58: Educational Poetry That Shakes, Rocks, and Rattles

An issue of a periodical so vigorously named The Journal of Critical Inquiry Into Curriculum and Instruction devoted to poetry as a form of educational research? Really? We are all aware that within the larger social imaginary, the making of poetry, as one of the literary arts, is generally depicted as an effete endeavor, involving the composition of formally beautiful verbal artifacts, ethereal texts that evoke a sense of harmony and equilibrium within the mind of the reader. The prevailing imaginary would surely disqualify poetry as a form of critical inquiry.

Of course, opinions dissenting from various facets of the imaginary have been lodged over the years. For example, John Dewey (b. 1859 - d. 1952) insisted upon the dissolution of the classical dichotomy between works of art and the affairs of daily commerce. Still, even the elderly Dewey of Art as Experience (1934/ 1958), while suggesting the potential of works of art for inspiring new personal relations in everyday experiences, failed, in my view, to sufficiently emphasize the power of art to challenge and disrupt prevailing regimes of truth by raising new questions without obvious answers.