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I'm an essay fan, but then I like writing sonnets and villanelles too.
Formal writing seems to be something the often intellectually apologetic
like to shoot down. Maybe you just have to read some of the great essayist,
and there are many that can be enjoyed not only for their ability to craft a
good text, but also for their humour and playfulness with this form: Stephen
Jay Gould, Orwell, Swift, Atwood, Russell Baker, Maxine Hong Kingston,
Nadine Gordimer....the list goes on.

One way to get students engaged is to get them to write an autobiographical
essay of some sort---leaving the topic very open. If anyone can get hold of
Guy Allen's essay in a text, which I believe is called "Writing and
Healing," you will find many good suggestions for getting students to write
more authentically through the autobiographical essay form.

Have always felt that the essay, the sonnata and the sonnet get right to the
heart of the matter: state, complicate (compare and contrast), turn, and
return (as in summarize, conclude, hit the final chord). Of course the great
thing about these forms is that they can be stretched, loosened, slightly
collapsed, as is often done now in contemporary poetry.

The Pulitzer Prize winning Irish poet, Paul Muldoon was at the Montreal Blue
Met literary fest last weekend. Someone asked him if the sonnet was dead.
Muldoon, the greatest stretcher and bender of the sonnet in our time, said
definitely not, it's too basic to the way we think, they way we compare and
subordinate our thoughts. I would argue the same for the essay.....
My 2 cents......Charlotte Hussey















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