coldhearted scientist وداد

Referring ironically to the Romantic tradition that “nature teaches” César Vallejo called a linden tree murmuring in the wind a “professor of sobbing” and a “technician of shouts.” He ends this poem suggesting the tree is actually no such thing. I, however, really am now an engineer of poetry.

My introduction to literature is intended for majors, but since the majors study abroad at a certain point, its usual audience is actually minors who do not speak the language very well but have a literary background in another language, or in English. This semester, however, its audience is native speakers in technical fields with no literary background, who are taking it for a general education requirement. I have found new, acrobatic ways to explain what we are learning to do.

Some examples:

We are taking this poem apart so as to see how it has been built. Then we will put it back together. When we write our report on its structure, we will be able to use the information we got by looking at the insides. This will make our report cogent and complete.

Think of your paper as you would a mathematical proof. You begin with something we know is true, or that we can see is an interesting question. By the end, you show us something new, or bring us to a new point.

Your thesis statement should be like a spring, coiled to the right tension so that when you release it, it propels your argument forward.

Since you are comparing two Renaissance sonnets on the same theme, you should give each equal weight. You might think of this as you would hanging a double door.

How has this poem engineered the reading experience you describe?

Some results:

This sonnet is a large, square shaped building with high ceilings and large, shuttered windows. The reader is situated in a gallery at the center of the second floor with balconies at either end. With each line from 2-13, one of the twelve windows on this floor opens. The view from each window is a new perspective on the garden, some of which is cultivated and some of which is not. The movement between formal and wild is the conceptual content of the poem, which is introduced in line 1, developed metaphorically in lines 2-13, and restated with a surprising twist in line 14.

On the other hand, this sonnet written fifty years later on the same theme is a Victorian mansion filled with spiral staircases. Most of these are not functionally necessary, but all are interconnected by passageways. Each staircase ends individually and pointlessly at the roof, but all lead down to the same point on the ground floor where there is a large chute. The chute dumps everyone who steps off their staircase – as one is virtually compelled to do by the rhythm of the stairs (the words) – into the common pit below.

I said early on – trying to communicate acrobatically, feeling like a contortionist – that if they could not face poems as words on a page, they might think of them as buildings, bodies, pieces of sculpture, or dances. They have taken that very seriously, as you can see.

Axé.

Note: this post was written before Professor Zero was taken into custody.  Signed: THE DIRECTOR.