The Beginning of the Question

February 1, 2015

It's Super Bowl Sunday, a national holiday according to NBC's six hours of "pregame" coverage. Two hours and forty minutes until game time, I perch thirty feet up at the corner of Broadway and Garth watching the gray rainy day give its best imitation of snow. There's fiddle music rising up inexplicably from the floors below. Ahead of me, the water tower looms dirty white against a relentlessly bland sky. Cars pass. I sit. Two hours to kill. Well, hell, why not 8010 exploratory essay? Let's get to it.

The question: How can poetry be integrated as fully and effectively as possible into the composition classroom?

My interest in this topic is rather simple to explain: 1. I'm a poet and thus maintain a vested interest in poetry. 2. Pedagogically speaking, I believe the best teaching stems from instructors being passionately engaged with the material they are teaching. 3. I do not possess a passion for much of the traditional composition curriculum (how to write a thesis, organizing arguments, topic sentences, etc.). 4. Unfortunately as far as how my passions run, I will likely have many more opportunities to teach composition (at least in the near future) than poetry. 5. Accepting numbers three and four, and still wanting to be as effective a teacher as possible in keeping with number two, I strive to do my best to design composition curriculum that keeps me, as the instructor, passionately engaged in the class. Thus poetry (see number one).

Touchdown! I think to myself, performing my most ludicrous and gyratory of end-zone celebrations. I am totally winning this essay! If this were the Super Bowl, I postulate, I am Katy Perry at halftime, I am Deon Sanders commentating, I am John Madden getting video games named for himself, I am one pace to be MVP. Sadly, thinking and recording this jock-rock-a-shock tirade has utterly derailed my exploration (unless the exploration, unbeknownst to me, has suddenly shifted into crafting poor sports metaphors). Fumble! Fumble! Fumble! Ah nuts! Where was I?

The question: Poetry composition? Will they be friends? How much? Does this ever go beyond friendship? Should it? The Book of Nightmares? Really?!! Dr. Strickland, that's bold. Very bold. But what about Citizen, a hybrid text, a socially-engaged hybrid text, a socially-engaged hybrid stunning text, a socially-engaged hybrid stunning masterpiece text, a socially-engaged hybrid stunning masterpiece current text? Can I teach that? Can I build a curriculum around that? Would be pedagogically sound? Say I just spelled "pedagogically" correctly! Say I like the sound of "pedagogically sound?" Say you had just purchased a vacation home on Pedagogically Sound. You walk through the door for the first time (you are a brave buyer, but hey it was a steal!). The house smells slightly of ash-dust, cigarette buts, damp cobwebs, and ginger-ale fizz. Just one streak of sunlight cuts the shadows illuminating a large oak desk in the corner. There's one book on that table, just one. You walk over and pick up the book. Could it be Citizen?

There's a bright red challenge flag on the field. Maybe a touchdown, maybe an interception. The only clear thing is that this last metaphor, the one about Pedagogical Sound--don't pretend you don't remember--has transported us from refocusing towards confusion once again. Consequently...

I wrote for advice to a former 8010 student who I was informed had written on a similar topic. By wrote I wish I mean that I had sat down at my kitchen table with a tidbit of tea and scrawled out my urgent request for guidance, carefully folded the paper up, stuffed it in an envelope, sealed that envelope, addressed it, forever stamped it, mailed, and waited. What I actually mean by wrote is "emailed." It was unexciting, there were no stamps, or tasteless paste, or even tidbits of tea involved. But the waiting for a reply? By George and Gina and Josephine and Jim, that's the very same!

I think how this is similar to when the lights went out during the super bowl a couple years ago. There we all were, 80 million of us, give or take, young and old, black and white, male and female, lovers and haters, waiting for the same thing, waiting for the lights to come back on, for the game to begin, for someone to win. So too our days are full of waiting: individually, collectively. And so too this essay will brim full with waiting. The tables set, the drinks are served, we only need a source. And, so, we wait.