The Art of Form, The Art of Argument

For this week’s readings, we again find new ways of thinking about argumentation and form. A departure from the annotated bits and pieces of Geoffrey Sirc’s “Box Logic,” both Peter Elbow and Barry Kroll still do maintain the sense of exploration, withholding of certain connections, and experimentation with forms that Sirc proposes. I also think that both Elbow and Kroll want to recapture the art of writing and rhetoric in the twenty-first century, just as Sirc wants us to imagine composition literally and our own roll as designers. For me, Peter Elbow’s “The Music of Form: Rethinking Organization” enacted the type of dynamic “itch and scratch” that he proposes as the differences between a visual understanding of form and a temporal understanding. This long article kept me reading until the end because of Elbow’s voice and the narrative he tells. In many ways, I think Elbow makes a great point in noting that readers are stuck experiencing texts in time, which means some visual metaphors (such as “sign-posting” in essays or thesis statements providing a “map” for readers) DO seem to fall short, particularly in the type of article-length papers we write in graduate school.  Particularly challenging is his re-imagining of “cohesion” and  “coherence,” which we often think of as logical and linear (“do all my points make sense in the order in which they appear?”), but Elbow wants us to think of us part of a pull that draws your reader through your own thinking process (or a cleaned up version of it). He writes,

“Current notions of cohesion points to local links between individual sentences or sections. Links are good; they grease the skids, but they don’t pull. I’m interested in what we might call dynamic cohesion – where we’re pulled from element to element. Current notions point to global semantic webbing that make readers feel that all the parts of a text are about the same topic. That’s valuable (and not easy). But I’m interested in dynamic coherence where the parts of the essay don’t just sit together because they are semantically linked; rather, we feel them pulled together with a kind of magnetic or centripetal force. Dynamic cohesion and dynamic coherence create the music of form” (633).

His illustrations of music and the type of dissonance and consonance that pulls the listener into the experience of rhythm and melody in time are useful. They remind us of the oral nature of speech and what is lost when we attempt to visually ramify a text through bullet points, outlines, and the dreaded five-paragraph essay. The oral nature of language is highlighted when Elbow states that the most common way that “writers bind words and pull readers through a text” is through Narrative (634). Particularly helpful for me in my own writing is his point that narrative can be personal stories, yes, but it can also be a mode of narrating our own thinking that is similar (though in some cases less personal) than the exploratory essays we just completed.

Elbow’s notion of “writing straight into our perplexity” and then narrativizing it is also helpful. This is a more sophisticated version of Allyn & Bacon’s “wallowing in complexity,” which in that textbook strikes me as a prewriting exercise. Elbow suggests we think about how this kind of rhetorical strategy can be employed in our own writing to accomplish that “itch and scratch” effect. One strong support of such a style that asserts something, for example, and then amends it, or takes us forward only to redouble back or even repeat, is that is can help elucidate very complicated arguments for readers. I have noticed yet again this semester in reading theory for our Contemporary Theory course that some of the most enjoyable theory to read uses sign-posting and also is able to create a dynamic pull through sentences and concepts that allows one idea to be stated, then restated, then explained and  clarified further, and etc. At the end of his article, Elbow concludes that we can in FACT use BOTH the visual and the temporal in even our most erudite in academic writing, and I think this is proven when we look at some of our favorite critics and writers in general.  Elbow’s version of “having your cake and eating it too” is as follows:

“If we start with thesis statements and introductory mapping, we seem to undermine the possibility of building an essay out of perplexity. This is most obvious in clunky five-paragraph essays and wooden textbooks. But it’s not that simple. Consider the case of narrative and how we are sometimes pulled along powerfully by the unfolding of exactly what we know it coming. And the time-binding power of good music is not destroyed if we’ve already heard it many times (though too many times too recently can be a problem). So, too, we CAN in fact be riveted by the dynamic energy of an essay that starts off announcing its claim and structure” (648-649).

Elbow has encouraged me to really encourage my students to try out different forms for their argumentative essays this unit (we’re very early in the unit, so this seems like a viable option). He has also made me think about the form of my own writing, which I feel is missing that voice that Elbow emphasizes toward the end of his piece. I am not going to persuade people with my stellar logic and organization (I’m just not that organized), but it’s possible that I could learn to be more purposefully creative with how I arrange my thoughts and develop an authorial voice.  

To move to Barry Kroll in “Arguing Differently,” I think this article does a wonderful job of further clarifying the concept that James Kastely in “From Formalism to Inquiry: A Model of Argument in Antigone” introduced us to last week. For one thing, Kroll uses a lot more practical examples of how he organizes his semester-long class on “arguing differently,” including the types of difference approaches he teaches (conciliatory, integrative, and deliberative), as well as readings that might accompany such approaches. Last week, many of us may be thinking that trying to get English 1000 students to focus on Antigone for an entire semester would be hard for those of us who don’t study Greek Tragedies that often and also for students who perhaps we can’t even get to read The New York Times. So, Kroll offers a model that is not based on literature but rather makes students focus ultimately on the value in different kinds of argumentation for different situations. Most importantly, it seems to help students grasp the complexity of problems, answers and arguments in general in virtually every aspect of their life. Even if students just walk out of the class with more of an awareness, I would consider such a course a success. Naturally, this type of course would require a commitment, just as “Box Logic” does, to take the time to develop this type of thinking and writing for students new to the whole game. I’m wondering if there are textbooks or readers that have this kind of focus on “arguing differently” that would make designing this course even easier.

Elbow/Kroll

I found the Peter Elbow article "The Music of Form" interesting for multiple reasons. At first I held resistance to the comparison he makes with music. Then, as I kept reading, I realized that in a creative writing context, what he's saying absolutely applies. “Sentences themselves illustrate this truth about the experience of language,” Elbow tells us, “sentences are little pieces of energy or music—they have rhythm and melody— even on the page. Or, rather, they have energy, rhythm, and melody if the writer has been successful. A good sentence pulls us in and leads us on to the end; it sets up expectation and relief” (626). I'm not sure where my hesitancy came from in thinking about applying this same concept with composition. I guess part of the bias that's been ingrained in me that composition must be boring, that it can't or doesn't have a creative component to it. This article, much like the box-logic one, is starting to break away at my preconceived notions about the ways in which a composition course can be.

I was grateful when Elbow got into how to take his ideas and to apply them to expository and analytical writing that is done in a composition classroom. The example he gives of Martin Luther King's speech was particularly helpful. Not only would that speech be a good example of the ethos/logos/pathos rhetorical triangle, but I think providing it to students to see how like music, there are repetitions of phrases and metaphors and other speech patterns (635). I think getting students students to think about how these pieces is something not necessarily stressed in composition classes, and yet the more I think about it, the more I begin to believe it's a vital component in creating engaging and moving writing.

The section “Binding Time with Voice” reminded me of something Drew mentioned he does in his class where he has them read aloud their essays during the peer review process. Like Elbow, Drew understands that “when we hear naturally spoken language—or when we hear a difficult text read out loud well—we don’t have to work so hard to understand the meaning...So if a writer is skilled enough to write sentences that readers actually hear—hearing the accents, rhythms, and melody in the silent words on the page—readers will actually “hear” some of the meaning” (643).

As an aside, when Elbow talks about composition textbooks and how even though “they are impressively well organized in all these signposting ways (along with the best graphics that money can buy). Yet they often put readers to sleep” (633). Janessa and I have been discussing this issue with a lot of the different textbooks we've been looking at for our textbook review. A few of the ones we've looked at are well put-together and organized beautifully. Upon closer reading though, we found the application for certain types of projects confusing or the reading material too difficult. I can't speak for Janessa, but I found myself having the same lost feeling that Elbow describes and the same sense of the pieces not “hanging together or gelling as readers” (633).

The “Arguing Differently” article by Barry Kroll was also enlightening for me, most specifically the three scenarios he provides to his students that show the different approaches he calls the conciliatory, the integrative, and the deliberative (38). Originally when I first thought about how I'd teach argument, I considered having a debate in a class, but I'm afraid that students in a debate would do all the things Kroll describes. I like Kroll's approach to argument better. In some ways, it reminds me of the concept of countering a text that Joseph Harris talks about in his book “Rewriting”.


Reading Barry Kroll's article made me wonder if he had a composition textbook so that I could see in more depth his teaching strategies for other types of academic writing. He has a few books, most of them out-of-print, one of which called “Strategies for Academic Writing: A Guide for College Students” and also a book on teaching the Vietnam War in literature which I thought interesting. According to the bio on Amazon, Kroll believes that “students should be personally absorbed in a topic—emotionally connected to key issues and texts—if inquiry is to be more than a perfunctory exercise.” Even though this quote comes from a book unrelated to composition, I think the central idea of it is an important one and I wanted to share it here.

As a fiction writer...

Elbow's message really resonated with me. I love narrative. I respond to the rhythms of narrative in a way very similar to the way I respond to music -- the same waves of expectation and satisfaction, itch and scratch, stretches of both adrenaline and frustration. I like the idea of taking narrative principles and combining them with academic writing (whatever that is). Elbow is clearly aware how completely boring typical comp student essays are, and how the act of reading, which can supply us with such fascinating discoveries in itself, has been pushed aside in favor of thesis statements, bullet points and signposts.

Elbow's "story of thinking" is  exactly what we've been doing with the exploratory paper. The cycles of expectation and satisfaction go hand in hand with that model. "I started off thinking this, but then I found this, now I'm thinking this, and it's making me consider something else I hadn't thought about..." A good paper should take you somewhere. It shouldn't just bring you back around to where you were in the first damn place.

My students proved to be very confused by the exploratory essay. After reading their drafts, many of which were traditional research or argument-based papers, I readdressed the original intention of the exploratory paper in class, and I think many of them had a small light bulb moment. "Oh, you want us to do THAT? Nobody's ever asked us to do THAT." I found myself using the temporal phrase "Your Research Journey," which sounds super cheesy, but which I think pretty accurately describes what we're asking students to do in an exploratory paper. "Research journey" is a time metaphor rather than a visual one, and I think it's important to make sure students understand that there's a benefit to getting out of that five-paragraph high school rut. Scratch that creative itch.

 This is here for my own amusement.

Temporal and Timeless

Peter Elbow's essay "The Music of Form" felt very familiar to me as a poet. Theorists from T.S. Eliot to Harold Bloom have echoed what Archibald MacLeish wrote in his famous "Ars Poetica": "A poem should be motionless in time." Here is the poem:

Ars Poetica
by Archibald MacLeish
A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown— A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. * A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs, Leaving, as the moon releases Twig by twig the night-entangled trees, Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind— A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs. * A poem should be equal to: Not true. For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf. For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea— A poem should not mean But be.

The goal of the perfect poem is to be at once temporal (pertaining specifically to the current state in which it was written) and timeless (universal, could be understood and emotionally resonant at any given time). Hence, Elbow's idea of binding time--in all the various forms that he describes--is nothing new. The poet always has been preoccupied with creating both a present that is informed by the past and a past that is informed by the present--all in one poem! It's difficult work. I definitely related, then, to the question: "Is it possible to have the advantages of both--a well-ordered record of past thinking that nevertheless preserves and even enacts the life, presence, and energy of thinking in process?" And furthermore, I ask: how on Earth do we teach this to students?

Now I am stressed out by these enormous questions. It is nice to know, though, that writers of every genre struggle with these answers. To lessen the emotional load, here is an adorable picture of my kitten, who is also questioning how to be at once temporal and timeless.

Form and Function

Well, I can understand why Peter Elbow is so respected in the rhet comp world; the man writes a artful and impactful essay. I like that he is trying to fuse "academic writing," whatever that is, with creative/artistic writing. In fact both pieces we read seemed to be pushing the envelope of the rhetorical choices we have available when writing a traditional essay (coincidence? I think not fine peoples). 

Peter (can I call him Peter?) wanted his students to think about their essays in terms of time: when do we let the reader know our intentions, how do we motivate him/her to continue reading and how does our paper set, meet, and frustrate expectations in order to create a satisfying effect that is usually reserved for fiction? These are all great questions, and honestly ones I have never thought about before. 

My central issue with these questions though is: does any undergraduate student, or, heck, even graduate student give enough time to essays to think about these questions. These are very high level organizational issues that rarely come into play if one is writing a essay in a matter of weeks, days and hours instead of months like most publishable essays. 

This thought aside, Peter's point is still a interesting one, and one that might be incorporated into classes that use literature and poetry in some way or another. I know I have already mentioned that I use literature in my class, and I think for me this essay opened up the opportunity to look at the rhetorical choices the author has made in order to demonstrate some of Peter’s ideas about time and organization. I also like the fact that Peter both mentions the importance of and then challenges the reliance on signposting in essays. Sometimes simply stating is the easiest and most transparent way of moving the reader smoothly through the essay, but other times this becomes less than exciting. Thinking about the essay’s energy and what the reader might be feeling while reading the essay are important for any writer to consider. Peter’s five ideas concerning time oriented techniques were standouts and highly practical, and I am definitely toying around with presenting them in my class when we move into the research paper in the next few weeks.

I really liked “Arguing Differently” as well, mostely because it gave a clear framework for dealing with different types of argumentation. While I don’t ever want to deal with subjects like abortion or the death penalty again in my classroom if I don’t have to, this was a interesting way of turning those controversial topics into interesting and nuanced subjects. Again, ideas like this are not ones that I would structure my class around like Kroll does, but they might be interesting rhetorical choices that I might present to my students. Deciding whether the arguments being written should be conciliatory or deliberative, if students should present a thesis in the beginning or the middle, or thinking about how to frame your argument so that the reader responds positively to it are all choices that the student could make deliberately instead of haphazardly, and I like that Kroll gives a solid and practical framework in which to present these ideas to students. 

Box grammar...box composition

Refreshing ideas...how do I teach this way....wouldn't it be great to have a box by the door where students drop in their ideas...a collection of scraps of paper...found stuff...things...a pebble that make you think of how and idea ripples outward....how interesting the concepts in "A Model of Argument in Antigone" support the ideas in "Box Logic."  If we could see how recognizing difference actually takes us closer to the truth...there is no one idea...there is a multiplicity of thought.  I would love to teach nonlinear writing...hybridity....This is the way we think after all....One thought spinning off the other...like the Renga poem or the jazz jam.

The greatest so far in teaching the exploratory essay is to inspire students not to begin with a position before they have allowed themselves the adventure of discovery....of inquiry.  They are so used to be told what to do (and we reward and punish based on this) that it is difficult to inspire them to think for themselves, to not just follow the path that you have laid out for them put to build their own path.  I found that when I defined where they looked for sources that is all they did.  I had to give them permission to follow their own instincts.  But the box logic affirms that is all relevant and helps them develop their associative language/design skills.  This will beneficial them today because all ideas all situations are complex....none linear and simple...there are no black and white issues.

It is nice to read references to poets as rhetorical thinkers and to value the haphazard and chance in critical thinking.

Box-Logic Assignments/Syllabi Ideas

The article “Box-Logic” by Geoffrey Sirc reminded me of a few different activities I've known other composition instructors to do in their classrooms and I thought I'd share them here:

“The box, then, is the historically preferred format to archive our most treasured baubles. Johnson-Eilola wonders at the underuse of programs like Storyspace and Dreamweaver in composition classes. In a pedagogy of the box, their blank screens could act as a blank canvas or cartouche, a flatbed frame ready to be inscribed with the flotsam and jetsam of textual fragments from the real or virtual world, objects, images, sounds, along with sound-bite poetry or pensees” (Sirc 21).

This quote made me think of an assignment sequence from a course called “Shaping Identities Through the Digital Sphere.” One of the assignments early on in the unit was to write a critical essay concerning Hypertext Fiction/Electronic Literature. Students would look at pioneering examples of hypertext narratives like Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl or Michael Joyce's Afternoon, a story, and read examples of what is considered hypertext in print (sample chapters from Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler or Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch), and then students would write a five-page critical essay responding to the problems and concerns of a hypertext narrative. How do they challenge print-based understandings of plot, narrative, and rhetoric?

This assignment would transition into a final unit in which students create and design a themed-based website where they adopt a novel or a story into a hypertext fiction.

Similar to the website, I've known instructors to assign students to create their own graphic novels as one of the assignment sequences (in one of the textbooks I own, there is a chapter devoted to how you'd go about teaching this, if anyone is interested). The idea with both is that students use rhetorical strategies and research skills (the same things they'd be doing when writing a research paper) in a different light. They don't necessarily have to be excellent artists to do a graphic novel (they could do stick figures) just as long as they are thinking about audience and purpose, and communicating their ideas effectively. With the web design, they could do Dreamweaver (I think it's helpful) but they could design their website on storyboards, just as long as they understand the idea of how websites are structured and pages are linked/connected.

“What is it that writers do, exactly, if not (as Katherine Stiles describes the Fluxus box artists) “point to things in the world and negotiate their meanings through symbolic productions” (24).

This quote made me think of the conceptual artist Sophie Calle (I won't go into her work here but she's a wonderful artist whose work I'd love to introduce in a class). Calle reminded me of another syllabus I've known someone to do that focused on exploring a subculture through found texts.

I have copies of both these syllabi and assignments if anyone wants more information or wants a better explanation.