book talk: belated

Hey all! This has turned out to be the kind of week where "book talk tuesday" turns into "book talk wednesday." I feel like every half-hour of my week is full. Can you relate?

Today in my classes, we had a brief mini lesson on comma usage, and I used a piece (I've posted an excerpt below) by Adrienne Rich,  from What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics:

"As if your life depended on it"

You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.  That is not generally taught in school. At most, as if your livelihood depended on it: the next step, the next job, grant, scholarship, professional advancement, fame; no questions asked as to further meanings. And, let's face it, the lesson of the schools for a vast number of children--hence, of readers--is This is not for you.

To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife, the physical sensations of your ordinary carnal life; and, simultaneously, to allow what you're reading to pierce the routines, safe and impermeable, in which ordinary carnal life is tracked, charted, channeled. Then, what of the right answers, the so-called multiple-choice examination sheet with the number 2 pencil to mark one choice and one choice only?

To write as if your life depended on it: to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public words you have dredged, sieved up from dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence--words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist. No, it's too much; you could be laughed out of school, set upon in the schoolyard, they would wait for you after school, they could expel you. The politics of the schoolyard, the power of the gang.

Or they could ignore you.

This piece hits me every time. Not only does the fear of being ignored resonate deeply in my writer-heart, but there is so much here about literacy, and more particularly, literacy and school. It's also dripping with lots of glorious commas! It made for really good discussion in all of my sections today.

I used this essay to teach commas not because I want my students to write exactly like this in all of their essays. No, I wanted to talk about commas in the context of an actual piece of writing. I wanted to talk about being flexible writers, with the ability to manipulate written language to fit particular genres and purposes. And we did! Students asked good questions, pointed out the very things I was hoping they'd notice. Now, I think I need to read the rest of the book! Who knows what other contextual grammar discussions are waiting within?