Unwoven Interview #2: Sarah Rusinowski

Steve:

You know, I published a book of poetry in September 2024. Unwoven: Poetry of Form and Release. It’s a collection. Poetry on learning on aging on certain. But most of all, it’s an investigation into the meaningful impact of poetic structure, with poems paired across the book in both formal and free verse, I explore the tanka, ode, forms of sonnet, the ghazal, sestina, cinquain, pastoral, ballad, and others.

Find that book now in print, ebook and audio, along with hundreds of pages of educational supplements at Waywordstudios.com. There’s a link in the show notes.

But at that book launch, I offered quick snippets of interviews on poetry, reading and writing. Here is the first of those interviews in full with Sarah Rusinowski. Sarah is a teacher of AP Literature and AP Language and Composition. She did her graduate work at the University of Alabama. In this interview, consequently, we talk mostly about the classroom uses for the book. We talked about pairing poems for classrooms, the role of author intention, and what is in the teaching supplements offered with the book. I hope you enjoy.

Sarah R:

Well, yeah, I have some questions. But first, I just wanted to say congratulations on the book. With this being your first book and that I’ve been following Waywords, especially the podcast over the last couple of years. And I’ve been looking at some of the resources that you have on there for teachers, but I’m just wanting to know a little bit more about how this book of poetry. To the other work that you do or maybe how it just connects to Waywords mission in general?

Steve:

One of the things that was interesting to me was that for 35 years I’ve taught poetry and I’ve never found any way to teach structure outside of here. You give the kid a sonnet and you show them that that’s what a sonnet looks like, and there’s the. And so they memorize the rules, so they’ll recognize it next time they see it. And that’s as far as it goes. I mean in terms of structure, anyway, we look at individual sonnets, but we never understand why the sonnet. You know. What is the structure doing for it and why did the sonnet writer choose that form and so one of the things that comes out of that is that question of what happens when you put the two next to each other and. Can you now if the poems are the same poem, basically subject wise? What’s the only thing to inquire about the structure? Did the structure change those things?

And so now we’ve got a book here that is actually showing those two next to each other, you know, and I think that’s fairly unique in terms of, you know, what is offered to students. So they don’t have to worry about the, you know, the flash cards of rules. They just look at. What is? I’m sitting in the space in between those palms that they get to ask that question and figure out how the meaning changed when practically the only thing different is the structure.

Sarah R:

Yeah. Well, I think that you make a great point. That there really isn’t anything out there like this where you can look at 2 poems that are getting at a similar message and laying them next to each other like this. And as teachers, we saw, we want our students to understand and I think one of the hardest things to teach with poetry is. Helping students understand how does the structure of the poem inform its meaning or affect its meaning? But it’s hard to really. I think that this shows them that in such a unique way where you just completely strip the poem of that structure and then look at are these now the same poems? Are they different? How is the meaning affected? So I think that’s great and it sounds like from the beginning you had this in mind as a teacher. Or did it start out as just a personal project and involve into something that could be used for teaching?

Steve:

Well, I guess, yeah, yes and no. Yes, it’s always been on my head, I guess somewhere. But no, I was originally just writing poetry and I wanted to experiment up the form. I wanted to know what was going on with form. What I could do with my own writing with it, and so it was for me. It was a training on its own, but then only get into the workshop. People are talking about what happens if you do. This what? Do that and it started to build from there. And then the question. You should do a whole bunch of these. Well, you know, once that happened, then I was writing, I think with a little more intention, a little more purpose. For the idea that maybe there’s something that fits Waywords, and it certainly seemed to once I started thinking about. My gosh, this is doing a little bit of everything that I like to do. So yeah, absolutely. A lot of- I don’t think anything comes out of one source. It Comes out of lots of them.

Sarah R:

Are there any forms that now that you’ve created all of these different poems and use all these different structures, are there 2 that you think would be maybe fun to juxtapose or look at next to each other?

Steve:

Oh man. Yeah, I think there’s a bunch. I mean, obviously I like all of them, but. One of the things I noticed was that as I was writing these that it’s not just the pairings. You know of each form that work, but there’s a lot of connections over the course of the poems as well. Take the Pantoum and the Villanelle for instance. Both of them have repetition. And if I were not thinking consciously about it when I was. I just might say, well, repetition is a way to double down on some of the stress, stress, themes and motifs that the poet wants, and it might serve to. The speakers consciousness in a certain place, that repetition it locks into that idea. But when you look at how the pantoum and villanelle each used the repetition, it’s quite different. And so in the pantomime case, you’re moving forward, but you know, as people say, you move forward 4 steps and then two backwards for those repeated lines. What happens is there’s. That. Turns back on itself, turns back on itself, applauds forward. Very slowly, but always turning back on. It’s a great poem for that repetition, looking backwards from nostalgia, from memory for resistance to change. You know, that kind of thing. And so it’s a very open poem for that narrative. To plot forward and welcome everybody into that slow, nostalgic look back.

The villanelle, on the other hand. Locked in place. You know, it’s one of those. That wherever. Start with the lines they’re going to end right at the same. We haven’t moved an inch and it’s a very anti narrative sort of poem. That way. It doesn’t feel like you’re speaking to anybody in the conversational way. You’re locked in, and so it’s great poem for repetition of. Speaker. Locked in. Who’s locked in internally? Psychologically, who can’t move past something so great? Poem for a poem for obsession. For kind of a manic behavior for wanting to. Dig out of something, but being incapable of doing so of helplessness. So it’s a very internal poem that way because it’s you’re not going to be saying the villanelle out in public to somebody unless you they think you’re nuts. So I mean those are two that. Could put. I think that be kind of fun to talk about.

The other one that I thought was and this is what I’ve discovered as I was writing. I didn’t imagine when I wrote haiku that I would be thinking about it. Same way I saw it. Hi. We talk about it in 575, don’t. You know, and we’re all clapping together even now as we think about a 575. I don’t want. To throw shade on elementary school teachers, but it’s their fault and they’re doing it because they want to teach syllable structure. I get it. But all of the Western world now is thinking 575 in haiku. The Japanese alphabet doesn’t work that way. The Japanese alphabet is very different from the English alphabet, so they don’t even have syllable structure in that same way. What we need to? About Haiku is it’s a very. Deficient compact condensed objective imagery where you’ve got 2 lines that are set up. To offer an objective nature image, a very present moment image of a season or a time, and then a turn, a shift where that third line is juxtaposed in a way that surprises perhaps, or opens up possibility. But the important part about it in that. Courage. Turning. The cutting word. Which, by the way, English doesn’t even have a word like. So in English we use dashes, spaces, even just the line break to show that cutting or that Volta turn.

That’s the same as in the sonnet. You have a condensed poem of beauty. That turns. And in that turn, everything opens up. Now, if I were going to say the same sentence, but I was going to say it was in a sonnet very condensed, 14 lines, very tight. Every word, every syllable. It’s a ton of tight beauty, and there’s a turn at some point in that sonnet, and then it opens up. And in that case you’ve got 2 poems that are functioning exactly the same way, structurally. And that, I think is a much more refreshing way to understand what poetry is up to than to say 575, you know, or 14 lines iambic pentameter. Can count it and answer C you know on the quiz. That’s kind of the thing I’m thinking about there. So those are fun to juxtapose to. Together and you could. A lot of different ways, but there’s all these ties. These poems that are structurally unique, even the sentences, works at some level that. That we just typically don’t. Think about.

Sarah R:

And as you were saying, like the use of the cutting word or the Volta kind of looking at those next to each other could be really interesting. You would. I mean, I would have never thought to place a haiku next to us on it. So that is that is really fun.

Steve:

Yeah, well, yeah. Me either. And I think that’s one of things that I discovered as I loved writing this book. Because of that, I discovered so much about structure. That, you know all the all my lifetime. I’ve spent time around literature and yet I’m still learning things. Awesome is that. But why did? Have to wait to this. And why do we all? So yeah, I thought this was a nice way in and I love the discoveries that come not from prescription, like prescription lesson plans and things like this. But just. Open. Lots of different pieces that you can put together. Assemble the way you want to assemble them. As a teacher, you know all the pieces are here. Them together into any way you want and then discover something that’s fun.

Sarah R:

Well, that’s really interesting to think about because. My initial idea for how I might approach teaching a collection like this was there were all of the doubles, the dual poems, the free verse, and then the structured 1. And it makes sense, of course, to place those next to each other, but maybe even picking 2 poems that might not be necessarily intended. But bringing them together. I think that that would be another really fun approach.

I think there are a lot of different uses and even you know, I was looking at the notes in the back and I’m thinking about the poem. The reply I believe is the title of it and the note. In the back was about the inspiring moment for the poem about receiving a Facebook friend. Friend request and I thought it would be really fun to give students the two poems without any context, and then even after that, give them that context or give them the authors. Comments and then see how that changes their understanding. So I think that those notes even in the end, they’re not the same as your supplements, but I think that those are a wonderful supplement that could open up some questions about this is really up your alley. Does the meaning from this poem come from? How does knowing more about the authors intentionality? Change. Does that help?

Steve:

Oh, I think you’re right, absolutely. Intentionality is important as a discussion point for. You know, we always say what was in the office head. I’ve given some hints. What was in my head in terms of, you know, in those notes in the back like you say, and certainly they can be used that way. And it would create some interesting. I like the way you set that up about, you know, here it is without the authors. And here’s a little bit of that inspirational context that are there. As always, we recognize that that’s not the answer. You know what? That guy says he did while he was writing. Isn’t necessarily what he ended up with. And so that’s kind of a fun conversation to have, too. So there’s. There’s a vehicle for that through the book as well, and I talked more about my process and what I was about in the books in some of the supplements as well.

Sarah R:

I was just going to say it made me think about your comments. That went along with the prose poem, and really. What’s the difference between a prose poem and? Free verse poem.

Steve:

I should point out at this. I think. Free verse is itself not without structure. Think. One of the things that we always, you know, say well, it’s free. Can do whatever I want. You can’t. The author may decide that they want to be free. But there’s always something binding them and right down to the level of grammar and syntax of course, but in verse you’ve got line length. Stanzas you know things like that. You’re. Creating something that looks like first on the page and that comes with its own baggage of expectation. So reverse people are not writing. Rules at. They’re just writing with a different set. Or perhaps fewer. And that could have been more plain to me than when I wrote the post poem. And there’s the post poem, which abandons even those rules and says no, the unit of meeting is actually the sentence and paragraph. And so now it block of words on the page.

What do I do for? And I thought what was interesting was certainly I’m actually adding structure back into the free verse to make it more poetry again.

Sarah R:

Yeah, probably the opposite of the way that your mind was working.

Steve:

So I guess the point is that you know all of our movements back and forth with structure and meaning and intent are kind of a wash. Doing the same act in every case where choosing the rules we want to use. In order to create the meaning we want to create. Structure then becomes all the rules that we have become. The choice of the writer to use or not use as they see. Oh yeah, there’s prescription and enforcement and tradition and those things that are out there that say your poem has to follow these rules. Fine. But think of it this way, a lot of people, even in the Robert Frost Carl Sandburg poem at the beginning there was that discussion about the net and are you playing inside the tennis court and you and you’ve got the rules that are put upon you. Don’t think that’s an accurate metaphor, because. In this game, if I don’t like the height of the net, I can change it. If I think the ball is going to go out of the court because it’s going to be called a foul, I can move the foul line. I can change the structure. To suit the need of the meaning the what the verse needs to do, and people do. They’re doing it all the time. Act of resistance in some points, but the idea is structure is not a giant. Electric fence that binds the poet in some way. Structure is a tool for meaning. And if we’re making meaningful choices as poets, that’s a big deal. And again that I think that’s why we look at it from this direction. So we look at it in terms of what impact it has on meaning, not on that electric fence. You have violated the rules.

Sarah R:

I want to go back for just a second to talk about some of just as I was reading some of the poems really struck me as ones that I would enjoy teaching the most, and one of them I thought, I’m going to be teaching all seniors this year. And I was thinking that if there gets to be a point in the school year, which I’m sure there will be, where students need a little more. Of a nudge or kind of a re-inspiration to learning for learning sake. The one section of the book that seems like maybe it belongs the most in a classroom space was the section on education. The I’m thinking about the poems righteous education And Yes, Young Man, I Wish You’d Studied More. Which all kind of invite those questions into the nature of learning and the nature. What? True learning versus those extrinsic motivations for learning. So do you see those as poems that you think belong in the classroom space, or are they more commentaries on the classroom and learning? How would? How would you maybe encourage teachers to? Those phones.

Steve:

Yeah, I guess I would agree. Both. I mean, I think there’s a lot to be gained from understanding the nature of the educational space. A lot of transactional stuff that happens in education and. It was hard for me to as a with my teaching background, not to write about something like this, but absolutely they can be used and. I think one of the things that catches me about, and yes, young man which is blank first, what that does we I guess teenagers have this this image of a lot of teachers as being you know full of themselves, you know knowing all. And perhaps stuffy as well. Well, what’s interesting is the blank verse. Fills that a little bit by making everything. Am big. Suddenly we’re taking that tone and we’re just shoving it up a couple. Degrees and if you want to think of it as a stick being shoved up a couple degrees, that’s fine too. But there’s  a teacher monologue going on there, and the blank first is it’s a monologue in this case.

Sarah R:

Yeah. The conversation about learning is not much of a conversation.

Steve:

No matter how effective that teacher is, no. How much they know. Notice in that poem there’s no space for the. At all. He’s not saying a word doesn’t get a chance. Nice dialogue for that one-on-one conversation, isn’t it? And. There’s a fair amount of that going on. And it happens. Lots of different ways it can happen with the pomposity of this kind of teacher who, even if he has the right idea, we should be pursuing the why we should be getting into the noble epistemologyAny question of philosophy which addresses what we can know ... More of learning. But even if he’s got that right. Everything else shuts it all down and it happens. Through the pomposity, of course, the tone of that, of that poem, it happens with the silencing of a student who doesn’t feel they have the right to intercede at.

And so we’re that space. So we go looking elsewhere. I guess the same game that’s out there, the little girl who avoids the school issues and decides to find. Learn on her own. Who finds a different way to do it? Yeah, I think you’re absolutely. There’s a lot of ways to do it, but the poems aren’t offering answers. They’re just complicating the questions. Half the fun, yeah.

Sarah R:

I guess if there was one poem that you. To share out and especially I’m sure that when you’re sharing this with groups that might use this in the classroom, is there one or two poems that you might? Suggest using as like an intro or one that you think that you would enjoy starting with.

Steve:

You know, I think I’m gonna surprise myself a little bit and say, yeah, I think I’d start at the beginning. The opening poem is Zanila, which is such an unusual form of poetry I shouldn’t. Unusual in that it’s fairly new. Invented just about 40 years ago, maybe by a little known poet (Laura Lamarca) who has invented a lot of different forms. This is what’s happening in the Circuit of the amateur and semi professional spaces out there experimenting? Zanila is a poem that you can almost. As a teacher. Nobody’s run into what’s good about. Is that suddenly no one is coming in with a lot of expectations about what poetic structure is about? Go ahead, start with this on it if you want to. But the moment you say sonnet in that classroom, all the students. Son, you know they don’t want. They want anything to do with it. And now you got to jump over that hurdle to get them back in the right zone of being appreciative of what it is to going to experience Zanila has no expectations. And it’s a really easy access structure. It’s very obvious to see what his rules are about, so that gives us a chance. That for the students, for the class to figure out what is this structure doing, what does it? How does it function? What is it doing for the poem itself? Is it lending some gravitas? The poem. Is it? Is it emphasizing? Is it showing some obsession? It up to. But guess what? You can’t Google it. You’re not going to find Cliff notes out there. Nobody that’s going to tell you that. Now. So now you’ve got a palm structure to look at that’s easy to get into, easy to talk about, sets up the whole discussion of the book and. No expectations. So this starts us off right away by saying what is the structure for instead of asking, you know what are the rules of the structure?

Sarah R:

Yeah.

Steve:

So we get back to that same idea again and that’s why I think I’d start right away. With the first poem.

Sarah R:

Awesome. Yeah, I had a question for you, actually about Zanila being the first poem in the collection. I love that that the poem itself kind of is a good opening to what the collection as a whole is interested in exploring. So I think that that would be a fun one too, to. Now I think. I guess my last question is just, do you have any other suggestions for how teachers might use this collection and? Especially use of those additional supplements or just anything else you want teachers to know.

Steve:

You know, I think one of the things that’s important about this and the supplements and everything else is I have no prescriptions. There’s no lesson plans. There’s no worksheets. There’s all these pieces of resources that teachers can assemble the way they want to assemble them. Now, as you get into the work that is coming. Forward I’ll have some suggestions and some strategies. Show some trends and some patterns. You know that work is done for you, but. How you? Employ. It is going to be up to.

I should probably talk about exactly what it is you’re getting in that way. There’s all kinds of. First, there’s annotated versions of everything that’s in Unwoven. There’s also master poets, you know. Malay and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and all the heavy hitters. And doing their work. And I’ve grabbed two or three of every form of poem out there and done an analysis of those for teachers as well, so they can see how unwelcome poems work the same or differently from some of the established masters. There’s questions on the poems and comparing and contrasting them. There’s. Essays that go into the palms of. Further and all that’s there.

What’s going to follow in October is a teachers guide, which will have all those things assembled, plus some of those patterns. Was talking about some of the implementation strategies that you might want to try some ways to decode. What other things I have as a as a toolbox? Kind of that if a student wants into a poem, they don’t recognize the structure. They don’t what to do with it. Some. To try out on that poem to see if they can unlock it a little bit and find out what what’s going on with it and then down the road, there’s even an online course. For students who aren’t cut to a classroom experience that way, or for teachers who want to send students there for supplemental work, it’s all there. Video audio talks are there. Video and. Readings of the poems are here.

And I should probably mention too that the copyright of this of this book is about as open as I can make as a Creative Commons copyright for educators. As long as you’re giving credit to the author. And that would be me and you are not using it for commercial purposes? You do anything you want with it. Right. Chop it up. Move it. And the same with the supplements, which are even more broadly protected. Use them for the class. Any way you. Things are hard enough without you worrying about something that’s been copyrighted or someone going to hunt you down so. That’s all there for teachers absolutely free.

Sarah R:

Well, I’m excited to take a look at that stuff, and especially I mean with this being my first year teaching a pilot, there are already a couple of poems that I’ve looked at and thought I don’t know if I would have even thought to teach this form, but. Now it’s in my calendar, so I’m excited.

Steve:

Yeah. I’ll just say picking and choosing the forms for this, the 17, I ended up choosing. There’s some traditional expected ones, and there’s some really unusual ones. I learned a lot riding them for me for the first time as a writer was a whole new experience. But you know. There’s at least another eighty 9000 thousand poems out there. Different forms that could still be written. So I wanted to grab a few that were less usual for our Western English speaking leaders and really work with those in some way. There’s still a lot more out there that can be found and discovered. Think it’s kind of cool.

Sarah R:

Yeah. Wow. Huge project. Well, I hope that it distributes far and wide and that I hope that it reaches the audience who will really enjoy and benefit from it the. I mean, that’s the goal because there are so many people that I think and especially thinking about it from the teaching perspective. There’s so many people that I think would. So much success. You this book, I hope that they. Find it. You know, I know that that can be a tough part of it too. It’s just getting getting the word spread.

Steve:

Thank you, Sarah, for a wonderful discussion and I wish you great success and wonder as you and your students discover meaning.

If you’re interested in getting a copy of Unwoven or any of the supplements, head on over to Waywordsstudio.com and drop an order.  I’ll have another interview for the book launch next week. But in the meantime, go read something.

 

Trailer:

Right around the corner, a literary podcast returns with a new name. The Waywords Podcast becomes Literary Nomads.

Why literary? Because we’ll be talking all things reading and how to think about them. That’s books and poems, of course, but also nonfiction, graphic works, digital and audio tales, and anything else we run into.  Because reading is reading and thinking is thinking.

Why nomads? Well, I suspect we’ll be traveling a bit into unknown territories, even settling down for a while, making connections that we may not have expected, and making use of them for a bit. And then we move on, always. Because change is change and change, is necessary, healthy.

So explore with me, Steve Chisnell, a teacher, writer, and voracious eater of books for almost forty years. I promise every episode will offer you something you weren’t imagining before. That’s Literary Nomads: Wanderings on Literature and Language. Wander with me. I think they call that, “follow the podcast” now.