Deconstructionism

The Knockers BY Francis Dunggan They give her no credit they go to her past Say that she was ex druggie and her new look won't last She once worked in a brothel on sleaze side of town And though she lives clean now they still put her down. A family woman to good man good wife And with two lovely children she live a clean life But the knockers still knock her such cruel things they say And her past held against her it won't go away And the knockers still knock her it doesn't seem quite fair As she's changed for the better and her type are so rare And though the knockers too many and the fair minded too few Credit ought be given where credit is due And if you are not perfect yourself then leave others alone As the one without sin ought to cast the first stone.

 ANALYSIS

Insofar as a literature course is ostensibly about the activity of reading and appreciating literary texts, we might wish to consider how we, as literature teachers, can best instill the love of reading in oustudents. In teaching the short story, for instance, we might now consider taking our students through the process of story-telling, by not simply enumerating its elements, but by letting them experience these on their own: with our guidance, they can make up plots, think up characters and dialogue, imagine settings, play around with points of view, contemplate ideas or themes.

In teaching poems, on the other hand, the teacher might wish to end or emphasize certain lessons with a poetic exercise that may or may not eventuate in the writing of a poem, but at least a kind of demonstration of certain poetic skills: poetic description or metaphor-making, for instance, the correct use of other figures of speech, or even an illustration of certain rudiments of versification.

In short, we can encourage them to tell stories (for poems also tell stories)—either as "re-tellings" of stories they already know, or if the gods are being kind, original stories. Rather than alienate them from literature, we can enjoin our students to actively participate in its production by writing texts, and not merely passively reading them.

There are several fallacies that need to be unpacked here. One of them is that a teacher has herself to be a seriously practicing creative writer to be able to teach her students how to write poetry or fiction. This is obviously not correct. The requisites of teaching creative writing are, to my mind, the very same requisites of teaching literature: passion, method, observation, sympathy (which can some­times take the form of patience—an inexhaustible supply of it), fairness, a courageous love for the written word. Off the cuff, I can only make one addition to this list, and if anything it's what a teacher of crea­tive writing might need to have in greatest abundance: humility.