Teaching Philosophy
William Gass likened fiction to a fine carpet, every thread and pattern important to the work as a whole. Creative writing, I believe, offers students a chance to better understand what ordains those patterns and threads and to apply that knowledge to their own writing and reading. As the child of an Army officer, the one constant I found growing up was reading. No matter what country or county I found myself in there were always stories to be read. I understood early on that in art, as in Gass' tapestry, there is a tendency towards order not readily manifest in life.
Fiction and poetry have long been a means of articulating and grounding my life, and the life beyond me. Whether I am reading or writing I see fiction and poetry as tangible epistemologies. For example, if I were to try to explore the relationship between disillusionment and ambition I could do no better than read Hardy's Jude the Obscure. Nor could I hope to understand such a complex exigency in any more palpable terms than in the narrative form. Only literature is able to offer both empathy and a history of human conditions, while challenging the reader to delay their desires with the promise of greater satisfaction. This process is in constant evolution as is the order it promises, keeping it beyond your fingertips.
My goal is always to impart both the tradition and possibility of literature to my students. I hope that students leave my classroom with the understanding that creative writing and essay writing are artifices which offer potentialities. And that one of the strengths of creative writing, literature, and composition is that they afford students the opportunity to examine and articulate human issues not addressed in any other forum.
Good writing begins with good, critical reading, and students must be lead to appreciate the accomplishment of reading as well as the craft of writing. They must be given the tools to cultivate a voice and concept of their own within the larger tradition. And they must learn to understand and appreciate the order, ideas and ambitions of that tradition so that they might try to extend and amend that tradition to their own lives.
Sample Works: Big Mike | Going on 99 | Swallow | Dear A.J. Rathbun
Professional: Vita | Courses | Teaching Statement | References | Student Evaluations | Links
Home | E-Mail