Zemblan Grammar

I have been meaning to tell you all about the final project I had my kids do this past term.  Without getting into too many specifics about the subject matter of the class, I’ll tell you that they had a creative project to do–something incorporating similar thematic material or addressing itself to similar questions as the novels and short fiction we had read.  Whatever, blah blah blah; they had a creative project; this is my point. 

I told them they could work in almost any medium: fiction, personal essays, poetry, music, film, painting, drawing, comics, web design–whatever they wanted.  They also had to accompany the creative portion with a commentary explaining how they conceived of their particular project (remember this information for later!).  Some of the projects were really wonderful:  there was a funny short film, a couple of really impressive paintings, a promising short story, a sweet and sad short graphic novel, and oh my good glaven, so much bad poetry.  So much, y’all, and so, so bad.

I feel awful saying that, because lord knows I had the poetry jones* when I was their age, too, but in my defense I have to tell you that I did not write any awful rhyming couplets like these.  What is with the rhyming couplets?!  It’s as if they never saw or heard any other form of poetry.  I’d love to cite some really ugly examples for you, but I have made myself a sworn policy of not quoting my students’ bad writing any more, mostly out of the instinct for self-preservation in the employment world, but let’s be nice and pretend it is out of some earnest ethical concern.  Any rate, I can’t give you any quotes, but trust me when I tell you that it was the kind of poetry that makes you physically ill.  Can a person die of excessive cringing? Because if so, I was probably in severe mortal danger during all of finals week.  Just start making a list of words that rhyme with "love" or "alone" or "distress" and you’ll have the measure of it.

In addition to the people who should have a restraining order taken out to keep them 500 yards away from the English language at all times, there was a slew of people whose markers, scissors, tape, construction paper, and paint should be confiscated until further notice.  If a person has less artistic ability than the average first-grader, why, oh lord, why would that person choose to do an art project, of all things?  The lettering on one particular poster/collage hodgepodge looked like it had been accomplished by the artist holding the pen between her toes, and one diorama appeared to have been constructed in the dark, by a one armed monkey.  It was hard to resist the urge to blind myself with a pencil. 

I know this sounds horribly snobbish, but I promise that isn’t what’s behind it.  It isn’t that I subtly disagreed with their sense of aesthetics, or something, it was just honestly that bad.  Then, of course, I had to read the commentary portions I told you to remember back at the beginning of this terrifying tale.   They were all so earnest and serious and sweet, telling me about their sources of inspiration and what effect they were trying to bring about, what they had learned about themselves or about the other readings via the creative process, that I couldn’t bring myself to give any of them the truly awful grades I thought their "creative" portions "merited."  And I sat there at my desk, drinking my forty-seventh cup of coffee, and trying to think of nice things to say about the offending items. 

"Remind me to never again put myself in a position where I have to read my students’ poetry,"  I went around telling people for a week.  While a lot of the non-poetry-based projects were quite good, or at least passably interesting, there was not one single poem that I didn’t just loathe.  Never again. 

Oh, who am I kidding? That was ten times quicker than grading essays, and I am absolutely doing it again.

*I still have the poetry jones, but I think, I hope, my taste level has changed for the better.