609 Week 3 - Blog 2

Charles Bernstein is clearly an authority (topoi) on poetics, composition, and style. As for his essay Poetics, it doesn’t utilize the scientific style associated with composition scholars, and for that reason his argument proved salient for me. This idea piggybacks on one of his quotes in regard to undergraduate, graduate, and scholarly essays, “…an unorganized (or differently organized) essay that suggests active thinking is often more useful in response to a literary work than a paper of impeccable logic that has little to say” (127). Because Bernstein places this observation out in the open, I’d like to follow his lead. So many times we read essays where the author has a sound grasp on composition’s scientific reasoning, in other words, the author can make a logical argument, yet there is little “meat.” Indeed, these authors can speak in the collegiate discourse, yet deep, original, self-reflective, and active thinking has not occurred. A while back when I was in the Master’s application process, I spoke with a friend in this very graduate program and asked her if I could look at one of her papers. She gave me one—I read it and then responded, “It’s written well, you’ve used elevated diction and collegiate discourse, but it doesn’t really say much.” She answered, “I know.” (She got an “A” on the paper). So when does how we say something become more important than what we say? And in the end, does it help the university to reward mediocre thinking that spews forth proficient collegiate language that is void or consists of little substance?