"Look," I said, "all the balls are together in the corner, and not one at the net." So, in The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey remarks to a group of students who had just finished successfully hitting back thirty balls. Gallwey adds,
Although semantically this remark was simply an observation of fact,
my tone of voice revealed that I was pleased with what I saw. I was
complimenting them, and indirectly I was complimenting myself as their
instructor.
To my surprise, the girl who was due to hit next said, "Oh, you
would have to say that just before my turn!" (38-39)
In the following series of balls, the students reported that they were less aware of their feet and hand positions--concerned as they had become with hitting the ball over the net. And they kept missing. In response to Gallwey's implicit compliment, they had become distracted, self-conscious, and absent-minded. Educator Claire Weinstein would say that they had become focused on performance instead of mastery--the score (grade, approval, ranking) instead of the what and how of a skill.
Gallwey's book radically transformed my sense of writing workshop. Students understand how corrosive negative judgments are--vague, undeveloped, derivative, boring. But they are initially shocked when I stop them from praising each other's work. No Wow, Great, Powerful, Amazing allowed. Compliments are comparisons--they polarize. I know that in workshops of my own work, something withers in me when someone else is complimented--and, I find myself become dependent on/victim of those who will be reviewing my work. I start writing to manage their responses, instead of writing to create something genuine. In one disastrous workshop, a poet savaged my work, claiming he wanted to take me to the next level--then, feeling guilty for his harsh treatment of my work, spent the rest of the afternoon over-complimenting everyone else. Ouch!
I've seen this happen in the classes I coach when a compliment is delivered--across the room, someone slightly rounds her shoulders, someone else masks envy with a fake smile. The more forthright will spurt an epithet followed by "Just slit my wrists, now." When the next person's poem is in review, a writer will preface the workshop with apologies, explanations, a lot of don't hurt me chatter. All this creates an adversarial atmosphere.
So, how are we to develop our various crafts--writing, giving and receiving responses, teaching. How are we to be godparents to each other's work? How do we move from the politics of praise to appreciation? Throughout his book, Gallwey emphasizes two things:
(1) Keep your eyes on the ball.
(2) Increase your awareness of "what actually is" (34).
Focusing on what should/might garner compliments isn't focusing on what is. As his student put it, "
Compliments are criticisms in disguise! Both are used to manipulate
behavior, and compliments are just more socially acceptable! (40)
The language of what is is what we develop, not only in writing workshop, but in literature courses. Let's take a stanza from Dickinson:
Wild nights -- Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury.
We could yadaya about how spare, risk-taking, sensual, breath-taking, OMG she is (notice the focus on she and not the poem). This is fawning, not appreciation. Here's how we notice what is:
(1) REMEMBER. We look away from the poem and report back what we remember. Simply, and without judgment or comparison. We look back on what tended to stick.
(2) DISCERN PATTERNS. What is on the page?
four lines
four syllables per line
visually, the first line is longer than the others
Wild, Were, and Our are capitalized
the sound w appears in wild, were
wild is repeated three times
three punctuation marks, in this sequence: -- ! .
high frequency vowel sounds of ai in wild, nights, I, luxury
exclamation point after the second Wild nights
when reading the poem aloud, the mouth puckers and unpuckers on w's
and widens on ai's
(3) ASK WHERE DOES THE STANZA BEGIN FOR YOU? Working on our poems in process, this question helps the writer consider alternative beginnings.
(4) ASK WHERE DOES THE STANZA END FOR YOU? See (3) beginnings=endings.
(5) ASK WHAT DID I LEARN FOR MY OWN WRITING?
There's more. With a student's permission, I will post a blog on how we responded to a particular poem and what we learned by KEEPING OUR EYES ON WHAT IS.
Alexander Pope coined the expression "Damning with faint praise." There is a lively discussion on the internet, arguing that "faint" should be "feigned." I agree. Too often, well-meaning teachers and responders will feign--pretend--a compliment--the old sandwich method--say something nice, say something critical, say something nice. That's condescension. It's insulting. We know it's pro forma. We walk away feeling damned with praise.
Appreciating each other's words takes patience, time, and effort. It's so much easier to dismiss someone with a compliment of Great! But oh, the difference saying what is makes! I'm posting this blog on Valentine's Day, 2014. Instead of saying, "You look great," my hubby said, "the gold snake on your earring picks up on the highlights in your hair." Did he ever (in novelist Vladimir Nabokov's words) Caress the details?!
Gallwey keeps his eyes on the ball and racket. We are writers: let's keep our eyes on the word and Penn.
©
2014 Susanna Rich
