Damning with Praise

 

      "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

       

     

You, I, We

         In the '70s and '80s smash television series M*A*S*H, set in a surgical unit on the battle lines of the Korean War, the clerk, Radar O'Reilly, with his Harry Potter round glasses, and uncanny ESP, "radaring" coming events, consistently uses the pronoun "you" when he talks about himself. So, when he's relating the news from his home town, instead of using first person pronouns, he'll say something like this: "When your mom is having trouble making ends meet, and your uncle is having heart trouble, you really have a hard time not wanting to go home to take care of them."  I found this tendency charming, innocent, self-effacing, shy--and sad. 

         Of course, this was perfect characterization--speaking style is as much of an identity marker as facial features or culinary preferences.  Radar was the conduit, the glue for the entire M*A*S*H unit--for him, it was all about the you in his world. He was, literally (and as literature) always the demurring second person--the company gopher, communications manager, the counterpart of the mythical messenger (which is what an angel is) Hermes.

          Sometimes, though, as a child of the '60s, I wanted to take him by the shoulders, look him in the eye, and say "own it--use I and me, and my, mine, and myself."

         For me, one of the great gifts (and occasional irritation) of language study, teaching, and writing, is that, for me, a megaphone forms around words. When others revert to the "you" mode, when, clearly, they are talking about themselves, I want to take them by the shoulders.
         What might be the phenomenology, the conscious experience of you-ing?  Let's take an example, one that applies to me: When your first language is Hungarian, you prefer music in minor keys. (1) First, I, as speaker, am distancing myself from the experience; (2) if I, as a listener, don't have Hungarian as my first language, I am distanced.; (3) I, as listener, have to translate the you to I of this statement, which distracts me from the content of the statement; (4) I, as speaker, am relinquishing my personal ownership; (5) hiding behind the generalizing you, I'm making a claim that, in others' experiences, might not be true.
          Here's a translation into the first person:  My first language is Hungarian, so I prefer music in minor keys.  OK. So, I am (1) owning the statement as my experience; (2) inviting listeners who aren't Hungarian to entertain a new perspective, and inviting Hungarians to consider their experience; (3) focusing my listener on my content; (4) owning my experience; (5)  inviting both validation and counterpoint to my claim.
          How have we come to rely so much on hiding behind the you? That's a historical boulder of a question.  Some preliminary guesses: (1)  It's safer to make a general you claim. (2) It's an academic mannerism to avoid using the I--as if that lends more truth and invites less argument to one's claims; (3) It's a version of the royal we, used by British monarchs.  See (2) for why. (4) It seems more courteous and polite to not reference myself. (5) More locally, I, as teacher, notice that I often use the you during instruction--when you use the comma, for example, or you need to watch out for your use of the second person. Hearing the externalizing you you you in the classroom--and from family, politicians, religious leaders, and on--for all our lives, I'm sure, leads us to favor the you mode.
           In class, I have taken to restating students' you-when-I-mean-I statements, as they talk: When you come from a large family becomes I come from a large family; when you don't know when you'll get a job becomes since I don't know when I'll get a job. At the very least, we are all listening more closely to each other.
            I teach to learn.  It's easier to assign the you of my students to write a poem about hands than to write one myself. (George Bernard Shaw's "those who can, do--those who can't, teach" applies here.) I am experimenting with changing you/your/yours to we/us/our/ours--"Let's write a poem about hands."  This makes me appreciate more what my assignments mean.
           My devotion is to empower, energize, inspire. There is something pleading and one-downing in you-ing our lives. You-ing says Please validate this, so that I can be OK. Please hear me. When Radar was talking about his family troubles, the subtext was I want to go home--something that a faithful member of the community would not be willing to say.
           Using the I/me/mine/myself is to take ownership of my experience--to be who I am.  Using I is a going home, in itself.
           Let's I-dentify~

  © 2014 Susanna Rich