Re: No, Yes, and But for Formulaic Writing

["Jeanne H. Simpson" <csjhs@ux1.cts.eiu.edu>]

I am charmed by the argument that everything afterwards is a gloss on
Mozart, either providing variation, commentary, argument for or against.
But whether one ends up with John Cage or not, one begins with Mozart.  Or
Bach.  I had a rhetoric teacher who argued that everything in rhetorical
theory is a gloss on Aristotle.

I remember asking my students once why they thought a writer would
deliberately and consciously choose to use a constraining format?  Why use
a 5 paragraph theme or a fugue or a Shakespearean sonnet, with the specific
constraints imposed by these forms?  Why not free verse instead?  Or jazz
improvisation?  I played a Bach fugue for them and then a piece by
then-Prince, from the Purple Rain  soundtrack, "Computer Blue."   Both
pieces mathematical and structured to a fare-thee-well.  Why did the
composers do that?

The question is not that a fugue is better than jazz improvisation,
because anyone who knows anything about music knows that each requires
skill and a deep understanding.    We should be asking instead, when is
one more appropriate than the other?  What would I learn, as a musician,
from a fugue that I could later apply to the jazz improv?  And vice versa? 

To present the five-paragraph theme as the only way to write is equivalent
to saying that all music must be in the form of a fugue or a waltz, played
only on the piccolo.  But we don't want forget either that fugues, waltzes
and piccolos all contribute to the corpus of music we enjoy. 

Writing a Shakespearean sonnet teaches us about poetry.  Writing
5-paragraph themes, as someone said so well, teaches us something about
structure and organization.  Sometimes you want the thesis at the
beginning.  And sometimes, it works best as a cannons-and-trumpets ending.
Sometimes, suspense is a value in an essay and sometimes it isn't.  

My point with all this rambling about music, poems, and essays is that we
need always to be careful of setting things up as an either/or polarity. 
We don't need to say 5-paragraph themes are good or bad. We need to say,
what can they teach?  Where do they fit into the scheme of things?  What
other forms might also be taught?  How do we teach the idea of form? How
can we encourage students to come to the question: what form would work
best here?  And sometimes, the answer might very well be, a five-paragraph
theme would work best.  

Jeanne Simpson
csjhs@eiu.edu