Google Thyself

I was thinking it would be kind of fun to do a blog entry today on the strange things you find when you Google yourself. I was all set to discuss the review I found once about I journal I had a couple of poems appear in that discussed the "sexual unpredictibility"of my work. Then I would have gone over the blog entry in which the author of said blog talked about how I was hitting on her at AWP once(which might be true, of course, but still). So, basically, fun and giggles all the way around and everybody has a good time.

But instead of all that, I think I'll focus in on this one. Not that fun and giggles aren't still possible, but I'll get to be a little more thoughtful and less self-depricating in my response.

I can honestly admit that I wouldn't have expected an article in the WMU newspaper about my experimental writing to get any exposure outside of Western's campus (and even on campus I wouldn't expect much, honestly), but it evidently did have some legs -- there was even a link and brief synopsis of the class on the NCTE website a couple of weeks ago (which is possibly where this person found it). I admit, really, that it's kind of cool to find a blog entry in which complete and total strangers are talking about you, even when they're basically making fun of what you're doing. Even that is kind of cool, really. I can accept it, anyway -- the danger of the class is the difficulty of explaining it and the likelihood of so much of the class being lost in translation. But, as one should after being made fun of, I have decided to reply to these offhand criticisms. And have chosen to do so on my own blog, away from where any of those bloggers and comment-ers will likely see.

The form and angle of the Herald article creates an immediate problem. I, for one, think the article is fine -- it discusses what a campus newspaper ought to discuss, which is the impact a story can have on the campus. In this case, the necessary purpose would be a description and origin of the physcial artifacts that were being displayed around campus. The reporter and the newspaper would have little interest in the fact that the class, while putting together those projects was also reading the works of Blake and the French Surrealists and graphic novelists in an attempt to understand the connection between art and writing in an attempt to apply said techniques to their own work. These are elements of the class' success that aren't necessarily pertinent to the university at large but, I think, rather significant when evaluating the class as a whole.

But I do take a bit of issue with the insinutation that the class isn't teaching students anything, even without the literary aspects of the class. I think the idea of taking writing into a public sphere (as we were doing with the tree projects) forces students to think about writing in an entirely new and exciting way. When a student writes a poem or story on a piece of paper, the intended audience for that piece is immediately limited (if it has been written for a class, the audience becomes the teacher and the students in the class, if it is written outside of class, the audience becomes even smaller than that). But when thinking about writing in a public manner the issue of audience becomes amplified -- suddenly the relationship between what you're writing and who will read it becomes wildly significant because, if you play your cards right, people will be reading it. The writer has the ability to insure that based on the material used to create the work (the more eyepopping and unexpected, the better) and the location of that material (looking toward higher traffic areas). And that's the thing about the "Speech Bubbles in Trees" project. It did work. Obviously, we had issues with people (Landscaping services? Students?) taking them down, but when they were up, people were looking at them. Some of the observers were complimentary and excited. Some muttered things like "treehuggers." But they looked. And that seems to me part of a success.

These projects were conceived and carryed out by my students. The bottle cap message idea? Totally theirs. Same with the Tree Bubble idea. I was there to supervise and encourage, to keep them on track, but the ideas were theirs. The students went through the propers channels to get their projects approved on campus and they dealt with the problems of missing bubbles when that came up. In short, these students were/are not only studying creative writing and literature, they were/are exploring problem solving and audience in ways that few classes I can think of are capable. So, yeah, I think they are learning something and their projects are getting noticed. And they're having a good time doing it.

And another thing mentioned in one of the comments about the article was how this would fly with high school students. Well, considering the fact that you wouldn't plug the class exactly as-is into a high school classroom (the projects and literature would have to be adapted), you'd have to make modifications, but I can't see why -- with those modifications -- it couldn't be beneficial. I've adapted the concept to work with 3rd and 5th graders (as a visiting writer once a week to a grade school) and it's worked amazingly well. Obviously, the 3rd graders aren't reading any Futurist manifestos, but writing on puzzle pieces and wooden trucks has forced them to look at poetry in a different way -- their thought process toward writing changes as the media changes. Besides, it's fun. The college students and the grade school kids are having fun with the projects and the same could be true in the secondary classroom. Somewhere along the line, literature -- and poetry in particular -- gets sold to students as if it is something of a dead language. Perhaps innovative techniques as far as teaching it will bring it safely back to life.

And is eating trail mix and encouraging students who are interested in social issues bad things? I sure hope not. And, to answer that third comment for the article/blog entry. I actually think I am fairly sane. I have my issues, of course, but I don't think lacking overall sanity is one of them. Of course, my friends, colleauges, and students can answer that better than I can.