugo's The Triggering Town, is the notion that if a poem asks a question, it shouldn't answer it.
Sorry Oliver. I thought my post wasn't taking---until Idecided to actually READ that you had enabled moderator approval
np Justin. I had to moderate posts because I was getting weird advertising posts on the blog. That just won't do. Anyway, I use that Hugo essay quite a bit in my classes. Students just seem to be so set on a trajectory these days. Quite odd.
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