Will Hochman
4/20/06
English 112
Dr. Will Hochman
From Atoms to Bits to Where We Began And Always Were
I received this photo from a friend I made online. I've never met Jeff Alfier, but I know he's serving our country overseas, and I've enjoyed sharing memories and our mutual fondness of Richard Hugo, as well as our poetry. Richard Hugo was the best writing teacher I ever worked with...and though he's been dead for more than twenty years his spirit and pedagogy seem to help me every day of my learning life.
I can spend a lot of time looking at this photo...and the funny thing I was talking with my students about how strange using a typewriter feels. I have a portable Smith Corona and feel like it's similar to the fountain pens I love, but I still use the pens and the typewriter remains in the case. I do remember visiting Hugo in his offices and didn't think much about his typewriter then, but I think now how its keys must still be singing somewhere.
I used the word "context" at the beginning of the term with my freshmen writers because we need to better understand our rhetorical grounding and "context" helps writers situate themselves in their own ideas and writing practices. As writers I think we are all trying to look beyond ourselves to consider audiences and better language and thinking possibilities. My context here is the hybrid voice of a writer who publishes both books and screens without being certain which I love best, just like I'm never sure whether I love reading or writing more. Richard Hugo was a great poet and teacher, but it's his typewriter in the picture and reading "From Pencils to Pixels" by Dennis Baron with my students that got me thinking about how cyberspace is changing the way we create and own our words.
I'm a teacher who uses computers aggressively while also pushing creative thinking into the academic arena as powerfully as possible. I think my real context as an educator is to bring the best learning resources I know of into the classroom and learn from my students how they (vague pronoun intended) best work (or don't). Nicholas Negroponte wrote Being Digital in l995 and I think his early way of understanding the context of our lives with computers still works. Negroponte explains that we live in "real" worlds made of atoms, and "virtual" worlds made of bits. This idea and the notion of "hybridity" matters so much to me because I think of my own life as alternating current between atoms (physical) and bits (online and also the way writing is more than pixels, ink, or even words and sentences). And as Negroponte points out, it's not one or the other, but both ( ).
I'm going to use a poem I wrote to show some of the hybridity in my teaching life. I alternate between creative and critical thinking, between screens and paper, and as a passionate reader and writer all the time. I wrote "At The Point Of The Pencil; Such Heavy Lifting Of A Little Twig" after reading Baron's essay. Then I wondered if I had stolen too much from Baron as a poet, and what it would teach my students about plagiarism if I showed them the poem. So I sent the poem to Baron and he wrote back saying he was honored and felt the poem was an original, creative work that didn't need citation. I could guess my students would disagree because we've been learning to document our sources in MLA style all term. If you've read Baron's fine essay, maybe you can decide:
At The Point Of The Pencil; Such Heavy Lifting Of A Little Twig
for Denis Baron and for my students thinking creatively about their word adventures
At first I can't get beyond blocks and mental static to spot my favorite pencil
lying right in front of me, it's quite thicker than a number 2 could be
After panic, frantic desktop scans, end rhyming, and internal sound jams
finding me, I have my little tail wagging and ready to bark in my grasp
Fingers twisting the shaft sharpen this idea inspection with knowing lead
gave way to graphite long ago (1560 to be exact), later came erasing words like memory
In fact, Summerian inscriptions date back to 3500 BC
making writing's recall five or more millennia long not counting what is lost
What is a pencil without caoutchouc? Language without a dictionary?
What is an author without his pooch lying loyally at everyone's feet
Are you reading all sorts of woofs behind the scenes?
X Rated because you know rubber comes from sticky ficus juice?
But rubber's remembered name is not caoutchouc (cow' chewk)
(god bless you) as it sneezes away pencil marks like silence
Unearthed ten thousand year-old carvings recently found sleeping in Syria
wake thinking up that could link art to underground writing history
Will what the pencil scratches now last as long or go grave deep? Is writing's
timeless scam what draws readers in as willing shills whose souls are only pencil strong?
This broad mutt's brand name is Quattro though it's really a Michaelangelo
in wood bleeding yellow, blue, green and red lead that must mix unpredictably
Into purple, brown, and orange marks alphabetically graying themselves
with lost direction and memory about where to go next in our paper world
The innuendo techno-dog waits just beyond his daily walk time pawing
at this poem and supposing to know the next necessary pencil and paper path
For now, let's nose sniff the future to gauge the shade of plagiarism
that each character and syllable might pencil as more civilized mind stealing
*****
We don't talk enough about the love of creativity and the lingering spirits teachers and students in education, but I bet that memory retention of influential ideas and people is better than most of the things we are required to learn. A way this educational insight typically gets expressed and that still seems true for me is that we always need to learn and improve our processes of becoming life-long learners. The academic products of those processes (papers, tests, grades, etc.) are sometimes not as central to the knowledge we seek as they seem to be. Maybe that's a reason why computers and learning make so much sense to me. As cyberspace mysteriously unfolds and grows, I think we need to explore and change with the ways we encounter information while improving the ways we teach ourselves to know more and feel life more consciously.
Before tackling more complex issues of multimedia and multimodal technologies, I believe computers simply give us more multigenre and collaging possibilities than every before. I also think that the context of education (before computers became widespread in the 21 st Century )was based on the assumption that much of what was considered valuable knowledge could be taught and learned in a complete education. For several thousand years, education was knowing important information and ideas and attaching that knowing to ranks in life. However, computers have changed what that knowing means, as well as made it clear that there is too much for anyone to master. There are no experts in cyberspace because it's simply too vast...like our own minds.
Instead of mastering a discipline or knowing most of the literature of a culture or time, knowledge is becoming much more process oriented. How we find information and how we synthesize it and express our experiences are still human acts in a computerized context. Nonetheless, rhetorically, it would be unwise to underemphasize close study and understanding of the powerful ways that writing, learning and knowing are converging and changing in cyberspace. Physically, it would also be unwise to not see the dangers and potential of any changes, but as I listen to teachers discuss "Turnitin.com" and online paper sellers like "School Sucks.com" I wonder if we are missing out on the true forest of cyberspace for the old trees still living like paper. Using computers to create learning contexts simply makes good sense, as well as creative sense. I get suspicious whenever anyone uses a word like "creative" so maybe I can say what I mean a little better or at least differently with this poem?
This little tile,
a reject from it makers
(one of many
from generations of Rampinis)
transcends borders and time
with its cooked sand and color
almost living and grouted
into the jaundiced skin
and coagulated blood
of an Italian family's
dead ancestors.
This particular square
of hand-painted tile
cheaply brought its
right angling of yellow,
green, brown, orange and blue
back from Radda, Italy
(a happy place
despite its sound)
to cast "Il Volpe--The Fox"
stirring in front of a Cypress tree,
painted perhaps out of scale
but almost perfect
for all creatures
to see beyond.
The animal's brown pose
and memories of Italy
warm slowly with
tea brewing the green taste
of earth's surface on this tile
cracked and cooling
until it seems to taste
its gaze in yours.
"The fox knows many things,
the hedgehog
knows one big thing"
the swift worker
may have thought
as he exiled the flawed tile
just past the furnace
to land on the last table
marked even in English,
"Reduced"
and "No Return."
Broken heart dancer
from mold to fired moment,
these ceramic words
are really all of me
cooked, coming apart
and together again,
broken beautifully
to take stock
that's me
and think myself
more of a hedgehog
while knowing foxes
(like collage)
import better art.
C 2006 Will Hochman/ Freer Pecan Grove Press
*****
Not only do I think this poem creates some interesting thinking about what creativity is, but I have to note the irony of copyright. I'm honorably obliged to do so because I respect my publisher but I also know in my heart that anyone who wants this poem should have it. I got the poem from the tile I bought, and with my experiences with language letting me dwell in the artist's world. Richard Hugo was my guide into the worlds of poetry and teaching and a large part of what I write is really a weak echo of his heart and ideas about creativity and teaching writing. Nonetheless, I'm even guessing he'd be happy with some small part of my work, after all, the title of his collected poems is Making Certain It Goes On. I don't know for certain, but I think Hugo would probably be equally proud of his teaching going on in my classes.
I don't expect readers to instantly "get it" with "The Art of Collage in Cracked Italian," but I know that drawing out any thinking process from a variety of modes often helps us reach others more powerfully.
Did I love a book of poems by Richard Hugo ( Good Luck in Cracked Italian) too much, too little, or just enough? In any case, I believe he'd be happy with my poetic pun on his phrase and be the first to laugh at how I used his "cracked Italian." I may have moved from Hugo's intended meaning or maybe I just echoed it and copied his spirit? I think Dick meant to use language to trigger varying psychological states in his context of living in Italy after he first lived there as a WWII bomber and plane crash survivor. Good Luck in Cracked Italian is one of the greatest (but least known) collections of war poems. The reflection in Hugo's poems on his war life and interior instability should in his third book of poems should at least be required reading for all soldiers. I still use what Dick taught about creativity and believe he'd have been upset if I tried to footnote my use of "cracked Italian" instead of outright "stealing" it. Hugo taught his writing students that good poets "steal" and bad ones "borrow." However, after I learned with Dick, I went on to earn a Ph.D. where citing sources seemed almost as important as anything I could say or think. Feelings and beliefs were implicitly either unspoken or left to creative types there and in most academic places still. Despite the paradoxes in my training and the ongoing changes learning creates, I'm thinking now that once words help us know ourselves better, don't they become ours? Aren't they really us, not I?
I teach students how to avoid plagiarism by using the MLA sytem of documentation as carefully and as honestly as possible, but using a works cited list for this essay would make it more formal and correct than I want it to be. But then I wonder, do I note one of my sources, Richard Hugo, enough? Shouldn't I give my students a "Works Cited" list that would make it clear that much of my own poetry and pedagogy are based on the love, words and ideas of Hugo? How many times have teachers used language from other syllabi without notation? Why don't we list the MLA handbooks (i.e. The Everyday Writer by Andrea Lunsford) that we use in designing our Works Cited list since they are theoretically a source for us in our writing processes? Isn't language one big plagiarism since we use words we didn't create and are actually just borrowing?
I may be pushing plagiarism too far because I like to explode academic myths and issues with all the glee of a language agent provocateur, but what I'm really saying is that we need to find better ways to respect the acts of "mashing" or "webbing" or "mixing" than simply insisting on a static way of listing and noting sources. Often and especially when we are learning, how we bring together ideas is more important than whose ideas they are. Sometimes both source and citation matter a great deal.
I'm simply saying we need some flexibility and creative in that process, just as I'm hoping this whole essay shows my students a bit more of the flexibility they can use to achieve success in their academic composition endeavors. I'm writing this draft from an idea structure that I've been living and teaching for the last thirty years. But the older I grow, the richer and less reliable memories are...though they are reliable for me when it comes to creating ideas from "seeds" started in other writing at other times. Right now I'm copying and pasting my own work in other modes (email, poetry, revision) so much that by the time I'm finished even I'm not completely certain what I've copied and pasted appropriately. I intend to go back and document sources carefully as a working model of good scholarship, but I think the boundaries of borrowing ideas, feelings, spirit and poetry reach far beyond any style of document.
As a final irony, I have to admit that doing my own assignment (see Appendix 1) with my students makes me think beyond teaching to learning. I openly admit that as I teacher and writer I hope to succeed with them as much and maybe even more than they wish to succeed with me. That's part of why I wrote this essay. I'm certainly going to wonder what they learn from it, and I'm going to wonder just what they think about how well I've composed parts of myself and others in this essay to do essay assignment #3. And yes, my students' final grade of this essay matters, maybe more than I'd like to admit. Just as Negroponte says it's not atoms or bits, but both, I think that my students' and my essays are not simply about writing process (idea structuring and research, drafting, finishing) or product (meeting requirements, getting good feedback, grades) but both. In the end, as we learn to read, write and think, aren't we really composing knowledge and feelings about everything more than we really know, just to find some truth of what we really can know?
Appendix 1
Assignment Guidelines for Essay #3
Purpose:
Write a 4-6 page researched essay about any aspect of how you use and understand computers in your life. You will need to formulate a thesis concerning a narrowed aspect of your computer use that asserts something about your particular insights into computer use. You will need to support your assertion with research (from at least 5 outside sources and from at least 3 required sources). You are challenged to showsyou are learning about your selected aspect of computer use, that you are able to discover new ideas and important questions, and that you can argue persuasively to help readers see your points of view. You are encouraged to analyze any aspect of computer technology and the ways it affects education, art, or any area of your life you choose. You are also strongly encouraged to use creative writing as part of your essay, as well as being encouraged to use multi-genres and media. Consider how telling good stories or using appropriate poems and images may help to support and enhance your essays' thinking.
Goals
1) Writers will practice ways to initiate and design an analysis of a particular aspect of computer use by using brainstorming, reading, observation, researching, idea structuring and drafting so that writers will develop ideas that are necessary and insightful when we think about how we experience computers in our lives.
2) Writers will demonstrate research skills by using at least 5 outside sources and at least 3 required sources in a 4-6 page researched essay, and integrating those sources into their essays with introductions and analyses that guide readers through the writer's research.
3) Writers will create interest by making readers see that the knowledge in their essays is carefully assembled, analyzed, and persuasively argued in critical and creative ways. In other words, writers are challenged to creatively and critically develop their narrowed theses and find interesting ways to develop useful ideas in their essays.
4) Writers will use carefully evaluated research to make ideas more credible and more interesting.
5) Writers will show improvement of good use of grammar, syntax, punctuation, spelling, MLA, and correct essay formatting.
Time Management:
Idea Structure due 4/13
First, finished draft due 4/20
Final Draft Due 4/27
Primary Readings:
"From Pencil to Pixels The Stages of Literacy Technologies" by Denis Baron (handout)
"How Computers Change the Way We Think" by Sherry Turkel (handout)
"The DNA of Information" from Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte (handout)
Links under the Computers Module on our homepage can count as required or outside sources (http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/112.htm)
Research Responsibilities:
Your research effort should include a minimum of 5 outside sources and more sources are encouraged. You must also use at least 3 of the required resources. In addition to the required readings above, previously assigned readings may be used as a required source for your essay. Try to make sure you have time to consult with a librarian and remember that creative use of research is encouraged. The point of using research is to develop keener questions and new insights as you work to enhance your knowledge of your narrowed topic. Do not simply select easy sources--find the best sources possible!
Works Cited