Materialities of Writing: Response to Question 1

My approach to answering the question about Emily Dickinson’s poem changed in various ways because of the writing instrument with which I was required to write. Firstly, I realized that I could not conceptualize the response entirely in crayon, so I started a draft that I wrote with pen. After writing three page-length paragraphs, I started to copy my pen-and-paper text to the poster paper.

As I copied to the larger paper, I decided to represent the response in a way different from the way that I wrote my draft. Dividing the paper into three parts, I tried to place each of the three paragraphs in each third, placing them on a slant (representative of Emily Dickinson’s word choice in the poem). After completing the first section, I realized that I couldn’t fit each paragraph into their respective sections, and I would have to separate each paragraph visually by writing them with a differently-colored crayon.

As I moved to the second section, I realized that I could rotate the paper on its center axis, thereby making readers turn their heads—another representation of the poem’s meaning. Perhaps by requiring the reader to move their head (or to rotate the paper), the writing exerted some type of physical control on the reader, changing their perception of the text.

I found that using the crayon was difficult because it rarely maintained a sharp point, and that forced me to constantly adjust the crayon’s writing angle. It also impacted my ability to write legibly. Due to this inconvenience, coupled with the small amount of remaining space I had after the second paragraph, I found myself forgoing words or phrases for more concise ones.