The Edge of Belief: Envisioning a Poetics of Teaching

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 26
  In Roundtable Session: Enchanted Poetics and Images as Advocacy in Arts-Based Educational Research

Abstract

In this inquiry, I engage a conceptualization of a poetics of teaching rendered through the lensings of poets such as Anne Carson, Ada Limón, and Robert Hass. I explore how a poetic disposition towards teaching asks that we encounter the elusive nature of being in the world, the uncertainty, and the inbetween-ness of contradictions. As Carson (2017) inquires, “Where is the edge of belief? Is it possible to believe / something truly unbelievable?” I take up this question in tracing how we form beliefs across our teaching and discuss how this shaping is a theorization of the poetic inherent in the ordinary.

Author

• Alecia D. Beymer, Michigan State University