Real Toads Research Articles

Modern Poetry in the Classroom: Imaginary Gardens, Real Toads: Wallace's "Ungainly Things"

Modern Poetry in the Classroom: Imaginary Gardens, Real Toads: Wallace's "Ungainly Things"

“Break Out, Be There!”

I, too, dislike it, begins Marianne Moore in her poem on Poetry. But dislike turns out to be only part of the picture, for, as we discover by the end of the poem, she also delights in the poet's imaginary gardens with real toads in them. For me, similar mixed emotions well up around the subject of creativity. Part of what gets my emotions churn ing stems from the word itself. Creativ ity. Certainly it has a pleasing ring, but it also has a mushy, unprincipled quality that's enough to make any English teacher queasy. In the past decade or so, it has become a catchword for all kinds of training and development programs, and there are people out there making money on creative management, creative marketing, creative coffee breaks. ... These objectives may be worthy, but occasionally I find myself wondering what they're doing in Mari anne Moore's garden and in the world of represented by, say, Frank Lloyd Wright, Pablo Picasso, and Albert Einstein. Actually, however, the confusion of meaning is nothing new. As a part of both pop culture and psychological jargon, creativity is used to cover

“Imaginary gardens with real toads”: Reading and drama in education

(1985). “Imaginary gardens with real toads”: Reading and drama in education. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 24, Educating Through Drama, pp. 193-198.

Real Toads and Imaginary Gardens

Real Toads and Imaginary Gardens

Real Toads and Imaginary Gardens

CITIES are powerful and threatening monsters, and writers exposed to them have often reacted with a horrified recoil or seen in them images of emptiness or despair. We recognise in the lines of Eliot and Wordsworth our own response to the brutal assault London directs at our senses and our cherished view of our own uniqueness, though few of us are able to communicate our impressions in such memorable language:

Real Toads and Imaginary Gardens

Real Toads and Imaginary Gardens