Now That You Go to School....

Response to “Now that You Go to School,” by Britton

The question I have chosen to ask, and attempt to answer, is found in the discussion question section of this article on page 17. “Would ‘transactional’ writing ever benefit from having the characteristics Britton associates with ‘expressive’ or ‘poetic; writing? Could transactional writing ever have these characteristics?” It is just a wonderful place both to start and to pause. For me, there is an easy “yes. yes” answer to both of these questions which stems from my reading and enjoying the poetry of handwritten “transactional” letters, both those of famous writers and family members. It stems from my having picked up a cook book the other day and being astonished at the beauty of the recipe introductions and pausing at the history behind the foods. Britton writes that “a piece of transactional writing may elicit the statement of other views [while]…poetic writing…demands an audience that does not interrupt” [11]. We don’t read a poem and then immediately think “I need to write a poem.” But there is definitely room for portions of transactional writing to assume the poetic stance. Perhaps it is the passage of time the grants this status. It is something that I definitely want to explore further.

In fact, I am going to predict that it is the passage of time and the reduction of the pragmatic relevance of transactional writing that elevates is to the expressive and even the poetic. There is a certain poetry to unsent letters, just as there is an ascertainable poetry in the missives of Cicero and Vergil. There is an expressive quality to imagining a grandparent’s grocery list. After the passage of a century, a property deed becomes an archival treasure. If we can divorce transactional writing from time, the infusion of eternity somehow elevates it.

Connection: The idea of using expressive and poetic texts to actually respond other poetic pieces created a lot of connections for me. On page 11, Britton juxtaposed Hamlet with  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Both pieces can stand on their own as works of art but one definitely came first and inspired the other. It reminds me of the way literature itself immerges as a response to reality or to history. It reminds me of the year my literature professor allowed us to choose any form of writing we wanted for our final “essay,” it just had to address a book we had read in some way. I wrote a short story that took place in More’s Utopia. I ended up having to reread Utopia two or three times to gather all the facts I needed but in the end I held a piece I could be proud of; a piece that could stand on its own and yet is completely immersed in More’s original understanding.

Response: My response, my personal reaction to this piece by Britton…it really made me want to respond to literature with actual literature of my own and to allow my students to do the same. It is a practice that infuses excitement and energy but that simultaneously pushes kids to look even further into the literature they wish to “comment” on creatively.

Visualize: My visual attempts to describe a question that this piece leaves me with: As we continue to refine transactional and expressive speech until it reaches a poetic level, does truth/reality/actually suffer? As our writing becomes more efficient, do our stories become fiction?

EXPRESSIVE ­---------------------------------------------  POETIC

TRUTH ----------------------------------------------------  EMPELLISHMENT