The poetry of Billy Collins has quite a reach on the internet. There is a false dichotomy between poems that are reasonably direct and easy to take in and notions of intellectual complexity and depth. I love Collins, for thumbing the eye of such pompousness.
I’ve been considering the writing classroom as a studio for a while, an approach that has great promise if only for the counter-force it applies to the analytical inertia of most language arts pedagogy. It’s hard to fall back on consumption and analysis when making stuff becomes the main activity of the class—a point particularly helpful when working with media. Over time, I’ve modified my thinking about this studio model to put back some analysis, ending up with a core of activity/making (maybe 70 or 75%) woven through with threads of analysis and critique.