25.ii.08 Foundations of Verbal Communications

I'm reflecting upon our oral presentations of poetry, now several weeks in progress, and a few overall thoughts occur to me:

A prefatory and somewhat technical (some may even think "snide") remark: In the past two class sessions, several students, in discussing the diction of the poems recited, have used the phrase "old English". I suspect, since all the poems recited so far have been in Modern English (yes, even "The Ballad of Bonnie George Campbell", which as I noted merely attempts to present a Highland accent rather than a real dialectual variant on English) that by "old English" is meant merely "a vocabulary with which I am unfamiliar and which appears to be "older"", and if this is so, why, this may well be correct. But it does not really show outstanding scholarship. Most dictionaries will give information about the approximate age of words in their various meanings. Poets often use words which have passed out of everyday use for particular effects.

Very few people today use "hereafter" or "behold" or "withal" or "slay" (to give four examples) in everyday speech, but some poets even today might use these terms for effect. Today the intended effect would probably be comedic as much as anything else, but fifty years ago and more these terms, although again not commonplace, would have been used seriously to give a sense of connection to older tradition, and in a sense, as I talked about today in reference to Poe, to "legitimize" or "elevate" the poet's work, to give it a sense of age and therefore respectability.

But while these words may be "old" (and for great information on the age and history of words, see Online Etymological Dictionary, which was created right here in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania: you can take some vicarious pride in that, I think) -- they all go back at least to the 14th century in their current form -- they are not "Old English" in the sense of Old English, Middle English, Modern English. In Old English these words would have the forms heraefter, bihaldan, mid ealle , and slean, which you may agree are like the modern English words, but are certainly not the same.

1) one of my goals in establishing oral performances in poetry was to provide an opportunity for students who tend to rush in speaking, or to swallow their words, or to mumble (if that is distinct from swallowing words), to correct these patterns. I think this goal has been met in part. The struggle to memorize lines may dominate, but even to some degree that struggle has overshadowed the discomfort or distraction of public speaking. I notice that in the analytical portions of the presentation -- where the student is neither reciting nor reading, but is summarizing some question about her or his poem, speech tends to be clearer.

However, in responding to the problems of, for example, what may be the tone or the sound or the structure or the diction of the poem, students tend to be

a) exceedingly brief, and
b) necessarily (because of the above) vague and unspecific.

To counter these, I proposed that students give specific examples from their poems showing, rather than telling about, the presence of the various qualities.

Having said all of this, though, I do sense that as a general rule, some real progress has been made. I hope that the time spent as a class listening to one after another of your classmates' work "torn apart", and having to hear a poem or section of a poem repeated several times, has provided some real use.

2) I am very curious to explore why, out of the many many poems available in the world, people choose the ones they do. When one choses a poem to memorize and recite, it is a bit like choosing a significant other (a bit like): this poem is going to enter into your consciousness, become a part of you, and you should think carefully whether and why it is one you want to become so intimate with. And just as in interpersonal relationships, one must learn and perhaps learn by mistakes, so with poems.

3) In asking about structure, external form, alliteration, assonance, and so on, one might legitimately note (although no one has), "Well, we were not taught about these things in this class -- how are we supposed to comment on them?" I am working from the (perhaps faulty) assumption that rhyme schemes, metre, sound-patterns, have been presented in "English" classes over the past twelve years or so, and that it is more a matter of recalling information learned and then stowed away unused rather than encountering completely new information. I make similar assumptions about other mechanical or technical aspects of verbal communication. I assume, for example, that anyone who could be admitted into a college program understands that an English sentence must consist of two parts, a subject and a predicate; or that when one is uncertain of the meaning of a word, a dictionary is used to gain some higher degree of certainty; or that a paragraph should consist of, at very least, three sentences.

At a certain point, I simply have to move forward from these and other similar assumptions. I am perfectly happy to assist a person who is confused. At the same time, I have reached the point at which, while I desire not to embarrass a student who has apparently not a clue as to the meaning of an English word, when the assignment in which the word occurs has been standing for about a month and dictionaries are still readily available, even if the student does not own one her- or himself, and when the misunderstanding of that word may completely reverse the understanding of the passage in which it is found, that desire is overridden by the thought that this cluelessness and misunderstanding is inexcusable. Am I intolerant, or rude, to call a student on this by saying, "What does this word mean? You don't know? Well, I do, because I use a dictionary."

Before answering that question, consider, too, that I am not asking for private recitals here: the recitations of poems are given to the class as a whole, are the basis of listening exercises, and therefore are not merely personal. In a sense, without stating it in so many words, I am asking for each presenter to function as a teacher for ten minutes or so. We should all be learning something about poets and poetry here, as well as gaining experience as listeners and speakers.

The upcoming exercise in which students are to present results of their research should also meet the maxim "Simple in means, rich in ends". I am eager to learn about The Brat Pack's influence on music, the development of Celtic tree alphabets, martial art forms, foreign versus domestic adoptions, the effects of caffeine on human functioning, physical responses in love, and so on. I, for one, hope to gain some information and insight here, but I also hope to see and hear improved posture, presence, enunciation, pronunciation, and projection. The five/fours and the poetry recitations served their own purposes as well, but recognize that all of these exercises together build to something else.

4) Consider how technical knowledge, critical thinking, and understanding of the liberal arts are to be fostered. All of the examination of poetry which is the basis of this exercise (or should be the basic of this exercise) is technical. First, the process of analysis and memorization is technical: you used some sort of technique to figure out what the structure of the poem is, what the diction of the poem is, and so on. It may not have been a sophisticated technique, but in part that is why I ask of you the questions I do -- like, "what does this line mean?" or "what is the rhyme scheme in this stanza?" or "how can you find out the meaning of that word?"

Second, poetry itself is technical: one must employ techniques in forming a poem, whether it be division of lines, division of stanzas, inclusion (or non-inclusion) of specific words, of metres, of rhyme, of alliteration, of assonance, and so on. To be able to achieve a recognizable tone or theme, the poet must have a greater rather than lesser degree of technical control. My comments on Poe as a poet were largely technical: to be able to ask why he does not structure the alliteration or internal rhyme schemes of "The Raven", one must first grasp the techniques of alliteration and internal rhyme.

Remember LeGuin's definition of poetry: "patterned intensity of language". Poetry succeeds to the degree it is intense and patterned. The tension of poetry exists specifically in such points as the play between the internal rhyme and the end-rhyme (and the alliteration) of the stanza in "The Raven" and the tags at the end of each stanza: "only this, and nothing more"; "nameless here forevermore"; "this is it and nothing more"; "darkness there, and nothing more" and so on. Here we may have (depending on the critic's argument) a ghastly lack of imagination or vocabulary (really, Edgar, can you think of other rhymes than "or"?) or a brilliant grasp of the maxim expressed by Brian Eno as "repetition is a form of change". Certainly the repetition in "The Raven" is intense in a way. Perhaps intensely boring. At any rate, until one recognizes the presence of the repetition, which along with variation is the key to Poe's technique (and, to those who see "The Raven" as a triumph, to his success here), one cannot interpret the poem sensibly.

"Critical thinking" is a somewhat problematic term, because the term "critical" has become so strongly connected with "negative judgment" or "attack". It need not mean this, but I'll admit readily that the uses of "critic" to mean "opponent" and "critical" to mean "negatively judgmental" are common. "Analysis" or "analytical thought" and "judgment" or "discerning thought" have been suggested as alternatives. But "analysis" does not really replace "critical thought", because it has to do properly only with the process of dividing up a problem into its constituent parts and perhaps categorizing those parts, but not necessarily making a judgment about their relative values. And "judgment" does not necessarily imply analysis. But critical thinking involves both analysis and synthesis and judgment.

In the poetry presentations, I have asked for analysis in the process of examining the various components of a poem, the technical aspects: metre, diction, sound, and so on. In asking for the theme and the tone, I am calling for a synthesis (drawing together) of the components of the poem to see a single unified whole, and for a judgment of the most important features of the poem in forming that picture of the whole.

One of the frustrations I experience is that here is an exercise which, were it really followed through, could be a very rich experience in critical thought. I'm not convinced that it has been that. So I ask myself, "why has this not been a rich experience?"

I wish I could lay the answer at my own feet: "You made up a bad exercise for the students!"

Unhappily, I don't think that is the case. I sincerely believe that this is a case of motivation. The tools to carry out this exercise are readily available. PCA&D's library may be small physically, but the collection is excellent, and we have plenty of on-line resources. Furthermore, we have excellent staff and faculty who are more than happy to help students who ask for it.

No, I'm afraid the trouble is a lack of motivation at the student level. If students won't even investigate what a word means, or consider what the significance of a classical allusion may be, when the answers are virtually at the finger-tips in dictionary or encyclopedia, it would seem that a basic malaise needs to be addressed.

Do we need to be slipping caffeine into the drinking water supply? Should we provide some sort of negative reinforcement?

Perhaps the answer lies in a general attitude toward the liberal arts (some of the LA faculty are strongly of this opinion). Perhaps the LA staff are too complaisant, not sufficiently demanding. Perhaps we are not flamboyant enough to merit imitation. Perhaps students actually believe that it does not matter whether they know how to use scholarly (and only barely scholarly) tools like dictionaries or grammar-checks, or that they use them, "because I am an artist."

And I think part of this has to do with a misunderstanding of the liberal arts: what the liberal arts are, and what value they have to artists.

As an artist -- and by that I mean "artist" in a very broad sense, because I compose and perform music, I have acted on stage and in film, I have worked as an animator, I design type, and I write poems, essays, short stories, and novels, for example, as well as draw and paint -- I am convinced of the value of the liberal arts. Obviously, my writing is supported by understanding verbal communications, but I also benefit from my understanding of nature that comes through the life and physical sciences and mathematics, from my understanding of human beings that comes through the behavioral and social sciences and history, from my understanding of the deep workings of the mind and the soul that comes from the study of philosophy and religion. The liberal arts provide content to place into the form of the technical training provided in the studio or fine arts.

Why a model should stand in a certain way, wearing certain clothing, or no clothing, with or without props, or why the lighting should be arranged this way or that, or why I should use conte rather than charcoal rather than graphite rather than something else, or why this paper or that -- all of these decisions are not purely technical within the visual arts. The liberal arts provide the context, the framework, the means by which the technical judgments about perspective, pressure, stance, and so on are to be made.

It is possible that artists can act without the benefit of liberal arts experience or training. Their work tends to be naive. That can be fine; but it's not what PCA&D is aiming for.

I hope that students will earnestly consider the possibility that the liberal arts curriculum is not an appendage -- especially not a vestigial appendage -- not a mere burden, but a vital part of training in the visual arts.

I wish I knew what to do about what seems to be lack of student motivation to engage with the liberal arts. If I knew, I could think of a plan of action.




This is not to say that NO ONE did a good job, that no one investigated the poems presented, that no one used scholarly tools. There have been high points in each of the presentations.

Certainly I am impressed with the overall improvement in posture (well, okay, maybe not that), pronunciation, enunciation, and projection. This is great. I sense that most of the students in FVC 101/102 are far more comfortable now speaking in public -- at least in front of the class -- than six months ago. Some students have made really astonishing progress, and this is great.

I'll end on that note.