as the reviews come in, we begin to understand that the public is not ready for what we have to offer... and that hurts a bit because we thought we were offering something good... interesting... unusual...

but maybe we weren't...

Personally, I don't think that I am gaining very much from this project. Analyzing the poems in this way has just turned these poems into a chore for me. I would rather enjoy their beauty than nit-pick them to death!

still...

maybe we just didn't explain ourselves well enough... didn't pitch it right...

i think that indexing is kind of pointless because if it's supposed to help us understand the poem better, it doesn't really do much for me; if anything it causes more confusion.

maybe they realized that the work was difficult...

But then again, I'm also noticing some similarities between the poems that I might not have noticed had I not been looking. I have some mixed feelings about this assignment, but overall I'd have to place my vote under a waste of time. It's also pretty hard.

there is no we, of course. it's me. my "public" in this case is my students, the sophomores... these voices...

It just seems to me as though rather than understanding them better, my group is just plowing through all of these poems trying to find some way to tie them all together.

i've been trying to think of an index as a different kind of tool... an alternate form of expression... that might be used and useful in ways that indexes traditionally have not been used and useful. what if an index were not merely a quick locator? what if it were a process, a method... a harvest of understandings... something one might examine to see how closely, carefully, accurately a reader has read and understood... because an indexer is really just a reader... who is noting and listing, grouping and connecting the important things...

So far I found it hard to find words that were important in the poem, and then finding words that they related to in other poems got to be confusing.

there's much talk these days of alternative modes of assessment. instead of having students take a test... have them write a paper, hold a press conference, participate in a debate, create some multimedia display, some multi-genre performance of what they have come to know... dance a dance about it, sing a song, draw a cartoon, design a cereal box or a t-shirt, make a webpage or a powerpoint presentation.... write a letter to your congressman. over the years, i have encouraged students to pursue one or the other of these paths...

I don't think that I'm getting very much out of this project. I mean, yeah, it's forcing me to really read into the poem, but I just feel like I'm taking it apart rather than gaining a better understanding of the poem.

last year one of my classes indexed a novel... this year i decided to push the exploration of indexing a little farther... by narrowing its scope... what if we took a handful of smalller works, poems, and rooted around in them? to see if an indexing process might help us to uncover some truffles... what are the important things in this fistful of poems by emily dickinson? this should be an expansive process rather than a reductive one. we are not trying to boil the poems down to one homogenous gray goo called "the theme" or "the moral" or "the lesson" or "the meaning." the indexing of poems (from this perspective) should not be standard but idiosyncratic.

we've looked at these poems, and this is what we found.

all we're doing is just writing down things in a meaningless catogorization. there's no point to it. how will this help us to aspire to our goals in life? all this does is get us to anally look at some boring poems. wow. and group work? i think not. how's about one person in the group does all the work and everybody else just sits around and talks about non related subjects.

index: a strange, convenient form to express our knowing....? or a coffin... a junkbox, a basket of lifeless, disassembled parts?

Doctor Nonentity, a metaphysician ... Most people think him a profound scholar: but as he seldom speaks, I cannot be positive in that particular. He generally spreads himself before the fire, folds his hands, talks little, drinks much ... I am told he writes indexes to perfection.

Oliver Goldsmith

 

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