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Homework answers / question archive / assignment for this week is the following: Crafting the Personal Essay, Chapter 16, "Write What You Wish You Knew," and Chapter 17, "Writing the Nature Essay" William Bryant Logan, "The Lessons of a Hideous Forest" (Links to an external site
assignment for this week is the following:
General posting guidelines this week: Please post a Primary Post in response to the discussion topic(s) below; as well as a thoughtful Reply to another person's post. You may write your primary post and reply in either order. One post is due by Thursday, and one is due by Sunday. Each post is worth 10 points, for a total of 20 points.
To ensure a cordial style, please remember to greet your classmates and sign your name in your posts.
In Chapter 16, "Write What You Wish You Knew," Dinty Moore adjusts the common dictum to "write what you know" to something more exploratory: "Write what you wish you knew" (my emphasis). He advocates visiting new places as a stimulus for our writing--even it's simply investigating a nearby alley or the local library: following our curiosity in order to learn new things about our surroundings (176).
Similarly, in Chapter 17, "Writing the Nature Essay," Moore recommends showing the reader "something new or fairly common but in a new way" (187, my emphasis). He explains that this "new way of seeing" in a nature essay comes about through patient, informed observation. Moore also talks about the importance of the nature writer relating what s/he/they see to their own lives (189).
After reading Chapters 16 and 17, and reading William Bryant Logan's "The Lessons of a Hideous Forest," (Links to an external site.)first, please write about an interesting connection that struck you between Chapter 16 and/or 17 and Logan's essay about his tramp through Fresh Kills Landfill in New York City.
Then, please choose one of the prompts in "Writing Exercise: Getting Out of Your Chair" on pp. 173-174. Complete the statement, place that in your post, and develop the statement into a paragraph or so, following the train of thought begun by the prompt.
Citing your source(s): Please include in your post at least one specific reference to Chapter 16 or Chapter 17. Please refer to the guidelines in Format for Citing Sources in Your Writings.
In chapter 17 of Moore's book, he talks about the nature essay, in particular the "path to exceptional nature writing" that all authors should take (Moore 187). It isn't just "abstractly appreciating nature or just waxing philosophically" about the trees, rivers, and canyons that an individual happens to stumble upon; it is about showing the audience "something new or...fairly common but in a new way" (Moore 187). William Bryant Logan, in his essay "The Lessons of a Hideous Forest", follows Moore's advice, showing the audience that a thing usually considered ugly actually holds more secrets and wisdom than previously thought. His descriptions of the Fresh Kills Landfill are well done already; he notes the "oaks 70 feet in height" and a "rolling landscape where the soils were part dirt, part garbage, part riprap gravel" as some things that caught his eye (Logan 2019). However, it is his musings on the forest's "sprouting, resprouting, reiterating, and repeating [of] the entire process" that really resonate with Moore's advice (Logan 2019). He doesn't just ramble on about how pretty the leaves of the trees are, or simply talk about his hike as if reciting from a grocery list. He digs deep, looking into the "coming to life" phenomenon he saw in the Fresh Kills Landfill and pondering how "we", as a species, "need to change our way of thinking" when it comes to nature, healing, and the restoration of life (Logan 2019).
From the list of prompts, I chose this one:
I wonder what flying feels like (Moore 174).
If I were to develop a paragraph surrounding this prompt, I would start off like this:
I wonder what flying feels like.
I know, at some point in life, everyone has this thought pass through their mind. When you sit in the darkened movie theater, watching Superman or Iron Man twirl about in the air, part of that wide-eyed awe is coupled with the longing to be just like them. When a flock of geese drift overhead like an army formation, loud honks directing each figure in the right direction, you tilt your head up and watch them disappear on the horizon. On a bad day, irritable at everyone around you, you stare out the window at the little swallows, warbling and twittering and chattering their secret language. You suddenly long to be like them, to lift off the ground and fly away with them into the unknown. The wind whipping through your hair, the scent of pine in your nose, the crisp, cool air patting your cheeks like a humored mother, everyone a little dot beneath you as the distance grows larger.
How it would be, if I possessed the ability to fly, is a question that will always be left unanswered.
