The Poetry Workshop
I did my very first poetry workshop yesterday.
What was neat about it was their willingness to modify the form of the meter, and verse - and toy with it all. It felt like doing a sort of workout. I am not sure if those kind of things make you stronger. But certainly you had to think on the spot, they will give you a form, like, say , haiku. If what you write doesn't have the exact number of syllables , its not Haiku , 7 5 , something. You have to get it right. Or a zen master appears out of nowhere and hits you across the shoulders with a long bamboo whipping cane. Most everyone there tried to match the form that was available, and of course, there was the odd one or two that matched the form precisely. We beat them up after class.
Comments
And I didn't like math that much when I was in seventh grade but I wish we knew then what we know now, that learning about math cross-fertilizes pathways of the brain that allow us to write and appreciate the written word, more poetically.
That should be taught to every seventh-grade math student.