On the Teaching of Writing

The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but to say what we are

unable to say.—Anais Nin

When it comes to writing and the teaching of writing, as the poet and art critic Frank O'Hara famously stated in his essay "PERSONISM:  A MANIFESTO" (Yugen, 1961), you just go on your nerve.  If someone is chasing you down the street with a knife you don't turn around and shout, "Give it up, I was a track star for The University of Michigan!"  You just run.  This is like writing.  You don't flounce out your credentials every time you have an important piece to write or teach to write.  You just write it.  In "PERSONISM" O'Hara posits an attitude in writing in which one of its minimal aspects is to address itself to one person (other than the writer herself), thus putting the writing squarely between two people and not between two pages.  This makes the writing more intimate or revelatory.  It makes the writing an arrow from me to you.

Within the writing classroom there should be room for experimentation.  I want a classroom that is defined by experimentation and openness.  I want a classroom in which students will feel free to consult with each other on their essays, poetry, or term papers.  Or at least I want a classroom in which it will be possible for students to do so.  In the teaching of writing there should be no "forced feeding" as O'Hara says, there should be no enforcement of writing doctrine for doctrine's sake.  Students should be brought into the state of being where they want to write.  This state of being should be encouraged and nourished by the teacher by reading to them or having them read new pieces of writing by which they will be moved to write.  O'Hara's "PERSONISM" is one piece of writing that has effectively moved students in the near past.  Ezra Pound's dictum on modernism, "Make It New," applies both to the kind of materials with which the students should be nourished and which they produce.  Quality in writing should be stressed.  The students should feel that their writing is a form of art and as an art form it can be as vibrant as Bruegel’s “The Wedding Dance” or as stunning and simple as Fra Angelico’s “Annunciatory Angel.”  While I believe that writing is a process, I also believe that there is room inside of the process for experimentation and spontaneity.  Without this room for experimentation writing wouldn’t provide the joy and satisfaction that it does provide when it is done well.