the instruction book?

analytic vs generative

consider a game and its rule book:

how much interest do you have

in the ins and outs of the instructions

until you’ve watched it being played, 

or played it a bit yourself?

there comes a time when the rules are interesting,

but not till the game itself captures you,

as teachers, we can forget early developmental stages,

we can fall in love with the structures

that appear so clear to us now,

and we falsely imagine that taking apart the whole

would help the young create the whole anew,

the ascendancy of the analytic over the generative,

I watch kids and I seek to learn from them,

I sought to help a kid write a poem,

and I inspired myself to write the poem instead,

ever since I have trusted the impulse

to shape thought and feeling into coherence

as the prime directive,

to bring forth a whole

that wants to be born

if we can but release 

ourselves into the shaping,

I watch kids and I seek to learn from them,

for me, a kid should write poems first,

working on idea, on feeling, on memory,

on authenticity,

and then figurative language can be tools

to capture meaning even better, 

not as words and technique to learn first,

for then a poem is made of Legos without a story

to bind them into the magic of meaning,

my grandson knows how to construct things

into a whole with a story,

of such is the challenge of an educator:

to learn by being, and doing,

to be of the whole that only later knows the parts.

by Henry H. Walker
April 12, ‘19