The Work of Teaching Writing by Joseph Harris;

Author:Joseph Harris; [Harris, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Distribution Center (CDC Presses)

“Did I really? What an inelegant expression. ‘What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?’ I see we got to the slaughterhouse in the end.” Sassoon read through the poem. When he’d finished, he didn’t immediately comment.

“It’s better, isn’t it?”

“Better? It’s transformed.” He read it again. (1992, 157, original emphasis)

But after offering this silent testimony to the power of what Owen has written, Sassoon goes on to argue some more with the direction the poem has taken, worrying that Owen might offer his readers a false sense of consolation for the meaningless slaughter of the war. But Owen objects to this reading of his work, insisting that one can take “pride in the sacrifice” without suggesting it was justified. Indeed, Owen points out, Sassoon makes a similar move in one of his own poems about the war, which Owen begins to read triumphantly to his teacher (157). Sassoon cedes the point to his newly confident student but still makes one last and telling revision, changing Dead to Doomed in the poem’s title (158).

What matters most to me is not how this conversation ends but that it is a conversation, an exchange in which both writer and reader, student and teacher, assert their views about the text they are working on. Barker shows us a process in which both Owen and Sassoon win, lose, and compromise—and through which a better text is forged. The poem remains Owen’s, but Sassoon has had a hand in its shaping. It is a remarkable depiction of the kind of work with writing a student and teacher can do together.

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