TACTics Journal

A Publication for and by TOC for Education Practitioners

October 10, 2003

In this week’s issue:

Connections

(1) TOC, Diversity and Poetry, Judy Holder

(2) Jonathon’s Response to Mom’s Cloud, Jonathon Holder

Editor’s Notes

(3) Kay Buckner-Seal

READERS’ FEEDBACK

(1) TOC, Diversity and Poetry— Part 2

From Judy Holder, United Kingdom

Judy Holder was inspired to write “TOC, Diversity and Poetry,” from an article by Mike Round

entitled, “Poetry and the Theory of Constraints” (TACTics, 9/5/03). Due to its length, we decided to publish it in two parts. You may read “TOC, Diversity and Poetry—Part 1” in TACTics, 10/3/03, which may accessed by visiting our website at www.tocforeducation.com.

"Poetry is a mystery to me" -Mike Round

[At this point] as a teacher, do I start with demystification, or is it the end point [of instruction]?

A Enjoy and understand poetry

B Develop “technical” understanding

D Start with some demystification

C Develop motivation to read poems

D’ Start with some stunning experience

I think I have one of many possible variants of a generic developmotivation/develop-skills cloud where the specific injection, and which side of the cloud you decide to break, will depend on the exact circumstances.

I’ve read poems with difficult boys who “hate poetry” despite never having read or listened to any, and where I have to provide fast positive experience if I didn’t want to risk the classroom furniture.

But that’s not the case here. Anyone still reading must be a volunteer. And they’ve probably already read “Mending Wall.” So let’s start with demystification.

Assumption C/D’ —> It's not possible to demystify poetry without demotivating my readers

Solution —> Be brief. Be vivid. Be clear.

Demystifying Poetry

A poem is not a poor substitute for an evaporating cloud, but an excellent

and distinctive form in its own right.

If our goal is to understand written poetry there are a minimum of two things we need to know up front:

· It’s the words that matter—All of them.

· Poems have a body language and that matters too.

Logic remains always itself, but words, like emotions, are fluid and slippery. 

In spoken communication, much, even most, of the message is in the manner and mood of the delivery. But it’s not wrapped up inside the delivery like a present inside a parcel, so that if you discard the wrapper the message remains intact. It’s more like the relationship between our organs and our skin. They don’t exist independently of one another.

Much written communication is more like wrapper than like skin. But not poetry. To get the poem’s body language we have to pay attention to all those things we can usually safely ignore when we read to get information, or to get things done in the world. That’s all those things like:

· Exactly where’s the punctuation and why?

· What do the words feel like on the tongue and the lips?

· What do they sound like either read aloud or heard in the mind’s ear?

· What are the rhythms, the rhymes, the half rhymes?

· What do the lines, the verses, the poem look like on the page?

· Where do the lines break?

· Do they repeat?

· What devices (metaphors, for example) are there?

· Why?

If you are a good communicator, then reading people’s body language can become second nature. If you like poems and read a lot of them, paying attention to their body language becomes second nature too.

Where are we?

We want to understand poetry.

BUT

We are mystified.

SO

We need information

BECAUSE

Information creates clarity

AND

We need it to be brief

BECAUSE

Information overload may cause us to switch off

AND

We need it to be vivid

BECAUSE

Vivid presentation maintains motivation.

If we have just enough information

And the presentation is vivid enough

And the information is clear enough

Then we will feel less mystified and be better able to take the next step towards our goal

Did the solution work? Only you can judge. Only your feedback can improve it.

Completing the transition tree

If we accept that the keys to a poem are its words and its body language, then we can complete the sequence of the transition tree.

· Words and body language unlock meaning

· Meaning allows us to grasp purpose and significance

· Purpose and significance lead us to relevance

And, we are already using TOC tools.

“Mending Wall”

As it happens we don’t want to understand any old poem, we have a particular poem in mind.

Let’s take a closer look at its words and its body language.

In a poem all the words are important, but some are more important than others. How can we tell which ones? Well, one good place to start is with the words people are most likely to remember. As educators we already know a fair few things about that. This list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s “good enough.”

· titles

· first lines

· last lines

· words that get repeated

· words with a strong rhythm

· vivid words

Titles and first lines

Frost didn’t start by putting into our minds the idea that this wall is unnecessary. He called his poem Mending Wall.” So the poem starts with an idea to do with keeping walls in place.

The first line tells us that “Something” doesn’t love a wall. So the next idea is that walls are not entirely loveable. This idea is given prominence because it appears in the first line of the poem, and the poem’s body language tells us that Frost has some sympathy with this “Something.Unlike the hunters who tear the wall to pieces to let the “yelping dogs” catch a rabbit (they left not one stone on a stone”), this something-the natural force of nature’s frost-spills the boulders gently into the spring sun. So what we have is an idea about walls and how loveable they are that is actually fairly ambiguous.

Where we have ambiguity, there is conflict. And where we have conflict we might be able to clarify with a cloud

D Love walls

D’ Don’t love walls

B Don't make life too easy for the hunters

C Well what need does not loving walls serve?

True, if he doesn’t have a wall then he won’t have to repair it, and it will save him a lot of work. But he’s willing to repair the wall when the hunters pull it down (“I have come after them and made repair”). Perhaps we don’t yet have enough information to know…

Two points:

· What I have seen in these lines isn’t a proper cloud, because there isn’t a goal. I believe that’s no accident. There are exceptions, but in my experience few poems, and even fewer great ones, have explicit goals.

· The near-cloud I have seen does not represent the one and only true way of reading the first dozen or so lines of Frost’s poem. It is only one way of coming to understand them.

The last line It’s the neighbour who gets the last line. It’s a very quotable line, very

memorable—probably even more memorable than the opening line, because it has the authentic ring of some wise old country saying, “Good fences make good neighbours.” And he gets to say it twice. If Frost is a master of the craft of words And he truly believes the wall is not needed (because mending it wears fingers “rough,and it’s not required to keep apples out of the pine trees) But he tells us that it is he who calls his neighbour to set the wall mending in motion

And he tells us that mending wall is a kind of “outdoor game”

And he tells us that the idea of telling his neighbour not to bother mending the wall is a kind of springtime “mischief”

And he never does tell the neighbour this “notion”

And he writes us a description of his neighbour that tells us how menacing a neighbour may be:

I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed

And he gives that neighbour one of the most memorable lines in the poem

And that memorable line is to do with keeping a wall, not tearing it down

And it gets to be the last word

Then what do we conclude?

Could it be:

D Something doesn’t love a wall

D’ Good fences make good neighbours

Why do we build walls? What need is met by keeping things out, keeping things separate, keeping things apart? What need do we meet when we tear walls down? Between people, communities, countries, traditional subjects on a curriculum (I am after all, a teacher)? Frost puts the questions so much better than I can:

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence

But only we can decide our goals.

 

TOC and Poetry

I could continue writing about this poem long enough to completely exhaust anyone’s patience, but enough is enough. Did close attention to words and body language unlock meaning? Did meaning allows us to glimpse purpose and significance, if not to grasp it? Did purpose and significance lead us to relevance?

Only you can tell me. The Danish philosopher Søren Aaby Kierkegaard (1813-55) has told us that:

Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.”

I believe that this is true of art too. I would be satisfied if all I have managed to do is inspire someone to read the poem again.

(2) Jonathon’s Response to Mom’s Cloud

From Jonathon Holder, United Kingdom

I personally would say that making life difficult for the hunters was not a true need, and that a more realistic need would be the protection of nature that the hunters were harming. I would also suggest that (rather ironically) the something that does not like walls is nature’s free will. Nature has 2 needs to satisfy. As the something that does not like walls is also a metaphor for humanity, describing people’s natural drive to tear down

barriers, there are 2 clouds that you can make. The cause of peoples’/nature’s dislike of walls is the need for freedom. The goal is harmonious nature if taken literally, or harmonious humanity if taken metaphorically. Hence this would have been my cloud had I been writing.

A Harmonious Nature/Humanity

B Preserve Nature/Humanity

D Love Walls

C Freedom

D’ Don’t love walls

EDITOR’S NOTES

(3) Kay Buckner-Seal

Well Judy—be satisfied, because after reading your article, I am inspired to revisit the “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost. As to the conflict, Jonathon’s cloud makes a lot of sense to me. But what’s the injection? What is the “win/win” for that conflict? Perhaps our readers would like to share some ideas? We certainly hope so! Thanks to both of you for very engaging reading!

To the rest of our TOCFE family, share your views with us. Send your responses, applications of the thinking processes, lessons, announcements, and etc. by mail to: Cheryl A. Edwards, 2253 S. Hill Island Rd., Cedarville, Michigan 49719, USA. Or send hyperlink to cedwards@cedarville.net or bucknek@earthlink.net.

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