Allen, Paul. "Something Beyond Meaning": The Poet's Problem In Freshman Composition."

My quest to grapple with some of the potential pitfalls of poetry in the classroom led me to Paul Allen’s essay “‘Something Beyond Meaning’: The Poet’s Problem In Freshman Composition.” In this essay, Allen dives right into the dilemma’s facing instructors who wish to include poetry in the composition classroom. He writes, “Trying to include the study of poetry in freshman composition, particularly contemporary poetry with no critical history, leads some of us to a dilemma. Either we allow our students to gush about Self, Issues, and Awareness or we force them into analysis that requires too much time for hammering at them with terminology and convention” (79). Allen argues freshman need more structure than allowing the former sort of open “gushing” and “less specialization” than is required for the latter in depth analysis” (79).

Additionally Allen points how poetry acting as a source of mystery, wonder, abstraction, and pure pleasure (along with other elements that tend to shun critical evaluation) can create a notable discord between the nature of a poem and the instructor’s assignment that a student analyze and interpret a poem (81). Further, while admitting that poetry can be used effectively to teach “analysis, synthesis, logic, and close reading,” Allen argues “…these skills are better served through such analysis of genres other than poetry. To teach them [freshman composition students] to write logical papers analyzing poetry is to disabuse students of what poetry is (according to poets) and to kill the essential quality of poetry, which is its magic” (82).

Yet, to be clear, Allen does not argue against having freshman compositions read poetry as part of the course. In fact, he recommends students read collections by poets that the instructor likes and thinks the students will like (82-83). And he encourages students to write out from these poetry collections (e.g. an assignment where they look through the collection and find 10-25 phrases they think would make good bumper stickers). What Allen warns against is having students write analysis papers about poetry, or the impulse to teach students the basics of analysis and rhetoric through poetry. Instead Allen envisions a classroom where students are engaging with poetry on the poetry terms: diving into the wonder and strangeness of reading poetry without the necessity of understanding (i.e. explicit meaning making) (83).

Allen provides several examples of assignments for which he uses poetry in freshman composition. I found these tremendously intriguing to the point that I’m honestly considering employing them in my own classes in the future. These assignments include: 1. Bumper Sticker (already mentioned) 2. Writing a personal essay incorporating one of the poetry phrases they found, thus allowing them to filter the poetry through their own experiences (84). 3. Using lines of poetry to aid in the freewriting process (the invention stage) about other essays or subjects (85). 4. Covering a poem with an index card and reading it line by line as a class. After each line the students share their expectations of what will come next. The goal being to delight in the surprise poetry often offers (85). 5. Challenging students to find odd or surprising phrases or sentences in the poetry (this can be a competition), which often leads to students discovering various poetic devices (86). 6. Have students mimic the poetic devices they discover (87). 8. Encouraging students to apply these devices, and riskier ways of presenting ideas within their own writing (87). 9. Having students use a poem (contemporary poems are best) as a template for their own passage of prose (mimicking the sentence structure of the original) (87-88). (Ok, just want to note the example passages he gives from students pretty much blew me away. The variance in their sentence structure, the rhythm and flow of their prose are remarkable! Could be a great way to give a practical lesson in varying sentence length, and taking risks in their prose style.).

To sum these example assignments/activities up, Allen writes, “Thus students may learn to write better prose through poetry, without having to write about poetry in such a way that its essential quality is lost, its magic, its ‘something beyond meaning’” (89).

Overall, I love how this essay flipped the risks I was imagining for poetry in the comp. classroom on their head. Instead of a concern for whether poetry might not have a place in composition because it doesn’t appropriately teach students the analytic/rhetorical skills they need to succeed as college writers, Allen highlights the concern that having freshman composition students analyze poetry is most risky because it reduces the essence of poetry to simple analysis: the students don’t need to be protected from the poetry, our love of poetry needs to be protected from the analytic milieu of freshman composition.  I also found myself very much impressed and inspired by Allen’s recommended use of poetry as a tool for encouraging surprise and delight in language while teaching students to write more fluently and riskily.

However I take issue with Allen’s closing paragraph. He concludes, “Critical analysis of poetry is a legitimate intellectual exercise. But to teach freshman to write, it is not a necessary one” (90). However, “not necessary” is a long way from an explicit warning not to try to teach poetry to freshman composition students. Thus this final statement comes across as rather milquetoast, as if Allen felt some need to qualify his arguments. After all, one could argue that even the most universally agreed upon essential elements of teaching freshman composition are “not necessary” to teaching freshman to write. Sure we all have our pedagogical hobby horses, but when pushed to it, it’s hard to imagine a rhetorical foundation that would allow any of us to argue our favorite methods of instruction are absolutely necessary to teach freshman writing. We might argue for the efficacy of our methods, recount how—in our experience—they are superior to other methods we have tried, even actively preach that this is the best way to teach. Yet as far as we might go in favor of our methods there remains a certain ludicrous hubris to claiming your pedagogy is “necessary” in order to teach freshman to write. 

Allen, Paul. "Something Beyond Meaning": The Poet's Problem In Freshman Composition." Writing On The Edge 13.1 (2002): 79-90. ERIC. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.