Exploring Writing Strategies

Review Questions: 

What is strong reading?
What does it mean to read with the grain?
What does it mean to read against the grain?
Explain the difference between what an author is saying and what the author is doing?

Wallowing in Complexity

Wallowing in Complexity takes time. We sometimes wallow in sadness, but this is unproductive wallowing--we want to productively wallow. To "wallow" is also to 'dwell', to not jump to conclusions/to the end. To wallow in the complexity of a text or a thought is to keep it OPEN rather than close it down. As Bartholomae and Petrosky put it, "Think of yourself, then, as a writer intent on opening a subject up rather than closing one down" (B&P 17).

Exploratory Strategies

• Free-Writing
• Idea Mapping
• Dialectic Talk (i.e. "conversation")
• Believing and Doubting

Activity: Free-writing and Conversing about "next to of course god america i" 

  "next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"


He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water


Everyone had some great insights into this poem. Many reader's saw the poem as "sarcastic," although perhaps the better way to put it is "ironic" or "satirical." The class pretty much got that the author seems to be commenting on the confusion of patriotism and the defense of country.

One interesting point we got at in third period was the last line. Rather than looking at it from the perspective of tone or attitude, a student usefully pointed out how the author stylistically separates it from the poem. The line has both punctuation and capitalization. We did not "wallow" in the complexity of this for very long (due to time constraints) but there is much to say about this.

The Take-Away Point

Because many of you have had to take literature courses in high school, you are used to analyzing literature and poetry (at least to a certain extent). The same strategies we use to read literature can be applied to academic essays, particularly the type in Ways of Reading.  All the rhetorical strategies we find in poetry will be used in these essays. We also need to take into account the essay's structure. We will look at the figurative language of these essays as well as discuss the topics at hand. We want to look at these essays in terms of their style and structure and try and imitate it, much in the same way you might write in the style of an author or a poet.