LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: composition

  • Writing about poetry with AI

    Writing about poetry with AI

    Poetry’s Possible Worlds emerged from years of teaching undergraduates who don’t believe that learning how to write academic essays about literature has long-term relevance to their lives. Many of my students, though, enjoy–or can be surprised into enjoying–reading, thinking, and talking about books and poems, so the puzzle has been: how do I make writing…

  • Excerpt from a mess in progress

    1. Once, when she was a toddler-sized blizzard of pure will, I called her “little missy.” Some current of Victorian chastisement must have welled up through me, springing from all the British books I’d read or maybe from some fifties sitcom re-aired in periodic waves. My daughter had created yet another hodgepodge installation of stuffed…

  • Tough Guide to the Field Guide to the End of the World

    Just a postcard here from the end of a very tough term–a cheery note from amid the ruins to show off some good work my students just completed. The last book my composition class read was Jeannine Hall Gailey’s excellent new collection, Field Guide to the End of the World. For a final writing assignment after a…

  • Adventures in poetry teaching, part two: Gaileyland!

    In psychology, it’s called “literary transportation,” although you may know the phenomenon by the metaphor “getting lost in a book.” Immersive readers do this all the time. We become so absorbed by a story that we forget we’re tracking lines of print. Physically, you’re sitting in an easy chair by the window, in a cozy…