Who: Professor Brian Reed

What: All three papers that I wrote for this class

When: Spring Quarter of freshmen year

Why: I took this course on a whim, curious about the content (a class all about poetry written in the last ten years?! Talk about cutting edge!), but a little apprehensive at the thought of taking a seminar-style class at the 300-level as a freshly declared English major. If I had known that my professor had earned a degree from Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford, I may have decided against taking this course at that time. Luckily, and ironically, I had absolutely no idea what to expect and, subsequently, found myself amidst profound and rigorous discussions (probably a little bit sooner than I was ready for).

 

So what? This course taught me about the richness of language and the rigor of interpretation. Our first assigned paper was an analysis of a poem of our choice that had previously been discussed in class. Limited to 2 - 3 pages. This'll be easy, I thought. But, in typical English-major fashion, five pages later I still had not wrapped everything up. My writing was spreading when I needed it to narrow. It was slipping away from me when I need to wrangle it in even closer. I was challenged to write precisely, concisely, and intentionally. I had never struggled so much to write three pages.

 

When I finally turned in a final draft, I was anxious. By this point I knew that my professor, an exceptionally brilliant and well-spoken poet (who personally knew many of the poets we were reading), was going to sink his teeth into our work. When he finally returned our papers, he explained that he reads each essay three separate times, to ensure fair grading: he read everyone’s paper a first time to get a sense of where the whole class was at, a second time through our papers to add comments, and a third time through to provide grades that would be appropriate for each individual in the context of their peers. Knowing that my professor invested so much energy, time, and thoughtfulness into his grading process encouraged me to match that kind of intensity in my own writing process. His comments helped me streamline my essays, and he showed me that I should never take a paragraph to convey what I could achieve in two lines. He had the sensibility of a poet: each word should be measured and chosen for a reason. It was an exercise in saying more in less space.

 

Now that I have some distance on this course, I can see that it was this early exposure to specific and constructive comments and a focus on the literary and argumentative mechanics of language that gave me the confidence to pursue more abstract and theoretical coursework in my major(s).