Tradition and Innovation

The concept of Queneau's 100,000,000,000 poems is a very contemporary approach to an incredibly traditional poetic format. He was able to take the idea of what a sonnet was and reinvent it as an art form. I find it hard as it is writing one poem and keeping everything cohesive; I can’t imagine writing a bunch of different lines to make a hundred billion poems and still have everything understandable. Like Queneua, Berrigan also renovated the sonnet in a different way. Taking a modern approach on a Shakespearean idea, Berrigan was able to incorporate those traditional ideas of a sonnet while still contemporizing it.
An idea I liked that Harris introduces in this chapter of Rewriting is that academic write is comparable to a conversation. Essentially, you are hearing another’s ideas, interpreting those ideas, and commenting on them along with your own commentary. Thinking of essays in this sense makes them much more approachable, rather than this highly structured, formal way of writing.