There is a lot to say. Dillard continues to stun me with her intricate and moving descriptions, seeing life where others passed by. Hancock’s advice, as per usual, is spot-on and ever practical. How do they fit together? I wonder. Synthesis in my blog posts not only seems appropriate, but also helpful. Seeking the resemblance between two seemingly unrelated pieces is an excellent task for the mind, finding pathways and trap doors that lead from one to another, previously unbeknownst to me. If Dillard’s book is the castle, Hancock’s writing is the many tunnels and hidden entrances that allow us to understand the schema beyond the appearance.
In that, I have learned something very useful. Dillard’s prose is empowered not only by her colloquial tone, occasional rabbit trails which reconnect with the main theme, and her acute sense of observation, but by her knowledge. Many authors could write beautifully on a small duck pond in the woods, noting the frogs leaping from algae, but Dillard does it as one informed. She knows to describe a scene that places one right there, and to include the names and behaviors of the many microscopic creatures. Protozoans, rhizopods, flagellates, byrozoans...we come to know these teeny beings through her research. She is informed—not only in senses, but also in mind. Dillard asks the question, “Why is it beautiful?” (pg. 107) We need knowledge to write the beautiful.
Which pushes my thoughts towards the final project of this class: the feature article. I am nervous, which is stressful. Not that I doubt my writing ability, but this time of semester my motivation and inspiration seem to run dry, not gushing rich and life-giving like Tinker Creek. With one assignment left, the most inopportune time to adopt apathy is now. So where do I seek inspiration and ideas, when I do not have woods to explore behind my house, or a blooming spring calling my name? Courage offers an answer.
Hancock writes, in her straightforward tone, “Take chances...Be slow to conclude your experiment was a failure” (pg. 98-99). Often times I re-read my blog posts while trying to draft a formal assignment, thinking, Damn! Where is that energy and spunk and wittiness now? I say courageousness is the answer, and not fearlessness, because formal assignments rarely lack danger. What if the professor does not appreciate it? What if it strays off subject, or fails to meet certain requirements? The structure of academics is based on performance, which implies evaluation, which rarely comes without apprehension. In the face of fear, courage is a necessary combatant. Whether my blog posts are boring as hell or beautiful enough to bring tears to Down’s eyes, a thorough reading + relevant blog post = met requirements. Low consequences for “failed experiments” allow me to write without fear, to take chances more willingly.
Dillard’s afterward surprised me. Twenty-five years later, she writes of her book, “I hope it seems bold” (pg. 281). Hancock says, “Naturally, we all prefer to fly. But flying, in my observation, is no more likely to produce excellent work than creeping” (pg. 109). That is how I approach this final assignment, and the remainder of the semester, for that matter: to creep boldly, moving courageously through thick terrain. To take chances without becoming wed to them; those crazy backward-spin-somersault-flying-leaps have a way of overcoming the roughest patches.
Anjeli, when I first read your sentence, “We need knowledge to write the beautiful,” I thought, “Exactly! I totally agree!” One reason that this statement makes sense is that knowledge allows a writer to compose a clear, concise text—or at least, to be clear on the ideas she’s presenting. In A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Mary Astell writes, “Obscurity, one of the greatest faults in Writing, does commonly proceed from a want of Meditation, for when we pretend to teach others what we do not understand our selves, no wonder that we do it at a sorry rate” (The Rhetorical Tradition 853). Surely most of us have discovered that our worst writing usually occurs when we’re BS-ing a paper and not fully understanding what we’re writing about.
ReplyDeleteHowever, we could also counter the idea that “we need knowledge to write the beautiful.” For example, consider the works of Shakespeare; many people consider that his writing is beautiful, and yet, he didn’t (presumably) have first-hand knowledge of what it was like to murder someone, cast spells, or lead armies into battle. But then again, I guess it depends on how you define “knowledge”; knowing *of* something versus knowing through experience are two different types of knowledge. The counter-argument with Shakespeare could be refuted by placing it in the “knowing of” category, which we could say is the type of knowledge that science writers usually work with...This still doesn’t account for works of fiction, though. If knowledge is needed to write beautifully, how do fiction writers—such as Tolkien—craft beautiful sagas of creatures they technically didn’t “know of”? They invent such creatures—which is a form of BS-ing, right? So I’m curious specifically what kind of knowledge is needed to write beautifully…Lovely semantics.
Hi Anjeli,
ReplyDeleteI loved this point you made:
“Often times I re-read my blog posts while trying to draft a formal assignment, thinking, Damn! Where is that energy and spunk and wittiness now?”
I totally agree! I didn’t mention it in my blog post but there a few lines of hers that I really enjoyed reading. – I sometimes couldn’t help but notice how she was able to affectively portray her points in the paragraphs with a crisp and fulfilling sentence.
To be honest, there were a few parts where I had to pause and re-read what she said so I could get a better grasp at what she was saying. When I read the piece, I kept trying to get a meaning at what she was trying to say throughout the book and my answer was Discourse and how that could apply to this type of nature writing. I think it’s cool how I was reading/analyzing what she wrote through a rhetorical point of view when she was really talking about religion. It made me think about interpretation and how every single one of us got something a little bit different from the text because of any lens’ we may have been trying to apply to the text to begin with.
Anyway, thanks for posting :).