|
Portfolio
The English Lyric, Foot by Foot
Convincing undergraduates to read and enjoy poetry is a perennial, and sometimes daunting, objective for English teachers. Having students understand the unique kind of thinking that poetry opens becomes a passionate pursuit.
by Professor Richard Gillin
Photographs by Christina Granberg '03
Where is the place of poetry, especially English poetry of the distant past, in relation to the exciting and innovative arts of our moment? The answer lies in our humanity. No matter how far our technology goes, we still have to confront our humanness. To understand our humanness, it is essential to see where we have been, what we have felt and thought. Poetry provides us with a rich record of all forms of human experience. But how to compete with our tendency to look at ourselves in our contemporary world, rich as it is with fascinating details, as opposed to confronting the language of the past with its demanding syntax and diction, not to mention its references to events, people and places not familiar to us?
A means to take on--although by no means solve--part of this question presented itself to me in the fall of 1997, and the experiment proved to be very successful. I was asked to develop a summer program for our students at a place called Kiplin Hall in North Yorkshire, England. Kiplin Hall, built in 1620, was the ancestral home of the Calvert family, a very powerful Yorkshire family and the founding family of Maryland in colonial times. Since I had studied in England and spent a sabbatical at Oxford, I felt confident about traveling with students to England, but I wanted to do more than just visit historic sites, or lecture about important literary works and writers.
I began outlining a course of study that would connect literature and places. By my initial plan, which combined a good deal of hiking with a wide range of reading and writing, I imagined using Wuthering Heights as one of the readings, for example. The book seemed a natural since many of the places in the novel are based on buildings that are still standing. As I thought more about my plan, however, I was dissatisfied. While seeing a number of places connected with Wuthering Heights might be interesting, it would make me something of a tour guide and the students more or less passive observers. Throughout the winter months, I worked through a number of texts that could be used in conjunction with the landscapes found in the Yorkshire Moors and the Yorkshire Dales, but the feeling that something vital was missing nagged at me. While reading some of Emily Brontė's poetry, I began to get a sense of a new direction. Instead of using Wuthering Heights, I thought, I would use Brontė's somewhat lesser-known poetry. And rather than merely visiting the places associated with Emily Brontė's work, I thought that it would be much more valuable to provide experiences, as much as possible, like the ones she wrote about in her poems. To this new end, I mapped out a walk through the Haworth Moors, as well as the North Yorkshire Moors, and I looked through anthologies and collections of poems to see if I could connect particular landscapes with particular poets. My thought was not so much finding exact locations for specific poems, but rather in developing experiences that would approximate those found in the poems.
By the end of the winter, I decided to offer a course on the English lyric. The core of my original plan to develop experiences that would connect with literature came into focus as I chose to use a range of lyric poetry from the medieval period to the present. No longer would I limit myself to Yorkshire writers; instead I would mine the abundance of English lyricism. As spring arrived, I had outlined a list of poems that we would study. Among them were a good number of William Wordsworth's poems since the Lake District, where Wordsworth spent much of his life, was a short drive from Kiplin Hall.
When the announcement was made about the proposed course, students had a mixed reaction: while they were interested because of the Maryland-Kiplin Hall connection, they were doubtful about studying the English lyric. But when I assured them that the course would be different from whatever past experiences they had had with poetry, our group--limited to 12 by the accommodations at Kiplin--quickly formed. The students ranged from freshmen to rising seniors, and only three were potential English majors. I emphasized that they would need a good pair of hiking boots and warm, rainproof outerwear. When I further suggested that they should get themselves in shape by walking a few miles a day for the rest of the spring term, they looked doubtful but remained committed to the program.
We arrived in England in mid-June, blessed by the first warm, clear day in a month, and we took the opportunity to walk out into the hills south of Richmond. After walking an hour or so, we came to a pasture high on the leeward side of a hill, overlooking an expanse of richly green farmland. It was here that we had the first of our classes, with the palpable beauty of the day underscoring the medieval lyrics we read. The special joy of a bright June day and the sound of a cuckoo in a nearby woods eliminated the time distance between the writer of "Sumer is ycomen in" and 12 students sitting in the grass on that Sunday afternoon. In our discussion, the students observed how the lyric as a form seemed to concern itself with the deeply personal and sensual parts of life, while at other times it treated the sacred and the unknowable. This perceptive observation would form the basis of several discussions we would have later in the course, as we investigated how several poets followed out the sophisticated implications of this sort of dual focus.
During the weeks that followed, I wove classes into each day's journey or expedition. We visited the Brontė parsonage in Haworth, for example, and after walking through the house and around the village, we set off across the Haworth Moors as the Brontės had in the nineteenth century. The grayness of the sky was intensified by the remarkably cold wind, which blew bursts of rain at us sideways. An hour's wandering brought us to a shallow depression in the moor that allowed us to sit out of the wind. There, we took turns reading selected poems of Emily Brontė, which evolved into a discussion about the uniqueness of the moorland and Brontė's response to it. The forces of nature were clearly apparent to us, and the haunting quality of Emily Brontė's poems was underscored by the feel of the place. Our discussion was free and open; everyone had something to say in spite of the cold and damp and the mud that had splashed up high on our clothes. The full weight of the impression that the elements made on the students was not apparent until later in our trip when they wrote about this day. A host of specific nuances showed up in their recollections, and their comments about Brontė were rich in appreciation of the wildness of the moors as well as the threatening quality of the place.
The Lake District was an hour-and-a-half drive from our home base at Kiplin Hall, and tours of William Wordsworth's houses at Rydal and Grasmere were "musts." Carrying packs filled with lunches and poetry, we drifted through Rydal Hall absorbing the rich domestic environment of the Wordsworths and then set out to walk to Dove Cottage via Nab Scar, a mountain just about Rydal Hall. The climb up Nab Scar proved daunting since the ascent is literally breathtaking and at times nearly vertical. At the summit, we sat to have lunch and a reading and discussion of some of Wordsworth's poems. During our talk, one student read an entry from a journal by Dorothy Wordsworth (William's sister) in which she talks about Nab Scar. Instantly, everyone wanted to read more of Dorothy's entries, and the students seemed genuinely fascinated that what she described was what we were experiencing. The landscape had not changed in any perceptible way; the trails and roads were the same; even the sheep and the flowers echoed from the past. Selections from The Prelude came alive for the students as they imagined Wordsworth climbing the very same paths with an eye on the island in the lake at Grasmere. On the way to Grasmere, we passed the pool memorialized by Wordsworth in "Resolution and Independence" where he and Dorothy met a leech gatherer. By the time we arrived at Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum, the students felt a kinship with Wordsworth, having just literally struggled in his footsteps, and they were eager to read more of his poetry.
For 25 years, I have taught the English Romantic poets in various courses, but this time there was a resonance that was substantially different. It was not that students in the past did not appreciate and understand the poetry; rather, it was the texture of understanding that was different. These 12 students directly experienced the feel of the air, wind and sun. They strained against the mountain, became breathless and discovered a deep thirst. Through their imaginations, they could place themselves back in time and sense the demands of life in this place. They felt the visual grandeur of the natural setting and could understand the terror of being isolated by its remoteness.
Our day in the lakes stimulated such interest that the students began to read more deeply in Wordsworth's poetry and more widely in Dorothy's Grasmere journals. We ended up making two more trips to other mountains in pursuit of more experience. Helvellyn, which is one of the highest mountains in England, was Wordsworth's favorite, and he continued to climb it until he was 75 years of age. Interest in this favorite of Wordsworth led us to it, and the day that we climbed it proved to be most memorable. The day was wet and cold, and a sustained wind cut into the climb partway up. The summit was wrapped in mist and clouds. The great challenge was Striding Edge. As the name suggests, the path cuts along the edge of the mountain with a drop-off of about 4,000 feet on one side. The ascent from woods, through pastureland, and into an elemental landscape of rocks, becks and tarns requires a sustained physical effort.
Despite the exhaustion brought on by the difficult terrain, the students were fascinated that Wordsworth and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge walked these same paths, frequently with Coleridge talking and Wordsworth composing poems. Wherever the students looked as they struggled up Helvellyn, they found remarkable sights. Later, despite how physically depleting the day had been, we found ourselves talking about Wordsworth well into the evening, and several students thumbed through their poetry books in search of more poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge.
The exhilaration of getting out into the landscape intensified as the weeks flew by, and students who just a term earlier would not have even thought of taking a book of poems with them were reading poems to each other and talking about the connections they could make between the text and the natural environment. We made other hikes in the Yorkshire Dales and up Skiddaw in the lakes and each excursion became much more than a day out. As required, the students kept journals, and the entries treating our walks, rambles and hikes reflected a deepened sense of detail and wonder. Often quotes from various lyric poems illustrated or supported a particular observation or insight. Through poetry and the physical demands of our journeys, the students learned how to know themselves and the physical environment differently. This sort of intimate knowledge is at the core of lyric poetry, and the link between the suggestive power of poetry and the landscapes we consumed was firmly established by a physical and imaginative effort.
What began as an outstanding experience in the summer of 1998 has become an ongoing program. On purpose, we have kept the group to 12 students, and we have varied the works read and the sites visited. Even so, the idea of an experience that offers an almost total immersion into poetry, history and writing has generated much interest on campus, and in each succeeding year, the number of students applying to participate in the Kiplin Hall program has increased. Especially notable is the role of writing in that interest. Before we even begin our journey, and before I outline what I will be expecting from them academically, students tell me how they can't wait to begin their journal entries. Through word of mouth from past participants and by an actual sharing of journals from past years, the new students get a fair idea of what they will be doing. The widespread sharing of journals was an unexpected consequence and surprised me the most after our first trip. Because of the close bonding that occurs, the students felt very comfortable about sharing their writing, and on many occasions, students wrote responses to other students' entries.
Since I wanted the students to reflect on their unique perspective at a specific historical moment, I suggested to them particular categories to treat in their entries. They were asked to write descriptive pieces about their impressions of Kiplin Hall and the surroundings, analytic comments about the poetry we would be studying, and narrative sequences about our daily experiences as we hiked through the various landscapes of Northern England. I especially wanted them to reflect on what they were experiencing. My purpose was to have them connect particularities of the moment with larger historical, personal and cultural perspectives.
The journal entries were written whenever the students had time to write. They faithfully kept the journals with them, writing as the opportunity presented itself. To my amazement and joy, writing sessions would take place well into the evening, even after a long day of traveling and hiking. Throughout the day, there was a constant low-keyed chatter about specific details of a poem or a place we had treated or visited, and the experiences we all had were sharpened by our collective attention to specific elements we discovered on our treks.
My experience as a teacher was profoundly fulfilling because of the experiences I had with the students in Yorkshire and the lakes, and I know that we were fortunate to have the opportunity to be in the locations we visited. But I am also convinced that it is not necessary to travel to faraway places; there is a wealth of experience to be had rather close at hand. I ask students now to take note of the ordinary things in their days--the way last week was different from this week as measured by the way the trees and grasses look, how the afternoon light is altered as fall comes on, or what they have felt on the bottoms of their feet as they moved about campus. All of these considerations contribute to a sensitive re-appreciation of where and how we live.
Richard Gillin is professor and chair of the English department at Washington College. This article is reprinted in part from an article previously published in The Quarterly of the National Writing Project. Christina Granberg, an art major, took Professor Gillin's course on the English lyric last summer. She incorporated dozens of photographs of the beautiful landscape in her daily journal.
|
