Saturday, March 6, 2010

Three Beautiful Things 03/04/10: Copia, Connected, Interview

1. I probably got a little carried away. I am almost religiously committed to the concept of "copia" as a way to explore and convey the multiple dimensions of the "truth" about a subject and I love trying to get my students a little revved up and into "copia mode". My morning class did a splendid job working together to explore the copious ways Kim Barnes invites us to think about wilderness, both literally and figuratively, in her book In the Wilderness. I think my students really started to understand how the "truth" of a single concept can have scores of dimensions. To really get at the "truth" of something, one really cannot whittle, one has to expand into the idea.

2. This work we are doing with the copious nature of Kim Barnes' thinking and explorations is helping my students see how, in In the Wilderness, in Barnes' words, "it's all connected". It's rewarding. Some of my students are surrendering to expanding their ways of thinking.

3. I had a fun time writing a fiction. It's as if I were being interviewed on Whitworth's radio station KWRS. I'm responding, in the interview to this idea: “If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day.For there would be an intolerable hunger.” It's a quotation by Muriel Rukeyser. The interview is here.

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