~Joan Didion

Back in my teaching days, I would assign a much-dreaded and labored project called a “paper.” Perhaps you’ve heard of this? Perhaps you’ve written some. My students wrote many and, no matter the caliber of student, most approached them with dread.

Many of my students also labored over them, but not all.

As teacher, I both dreaded and labored, because the work of evaluating said papers was often dread-worthy and laborious in the extreme, and there was decidedly an inverse relationship between the amount of labor a student put into a paper and the amount of labor I had to put into evaluating it.

In other words, the more poorly prepared the paper, the more challenging, time-consuming, and exhausting it was for me to evaluate.

I am sure this makes sense to you.

What I realized only recently is that I never (almost never?) called these assignments “essays.” We reserved the term “essay” for a portion of a semester exam or some sort of test the students were to complete during class. We never called papers “essays.”

Now I’m wondering why. After all, the word “essay” literally means “to try.”

What if that had been the assignment? In the wisdom of retrospection, I’m thinking this would have been an excellent thing to call my students’ papers. Doing so may have relieved some of the dread and given hope to the labor. In writing, what they needed was to try. Yes: Argue, support, prove, explain. Show, tell, justify, deduce. But still, all in all, the product was to be an effort at the thing. An essay.

To try is so much more approachable than, say, to accomplish.

***

The essay is a time-honored literary form, coming to us from Europe in the 1500’s, when French philosopher Michel Montaigne began writing about himself.

Oneself is the subject one (presumably) knows best–but writing about oneself is not enough to make an essay. A journal entry, yes, or a diary. Or maybe even a blog or Facebook or Instagram post, in which one reveals what one is thinking, feeling, doing, has suffered, is suffering, dreams/hopes/wishes for.

There is a place for this. I believe I have named some. But these are not an essay.

True, the essay does come “from a limited or personal point of view” (thank you, Merriam-Webster); and so what we have in the essay is not poetry or fiction, but neither is it journalism.

It is, in fact, “analytic or interpretive” work, a sustained, personal reflection on an idea, a thing, even a situation. And as readers, it is something to make time for, to dig into, to read actively and also to rest in as–if you are able–you watch the writer invisibly at work.

(Did I say to watch the writer working invisibly? Why, yes. Yes I did).

Because a good essay does work a bit of magic. As with the best poetry and fiction, reading it can be a transformative experience. The essayist links together ideas such that new understanding is suddenly laid bare. And the best essayists achieve this invisibly. The reader may never see it coming, but she reaches the end with altered perspective. The writer has lined up these words and these ideas, and the reader has followed them–and suddenly: Oh, look! I see! Here we are.

***

Maybe that is a bit too much to ask of our high school students on the regular.

***

It is, perhaps, a lot to ask of anyone. Many people are made to write, to pin down their ideas and experiences with actual words on actual paper (or screen). But the essayist has a specific function. Her view and experience are doors opened on to ideas, but she must go through those doors. She cannot sit on in self-reflection but rather, using her view and experience, must go somewhere, taking her readers with her.

How is this done?

Enter Charity Singleton Craig to help us. In a work of clarity and generosity, she shows us how to write essays, how she writes them. Anyone interested in writing essays (me! you?) or in uncovering, as you read them, some of that aforementioned magic, should read her The Art of the Essay.

In brief, thorough, and honest chapters, she sketches out how it’s done, beginning–as a gentle teacher might–with the beginning. How does one know what to write about in the first place? And when we’ve decided, what do we include and what leave out? If the subject doesn’t stem entirely from memory, our experience, the dark and less-explored corners of our minds, then can we do research? Craig says yes, giving permission to ask all the questions and do all the investigating.

Because not everyone, you know, is aware of the potential essays to-hand. Sometimes we need to go find them.

Craig goes on from there. We’re helped somewhat at this point (immeasurably, really), but still we need more: how to organize ideas; how to balance those three (!) essential components: “show,” “tell,” and “explain.”

This was a portion I found particularly helpful. I think I do a pretty good job of showing and an adequate one of telling, but until I read this book, I thought that explanation was anathema. Should it be? Craig: “Exposition operates in the dimension of abstract ideas, examining and analyzing information and events.” It “often sets essays apart from other types of creative nonfiction…. It’s the X factor that allows for exploration, inquiry and even counterpoint to the life circumstances, the destination, or the story being written.” It is, in other words, essential to the essay. Thank you, Ms. Craig.

More essentials follow: the value of place in an essay–which elements are necessary to set the scene; the importance — and risks– of writing about people one knows; the value of finding one’s voice (through pursuit of clarity–novel and so true!) in one’s writing.

And Craig talks us through those difficult things: self-editing, the failure of a work to meet one’s expectations, the challenges and disappointments that come in the pursuit of publication.

This book is thorough and, as I’ve said, honest. But it is most of all generous: not just because of the appendices (invitations to respond to each chapter and to practice peer review; resources for publishing options), but because, throughout the book, Craig talks about her own experience as a writer.

She writes essays. She has been published in many places. And yet she is not free from the difficulties and insecurities that writing means. She is simply willing to help others learn what she has learned–and she’s willing to draw from her own experience to teach us.

***

An act of generosity is, by definition, a humble one. After all, true generosity means risk–and Craig’s willingness to expose her own misconceptions, mistakes, and frustrations as a writer all work here to help others improve their writing.

And an essay, I am realizing, is also a humble thing. It intends only to try, which means recognition from the outset of the project’s ambition– which, in the case of the essay, is no small thing: the essayist invites you into her perspective and experience and then deliberately takes the back seat. This piece of work is not about her at all; it intends, rather, to be a gift. She offers her experience as a view onto ideas so that the reader can think, perceive, learn and, yes, be changed.

But to try something is also to risk. The risk of exposure, embarrassment, failure. Writing–and writing essays–implies risk. It’s inherent in the project.

But Craig thinks it’s worth it.

I do, too.

The essay, as it turns out, is for you, even if you like the word “I” as much as any other word in the English language and want to use it boldly–or, if you sometimes start writing before you know what you want to say and discover something new by the time you’ve finished. The essay is your words and your mind, lit up.

-Charity Singleton Craig, The Art of the Essay

You will love this book. Head here for details. And see below for gifts based on your order!

Order The Art of the Essay before October 1, 2019, and receive free resources to help you turn your ordinary life into extraordinary words.

LEVEL 1: Order 1 copy of The Art of the Essay and receive the free downloadable guide “How to Plan Your Personal Writing Retreat.”

LEVEL 2: Order 2-4 copies of The Art of the Essay (one for you and one for a friend?) and receive “How to Plan Your Personal Writing Retreat” plus “12 Top Writing Tips Worksheets.”

LEVEL 3: Order 5 or more copies of The Art of the Essay (one for you and one for each member of your writing group?), and in addition to receiving “How to Plan Your Personal Writing Retreat” plus “12 Top Writing Tips Worksheets,” I’ll also offer you or your writing group a one-hour video session about essay writing, help with a specific project, or just Q&A about writing essays or any other issues related to the writing life.

All of the bonus gifts will be sent on or before October 1, 2019.

https://charitysingletoncraig.com/the-art-of-the-essay/

The post On The Art of the Essay appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

We arrive relieved and a little breathless from the din. We almost didn’t find it; I had considered giving up.

But there it is on 6th Street, just past the tortilla place. Here is something different from the rest of Las Vegas: low ceiling, warm light, a host who enjoys the word “patio.”

He invites us to sit inside, in that low, warm room, or upstairs on the rooftop patio. But it’s “patioooo,” he says, drawing out the “o” because he likes patios or the “o” sound, or because he thinks the patio is where we should sit. And we do.
On that rooftop, the ceiling is all string-lights. Somewhere above them hangs the neon haze of Las Vegas. And above that, presumably, are stars, night sky, ascendant heavens, even (rumored) planets. A satellite blinking along.

But we are grounded at a table for two. And near us, a merry crowd is moored around three tables pressed together.

Theirs is a meal at its close: plates scraped clean, napkins wrung out and exhausted on table-top or under chairs. Wine bottles empty and glasses going that way. Six adults in Las Vegas, but without that glaze-eyed-look. They are laughing, leaning in, bright like string-lights.

And we are talking to our host about the menu, about the restaurant, about nearby Fremont Street and this refuge of warm wood and a menu drawn up by hand.

Then the host calls him over: the young man seated on the corner of the pressed-together tables. He stands, and I see the apron at his waist. He is one of their chefs.

He might be twenty-two. Maybe twenty-four, at the most.

We talk with him for a few minutes. Where he is from, how he came to be here. How he likes living in Vegas, how he likes working here. And they, he tells us, turning his chin toward his shoulder, are his family. Some of them live in town, but that one is his mother, just come to visit, he says, to see him at his new job. She’s going home tomorrow morning, early. It’s been a good visit.

He leaves us, rejoins his family, and Bill and I are happy to retreat to ourselves, anticipating the menu’s implications. I have ordered the salmon; Bill is getting the steak. Our host has insisted on the macaroni and cheese: it’s a family recipe and he is from Wisconsin. But first we enjoy the tempura green beans served with the brilliant miracle they call pepper jelly cream cheese.

From where I sit, dipping beans in cream cheese, Fremont Street’s panic seems almost impossible. The strobe lights, the neon; the girl in glittering bikini turning twenty hula hoops on her waist; the ring and clatter of the slot machines–all of it has dissolved under these lights. Here we have a friendly chef, a kind server, a host who likes words, green beans.

The chef’s family has left their table. They are disbanding, each taking a turn with the young chef in an embrace, a handshake. They move toward the stairs, but I’m not watching them: my salmon has arrived and I am taken with it, with its puree of spinach, with the way salmon breaks and folds so easily in the mouth. And Bill and I are having our Las-Vegas conversation, our wheat-and-chaff conversation, our practice of looking for beauty where much is not beautiful.

That’s when I see her: the chef’s mother, descending the stairs. She is with someone–her sister, perhaps–and that someone is turned toward her, talking. But I watch this mother, who can’t be that much older than I. She is listening to the one speaking to her, but watching her son as she descends the stairs, hoping, I would think, to catch his eye.

She leaves tomorrow early. She won’t see him again this visit. He is talking with a server, his apron hanging at his waist, hands on his hips. He has already said goodbye.

But still I think of her descending, watching her boy, holding–as she can’t help it–those things she knows of his childhood: his love for food, perhaps; the way he learned to make pancakes; the mobile above his crib of the solar system, planets suspended like string lights; the ceiling spangled in glow-in-the-dark stars.

The post Observed at a Restaurant off Fremont Street appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Every student in this country has started back to school by now. The other day, a boy in my daughter’s math class announced that, two full weeks in, they had completed exactly 5.5% of the school year.

This was not excellent news to Emma. She wasn’t sure that 5.5% was worth registering.

Nearly three weeks ago now, I visited her school with her at student orientation. With five minutes to pass between classes–threading our way in and out of buildings, up and down stairs–we sat in each of her classrooms for ten. Her teachers met us at their doors, encouraged us to take copies of the neatly stacked hand-outs. And in what must have felt to them like a hot second, they explained the scope and sequence of their courses, their methods of teaching and evaluation, and briefly listed (if we would be so kind) those extras we could provide that might be handy over the course of the upcoming year: whiteboard markers, boxes of tissues, hand sanitizer.

None of them knew that I have been a teacher, but like every parent in that room, I’m sure, I was interested in how my child would do in that class. I wondered if the methods employed would work for her unique mind, her way of perceiving the world. And, as a teacher, I had that other perspective: knowing what it feels like to greet student and parent alike for the first time. Knowing that I would be navigating relationships with both, listening carefully to both. Seeking to know each student insofar as he would allow it, as was appropriate. Seeking to like each one. Knowing that my standards were high and earnestly believing that my students could and would get there, that it was my job to give them everything they needed to reach those goals.

Emma’s 5.5% has been well worth her time already. I hear it in the way she talks about her classes: the experiments, the discussions. On the way to school this morning, she was telling me about parent functions in math; last night before bed she was discussing Malcolm Gladwell and rhetorical analysis. She likes each of her classes; she likes her teachers very much.

***

Once, years ago, I saw a comment about teachers on Facebook that saddened me. It was made by a mother of grown children, each of whom had been educated through college and perhaps beyond. She was complaining about teachers asking for pay raises. Why did they need to ask for more, she wondered aloud on social media. They only work nine months a year. They get the entire summer off.

I didn’t reply, but if I had, I might have said something about the work a teacher does around the edges of her day, those hours when she’s not required to be in her classroom. I spent hours and hours at planning and grading when I was a teacher. After an eight-hour day at school, I easily and often put in two to four additional hours of work at home, especially in my earliest years of teaching.

Listening to my daughter’s teachers talk about the upcoming school year, I had a difficult time assessing the value of their expertise. This one has a Bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a Master’s in teaching. She will conduct her students in performing experiments that will help them draw conclusions about acids and bases, and she will–at the same time–ensure that none of them blows himself up, or his neighbor, or school property.

When you are a teacher– I wanted to say to this Facebook remark– you don’t work with your colleagues. You almost never see them. You work instead with people who are vastly younger than yourself in age and experience, vulnerable people, people who are not in charge of their own lives and so sometimes (often?) are victims of poverty or anger, who are trying to understand the world while you are trying to teach them the beauties of a sonnet.

Please put a price tag on that and then pay the teacher accordingly. Or give her the summer off. Or both.

***

Every year I was teaching, my husband would compose a list of “class rules” and write it on a white board in my classroom. This is fall, 2007. Sorry for the flash. Again, 2007.

Of course I realize, too, that some people are terrible teachers, that they entered their profession in error or that, over the course of years, they have become calloused or embittered to the point that it might be best for them to stop teaching altogether. But that doesn’t happen because teaching is easy. That’s never why.

***

A teacher is a person with two loves: her subject and her students. They vie for dominance within her, and she is at her best when their marriage erupts in the classroom: when her delight in a sonnet equals her delight in her students discovering the same.

This doesn’t happen every day. It can’t.

And the most difficult part of a teacher’s job is when he is altogether unable to enjoy the thing he loves in deference to loving his students. They present with needs, difficulties, challenges, issues (or essays) that he must give his full attention while his love of sonnets molders behind the classroom door.

And that is part of the job.

***

My very favorite teacher helped me learn to write. I can’t say he taught me: like the best teachers, he understood that the best learning was a process of discovery. But he provided the insights and the examples, and he made me write. And then he only gave me praise when I wrote well.

He was an excellent teacher, and in what I consider to be among the best of the essay-ish things I have ever written, I recounted his excellence and my blundering foolishness in the face of it, and my regret.

He was a teacher, but he was also a writer– and it was his love of good writing that equipped him to teach me. No doubt it was also his hours spent evaluating my writing and that of others that prevented his getting more writing done. I wish I could thank him for that.

But there is this: he has released a book. Or rather, a book of his writing has been released (ugh, passive voice–he would have hated that), compiled and edited in the years since his death by his colleague and another of my favorite teachers, Dr. Gloria Stansberry.

Fragments is a collection of Bill Donnelly’s short stories–some fiction, some not–that showcase his love of language. He taught me to love the dictionary, and this book demonstrates that he loved it too–for all the wonder and surprise a rightly chosen word can deliver.

He was a brave writer, unafraid to experiment with writing–and this is what he encouraged us to do, so many years ago now, in his Advanced Writing class.

I think he knew what I have learned: that writing is always a risk; that you never show up to the task alone, despite how solitary you are; and that perseverance just might produce quality. So it’s always best to try.

He said, “Fragments are not the enemy. I like fragmentary sentences, vivid imagery, humor, weird repetition and variation, sound effects, contentious dialogue, electrifying facts, surprise.”

I did not know him well, but I can vouch that the above is true. It describes not just the way he wrote; it was the way he taught.

The book is titled Fragments because, I think, of his avowed love for them. But the book is fragmentary too: pieces of a life.

And that’s the thing I like best about the book: I can hear his voice as I read. No matter which story, it is Bill Donnelly’s voice reading it aloud. He is perched on a desk at the front of the room, his long legs bent in front of him. He is sucking his cheeks, he is pausing, he is enunciating the words exactly so. And I am riveted, listening, hearing not just the words but their sounds, not just their sounds but their rhythms–and finding my own voice because he shared his so generously. I am sitting there listening, and I am learning how to write.

I received my copy of the book a few months ago, but I’m writing about it today to celebrate. The book itself is a few months old, and today my novel celebrates one year since its release. I guess one could call it my book’s birthday.

So this is another gesture of gratitude to Dr. Donnelly, who above all others, helped me find my voice as a writer– or who, at the very least, most emboldened me to try. It is the page, after all, that teaches us to write. But Dr. Donnelly provided me immeasurable help.

Once more, Dr. Donnelly: thank you.

William Francis Donnelly, III    1935-2015

Fragments is available here. 

The post Of Teachers and Why We Love Them, My Favorite One, and Two Birthdays appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Punctuation is Great. Really and truly Great. It’s fascinating in its sheer design. Consider, for example, my favorite punctuation mark (yes, I have one, don’t you?) the semi-colon. Here’s a stroke of genius, and here’s why: it’s a combination of a period and a comma. See? ;

I love that.

And that’s how it works in a sentence: as a combination of a period and a comma. Stronger than a comma, weaker than a period, and joining two related sentences without the power of the period’s full stop or the cumbersomeness of the comma’s pause plus the requisite conjunction.

What’s not to love?

I would go on, but I can’t. Other things to write, and none of it here. So I will leave you with the following classic paragraphs which so amusingly illustrate punctuation’s power. They are identical in terms of text but oh, so different in terms of meaning– and all because of shifts in those dots and squiggles we call punctuation.

Enjoy!

Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy–will you let me be yours?
Jane

Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours,
Jane

The post National Punctuation Day appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Bill knows this.

“Would you like to read it?” he says, even as he turns to the review itself where it resides on page 41.

“Yes,” I say, and then “No,” because I know that this will mean Bill’s surrending of the Independent Weekly to me, and I don’t want to take it from him, as only moments before he was sitting there alone with his donut and coffee and enjoying the Independent Weekly by himself.

I say this. I say, “If you let me read it, then you won’t have it anymore. You will give it up. That is what will happen.”

But it is too late. Already he surrenders it, turning the paper its ninety-degrees, pushing it toward me.

He says, “That is what is happening.”

Now the paper is before me. “That is,” he says, “what has happened.”

And I don’t look at the article right away. Neither do I look at him with deep love and appreciation for his small but significant sacrifice.

No. Instead, for a moment, I am lost in the glories of the English language, in the subtle and vital fluctuations of verb tense and suffix, the small changes that Mean Everything:

will happen
is happening
has happened

Little things like that can almost Make My Day.

The post Little Things appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Maybe verbal blunders aren’t signs of fatigue. Maybe they’re just verbal blunders, or signs of old age. But when I talked with my Alaskan sister this afternoon, and when we ended our conversation, and when I expressed my love to her family, this is what I said:

“Give your love to my family.”

Happily, she knew what I meant.

The post Best Wishes appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

She being, of course, my sister Emily.

I call her because I am suddenly not entirely sure that I remember accurately what her definition is, and I need to confirm it.

“So it’s ‘a’ as in an article that distinguishes a person in their current state as different from their normal state, right?” I say.

“Yes, that’s it,” she says.

“So, like, one could say, ‘A disheveled Rebecca emerged from the overcrowded ladies room.'”

“Yes,” she says, not commenting on my lame example.

“Like, she’s disheveled right now and that’s because of a recent development, as opposed to her general state.”

“Yes,” she says again, and then commences to so smoothly quote her definition that I don’t realize at first that she’s quoting it: “used as a function word before a proper noun to distinguish the condition of the referent from a usual, former, or hypothetical condition.” That’s verbatim how the entry appears on p. 1 of the 11th edition of the M-W Collegiate dictionary. The example follows the definition (3f): <a triumphant Ms. Jones greeted her supporters>.

My sister came up with that. Yes, she did.

But somehow my successful corroboration of this information is not the end of the conversation. No. We find that we Still Have Things to Say, and so we say them, and we say them, until Long After I have found my space in the Target parking lot and am in the store.

It’s lovely to talk with my sister, and also rare. We are both so terribly busy, you see. But on this evening, she is content to lay aside her work for a moment, and I have had my class unexpectedly canceled, and so it seems that the two of us can go shopping together, if you will, via cell phone.

In the boys’ sock section, she talks with me about old acquaintances. Over in the nail polish, we discuss more of the same. In the potato chip aisle we talk about the beneficial potentialities of Facebook. In the dairy case, we talk about its downsides. While I am admiring the baby clothes, she is telling me about her upcoming spelling bee. And when I am picking out a shirt, we are shaking our heads at our shared tendency to say “yes” to things we don’t really want.

She has to hang up the phone when I reach the check-out lane, and I proceed to load my few items onto the conveyor belt, distracted by the available varieties of chewing gum. I pay for my things and grab the plastic bags by their handles and walk out into the parking lot. Time to hurry home.

But something feels strange suddenly. Suddenly, I have an unexpected feeling, one I don’t generally have when I’ve escaped alone to Target for an hour. It’s nothing. It’s silly. Nothing has changed since I entered the Target, phone to ear, an hour ago. I load my bags into the car and back out of my parking space, heading home.

And I feel lonely.

The post Phone Call appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

I’m loving it on several levels, and the first is also the most base: I Love it when I already know the words. And I often do. Words like “sophistry,” “antipode,” “puissant”– these are words I know, words I sometimes use, words that, prior to my finding them on the page-a-day, were already making their way into my vocabulary.

It feels good to know that one Knows Something.

Another level comes on the reverse side of the page. Sometimes it gives etymology (I Love Etymology); sometimes it traces the way a word’s meaning has shifted over the years; and sometimes it gives shades of meaning between words. I Love shades of meaning. Check this out:

“Artless,” “ingenuous,” and “naive” all refer to freedom from pretension or calculation, but there are subtle differences in their uses. “Ingenuous” implies an inability to disguise or conceal one’s feelings, while “naive” suggests a credulous lack of worldly wisdom. “Artless” generally indicates an utter naturalness, one in which a person is innocent of the effect of his or her speech or behavior in others.

My students stand a Strong Chance of being visited by these words Sometime Soon.

But the Very Best thing about this page-a-day is the new words that come through from time to time. Lately there’s been a spate of these. In the last few weeks we’ve been treated to words like “truckle,” “claque,” “esurient,” and– tomorrow’s word– “deliquesce.” “Deliquesce”– can you stand it? What kind of word is that?? “Acquiesce” comes to mind, and suddenly I’m thinking of (you guessed it) etymology and I flip the page over and there it is: the Latin verb liquere, which means (imagine!), “to be fluid.” So to deliquesce means to dissolve or melt away, which isn’t even remotely related to “acquiesce,” but never mind.

Deliquesce. Deliquesce. Like what happens in the ice cream carton when nobody bothers to put the ice cream away. Like what happens to the snowman who is left to suffer the sun’s unflinching rays. Like what happens (and this is the example given on the page-a-day page) to the butter when you leave it out on the table on a summer afternoon. It deliquesces, right? Just like we always knew it did.

“Esurient” means hungry or greedy. A claque is a group hired to applaud at a performance– or any group of servile flatterers (sycophants– my students would know that one). “Truckle” means to act in a subservient manner: to submit. Suddenly the sentences form: Esurient for more candy, the child shoved others aside in his eagerness to find the most Easter eggs. The claque truckled to his every demand.

Ah-ha! That last one had Two new words in it– did you notice that? That’s like a double bonus or something. I am Very Into This. This, O Reader, is a Very Good Time.

And, likely, it’s good for me. What was that ad I used to hear on the radio years ago? “The vocabulary of the average person stops growing by the time he reaches 25….” Something like that. I Never wanted that to happen to me.

But why? Why should it matter? Oh, it doesn’t I suppose. Who needs New Words (again, I hear my students– some of them– in my mind) when the ones one already has Do The Trick?

The second definition of “deliquesce” is, perhaps, a helpful insight in answering the above question. It reads: “to become soft or liquid with age or maturity.”

I guess I just don’t want to acquiesce to this happening to my brain.

The post Page-a-Day appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

I did belch with much vulgar vehemence.

But it’s Shakespeare!

Sort of.

The post Shakespeare Update appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

My students are memorizing this. These and the other fourteen opening lines of the General Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

A few of them (small handful) actually like this assignment. I’m guessing that Most of them Don’t. And a very vocal and very small few have made it Abundantly Clear that they Don’t Approve At All.

I didn’t have to memorize it in school. Heck, I didn’t even read it in school– and I was in honors English all the way through my senior year. And I was at a Very Good public high school.

I have no explanation. I have no excuse.

But I am enjoying it now. Absolutely and For Certain. How often does one get to speak in Middle English? How often (outside of speaking Spanish) does one get to trill one’s r’s with such abandon? How often does one get to say less than one sentence and within it Appropriately Use both French and German pronunciation?

Don’t tell my students, but I Am Loving This.

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