Quilt Squares, Literature, and Freewriting

I wanted a unique way to begin a discussion of the topic I wrote on the board:  "What is Literature?"  Just the writing of these 3 words on the board provoked some eye-rolling, and not in a good way.

I brought out this quilt square:

I asked, "I created this with my own two hands.  I sewed it all by hand.  Is this a work of literature?"  Much to my surprise, the students got engaged with this question--I expected mass agreement that a quilt square is not a work of literature, that literature requires words.

From there it was on to works that I consider much more traditional literature. We looked at Carolyn Forche's "The Colonel," which I've seen in Literature textbooks in both the Poetry and the Short Fiction section.  It generated good conversation about what a work of literature needs to have, beyond words.  Is it characters?  Imagery?  Some sort of plot?  Does it need to be about something that matters?  If it matters, what's the best way to get as many people to see it as possible?  From there, we moved to a few other works, as we talked about genre (is it analysis?  What are the limits of a poetry of witness? how can we tell if a poem is about the moon and the sun or something more substantial?).

There was some additional eye rolling as the class went on, which might have been about me or might have been about the subject or might have been about something else.  Much as I want to believe in my persuasive and performing powers, I know that not every student will be happy and completely engaged all the time.

At the beginning of the class, before we did anything, one of the students let out an enormous sigh and declared, "I can't wait for this semester to be over!"  It's only week 2!  So, I might be facing long odds with some of these students, in terms of having happy, engaged students.

But that's OK.  I'm happy and engaged.

My second class was much more engaged than I expected.  We did two rounds of freewriting, where students must write without stopping for 5 minutes.  There's usually one or two (or five or six) who just give up.  Not this group--they wrote and wrote.  

Was it usable?  That is not the point of freewriting.  But I suspect that some of it was.  Tomorrow we'll start working on narrative essays in earnest.  Today I'll join the quilt group at the local Lutheran church and play with their fabric stash.