Response to Trista Edwards Journal Week 8

Trista wrote,
"I am really finding ‘The Writing Experiment’ by Smith hard to follow, and maybe overall, not to helpful. I don’t think this is a text that I would be interested in using in the future to teach creative writing. First, for beginning writers I would imagine that it is not completely accessible. I find it hard to access even after writing for several years now. There are sections for beginners and those whom Smith would conclude to be more advanced, yet I feel that the book does not give me a great deal of material to work with. The few exercises that I have attempted to try from this text do not produce much workable material for me. And although this is true of a lot of other exercises I find the ones included in this book not fruitful. I was wondering how others in the class felt about this text—those both new and experienced to writing and how or if (those who teach) find anything useful in it to teach young writers?"

I will respond to this. I have found some of this material helpful, especially instructing with it.

The early exercises are largely written below the graduate level you are on. My high school students got the early exercises in chapters one and two with some guidance. Second, some of it may be better suited to other forms of creative writing than poetry. Animating a person in action in chapter two and Dialoguing in chapter six are much more helpful for my students skit writing in Drama class than they have been for my own poetry.
As many of these texts for teaching are written with the teacher in mind I can understand how it might frustrate you. especially when reading the latter chapters that are on a higher level. Compared to Dr.. Davidson's text and the Hugo text it is painfully boring to read anything other than the exercises themselves. and most of the exercises probably offer few surprises for you. However, If you have not taken a teachers research cohort and ever plan on doing so, wading through this flat and cold writing in between  the exercises might be very useful for you, because this is just the sort of cold language that you will have to deal with for that sort of course.

It is also important to bear in mind that this text like our world literature text helps give us a global perspective on poetry.

Additionally, many of the concepts in this text are already covered in class, and I would imagine are not new to you, such as differing first word and reorienting text. However, some of what we cover in class is found in this text and nowhere else that I can surmise, so it might aide you as a teacher as a supplemental text.