TEACHINGPHILOSOPHY

Part two

by ravi shankar

This attitude on teaching poetry isdoubtlessly derived from my ownexperience and training, which hasbeen disparate and ongoing,beginning with the first creativewriting classes I took at the Universityof Virginia.

There, I studied with Jon Loomis, LisaRuss Spaar, Charles Wright, Tan Lin,Rita Dove and Gregory Orr. From eachof these teachers, I learned somethinginvaluable, some aspect of lyricism ordisjunction, and an applicableknowledge of how to arrange myexistence towards greater receptivityto the incantatory arts.

Being in Charlottesville was awonderful apprenticeship,especially because I was able tobalance my explorations into thesensibilities of lyric poetry with a lookinto the welter of possibilitiesshimmering in the avant-garde.

In graduate school at Columbia, Istudied with Lucie Brock-Broido,Alfred Corn, Marie Howe, Marie

Ponsot, and Richard Howard, andmaintained the similar attitude that

each of these folks, regardless ofmy own affinity or feelings for

their respective personalities andpedagogies, had something crucialto convey. I learned what not to do

in a classroom as much as whatlessons and readings mightscintillate bolts of learning.

Since that time, I’ve grown to gain a better sense of my own aesthetic aspirations, which verge from the droll andrecombinatory, to trawling the hermetic waters of the self; however, I try not to impose my personal predilectionsonto the dialogue in the classroom, as I believe that the opinion that arises organically through sustained discussion isthe arbiter that need be tended and listened to in a workshop. I steer the discussion with a light thumb, infusing ideas,poems, assignments and some standard of how writing should be judged into the dialogue, but never practicing the“Sermon on the Mount” aloofness or the ostentatious eagerness to please that has characterized certain classes ofwhich I’ve been part.

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