"You have written a poem that is all idea. Important ideas, certainly, and clearly strongly felt by you, but I’ll be darned if I can find a single, solitary ITEM-THING-something that can be touched or smelled or tasted or heard or seen—anywhere in this poem. Even the river and mountain are metaphoric, not real. I imagine you saw the parts of speech as a sort of list. It is, but those items do not provide the sort of “thingness” that this approach to poetry looks for. The idea is to use things to explain abstractions and ideas. You try to use abstractions to explain ideas! A catalogue driven approach would have listed all the titles of the books you have encountered, from Run Spot Run to where you are today. Or a list of imaginary places in books that have captured your imagination. Or a list of teachers. Or even your earliest words. Once you have that list, you could organize, analyze, and present y0ur ideas within those items, commenting briefly. That’s the catalogue’s approach. This, unfortunately, no matter how heartfelt. Is not. Have you looked at one of the student’s poems in the Workbook about learning and teaching words to his little brother? It is more metaphor than catalogue, but it does transform the abstract into the specific!
If you choose to revise this for Module 6, I would keep only the concept of “speech,” and find a whole other approach".
It makes sense to me. Another example of me thinking I know what I'm doing and not bothering to read the required readings before doing the assignment.
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