Teaching Forms on the Road to Rhetorical Consciousness

The more I think about teaching rhetoric to students who have no idea how to even comprehend the conceptual nature of the term, the more I begin to realize that teaching rhetoric is a push to make students see that shape of things. That is, how are its components positioned, and how does this make for optimal usage? This, I think, is the basis of form.

As a student of poetry, I am always concerned with form. "Form," too often, can be conflated with dead white guy boxes like sonnets (which I happen to love, thank you very much) and ballades and sestinas and trioles and so on until the end of time. Rather, when I think of form, I think of the decisions that make such received forms (and all poetic forms) possible. It has to do with why one writer decided to do this instead of that. Why five lines instead of six? Why four beats instead of five? Why three words instead of four?

And then to make the leap from art to things to writing! A car has form (why four wheels instead of five?). Advertisements have form (why six repetitions of the words "hot wings" instead of seven?). And of course, our writing has form.

Writing too often seems like a thing that is outside the agency of our students. They don't realize that they get to make the forms, and not the other way around. They get to decide what constitutes "essay" or "letter." And they must do so, of course, with an informed opinion. But, with this kind of realization comes rhetorical consciousness. I think, therefore I am. I write, therefore I choose. I choose, therefore I invent.