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Authors’ Garden Clippings Grow Students’ Love of Literature
Steve Inskeep (Host): And I’m Steve Inskeep with the story of an English teacher hoping to find a way to make sure that a love for literature takes root. Here’s Rebecca Kruth of Michigan Radio.
Rebecca Kruth (Byline): The courtyard at West Bloomfield High School is basically just a cut-through to the other side of the school. There’s 1)grassy areas, some bare patches and a few picnic tables 2)scattered around—nothing here that’s likely to inspire 3)odes or 4)sonnets. On one side, a group of students is dumping 5)wheelbarrows full of 6)peat 7)gravel into a plot that, hopefully, by this time next year, will brighten up the place a bit.
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/fkyk/fkyk201511/fkyk20151115-1-l.jpg)
Sydney Jones: Some of the people may not know this is, you know, a literary garden, but they might just enjoy the color.
Kruth: That’s 17-year-old Sydney Jones, and, yes, sometimes a rose is just a rose, but not in this garden. American literature teacher Jennifer McQuillan is holding a 8)clay pot filled with soil. The brownish green beginnings of a 9)daylily are 10)poking through.
Jennifer McQuillan: I get up every morning. I take pictures of it. We measure it. That’s actually part of my daughter Emily’s job is she measures it, and we were delighted to see some growth.
Kruth: This daylily was Emily Dickinson’s—literally. It came from her 11)homestead in Amherst, Mass., and soon it will have a new home in this courtyard. McQuillan has been calling authors’ homesteads all summer, asking for clippings to add to this literary garden.
McQuillan: We’re talking 12)bigwigs of American literature—Poe, Fitzgerald, Whitman, Dickinson, I mean, Vonnegut.
Kruth: Jennifer McQuillan wants her students to see just what authors saw in their backyards that inspired their writing. That’s hard to do inside the windowless classroom where she’s taught for the last 16 years, so McQuillan gets her students outside as much as possible. Senior Jack Berkey says he still thinks about the 13)transcendentalist authors he read in her class, like Thoreau and Emerson.
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/fkyk/fkyk201511/fkyk20151115-2-l.jpg)
Jack Berkey: We got to go outside in, like, the cold of winter, walk around the woods. When we went out there, it wasn’t like, oh, go walk this way. It was kind of like just go in the woods and do whatever you want, which was kind of what the authors wanted you to do was just to find yourself. Kruth: Even just working on the garden today, shoveling dirt and rocks, is jogging some students’ memories.
Ilyssa Brunhild: I thought about the pear tree from Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Kruth: That’s Ilyssa Brunhild, a junior.
Brunhild: Growing up, it kind of symbolized, and I like that for, like, students who are looking to grow through literature, and it’s, like, all symbolic with the plants and you know. (laughter)
Kruth: There will eventually be a pear tree here, but it won’t come from author Zora Neale Hurston’s homestead because her Florida homestead no longer exists. McQuillan says that’s unfortunately become a common thread as she tries to track down homesteads for female authors.
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/fkyk/fkyk201511/fkyk20151115-3-l.jpg)
McQuillan: They have less access to, you know, generations with money that can preserve homesteads. What this garden has done has also opened up questions about whose 14)legacies do we preserve, whose memories? You know, who has the money to preserve those memories?
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/fkyk/fkyk201511/fkyk20151115-4-l.jpg)
Kruth: It’s also raised another question—how do you get 15)wisteria to thrive from clippings that traveled from the Mark Twain house in Hartford, Conn., or a rosebush to grow from a cutting from William Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Miss.? McQuillan is up for the challenge.
McQuillan: There’s all these moments in literature where nature is this force to be 16)reckoned with no matter how carefully you try to contain it or cultivate it, but you have to try. I think you have to try, and I think this is just such a novel way of getting them involved.
Kruth: Pun, of course, very much intended.
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/fkyk/fkyk201511/fkyk20151115-5-l.jpg)
史蒂夫·英斯基普(主持人):我是史蒂夫·英斯基普,今天给大家带来一位英语教师的故事,她希望找到一种可以让人喜欢上文学的方法。下面是来自密歇根州电台丽贝卡·克鲁斯的报道。
丽贝卡·克鲁斯(撰稿人):到西布鲁菲尔德高中的另一边基本上可以从这个庭院抄近路过去。这里有一片草地,几块光秃秃的土地和一些野餐用的桌子散落在周围,看上去这里没有哪一点可能激发人吟诗作词的兴致。另一边,一群学生正用手推车装满泥炭砾石,将它们倒在一片空地上,希望来年这个时候,这个地方可以多一丝生气。
悉尼·琼斯:一些人也许不知道这是,你知道,一座文学花园,但是也许他们只是喜欢这里的色彩。
克鲁斯:那是17岁的悉尼·琼斯,没错,有时候玫瑰就只是玫瑰,但在这座花园里不是。美国文学教师詹妮弗·麦克奎琳正拿着一个装满泥土的陶罐。黄花菜褐绿色的芽儿正破土而出呢。
詹妮弗·麦克奎琳:每天早上起来,我就给它拍照,测量它的生长状况。实际上,那是我女儿艾米莉的一项工作,是她做的测量,而我们也很高兴看到它一点点地成长。
克鲁斯:严格来说,这黄花菜是艾米莉·狄金森的。它来自狄金森位于马萨诸塞州阿默斯特镇的住所,但很快地,它将在这座庭院里有一个新家。整个夏天,麦克奎琳已经给很多作家的住所打了电话,问他们要一些剪枝,添加到这座文学花园里。
麦克奎琳:我们说的是美国文学巨匠,比如爱伦·坡、菲茨杰拉德、惠特曼、狄金森,我的意思是,冯内古特。
克鲁斯:詹妮弗·麦克奎琳希望她的学生可以看到作家们的后花园里激发他们写作灵感的东西。这是在无窗的教室里很难办到的,而她已经那样教了16年,所以麦克奎琳让她的学生尽可能多地出去户外。毕业班学生杰克·伯奇说,他现在仍旧会想起在麦克奎琳的课堂上读到的超验主义作家的作品,比如梭罗和爱默生。
杰克·伯奇:我们会去到户外,比如,在寒冷的冬天,在森林里四处转悠。当我们到达那里,并不是像这样“哦,走这条路。”而只是走进森林,做我们想做的事情,就像是作家们希望你做的那样,只是发现自己。
克鲁斯:就算只是像今天这样在花园里铲土搬石,也能唤起一些学生的记忆。
伊莉莎·布伦希尔德:我想到了《凝望上帝》里的那棵梨树。
克鲁斯:那是伊莉莎·布伦希尔德,一个三年级的学生。
布伦希尔德:它就像一种成长的象征,我喜欢(那种形式)是因为,比如说,那些期望从文学的殿堂中成长起来的学生,就和这些植物一样都是极具象征意义的,你知道。(笑声)
克鲁斯:最后这里也会有一棵梨树,但它不是来自于作家佐拉·尼尔·赫斯顿的住所,因为她佛罗里达的住所已经不存在了。麦克奎琳说,当她想要寻找女性作家的住所时,不幸的是,很多都是相同的境况。
麦克奎琳:你知道,很少有办法可以世世代代都有钱去保护这些住所。这座花园现在所做的也引发了一个问题:我们保护的是谁的遗产,谁的记忆?你知道,谁有足够的资金去保护那些记忆?
克鲁斯:同时,另一个问题也产生了:怎样能让来自马克·吐温位于康涅狄格州哈特福德的住所的紫藤剪枝繁茂生长,或来自威廉·福克纳位于密西西比州牛津的住所的一段玫瑰剪枝成长为玫瑰花丛?麦克奎琳正准备迎接挑战。
麦克奎琳:在文学作品中,都有这样的时刻,在那时不管你想要多么细心地包容它或照料它,自然的力量都是无法估量,不能忽视的,但你不得不去尝试。我认为你必须去尝试,这也是让他们全情投入的一种新奇的方式。
克鲁斯:明显是双关语。(注:上文中的novel有小说和新奇的两个含义,在这里都有体现。这种教授文学的方法很新颖。)
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/fkyk/fkyk201511/fkyk20151115-6-l.jpg)
Steve Inskeep (Host): And I’m Steve Inskeep with the story of an English teacher hoping to find a way to make sure that a love for literature takes root. Here’s Rebecca Kruth of Michigan Radio.
Rebecca Kruth (Byline): The courtyard at West Bloomfield High School is basically just a cut-through to the other side of the school. There’s 1)grassy areas, some bare patches and a few picnic tables 2)scattered around—nothing here that’s likely to inspire 3)odes or 4)sonnets. On one side, a group of students is dumping 5)wheelbarrows full of 6)peat 7)gravel into a plot that, hopefully, by this time next year, will brighten up the place a bit.
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/fkyk/fkyk201511/fkyk20151115-1-l.jpg)
Sydney Jones: Some of the people may not know this is, you know, a literary garden, but they might just enjoy the color.
Kruth: That’s 17-year-old Sydney Jones, and, yes, sometimes a rose is just a rose, but not in this garden. American literature teacher Jennifer McQuillan is holding a 8)clay pot filled with soil. The brownish green beginnings of a 9)daylily are 10)poking through.
Jennifer McQuillan: I get up every morning. I take pictures of it. We measure it. That’s actually part of my daughter Emily’s job is she measures it, and we were delighted to see some growth.
Kruth: This daylily was Emily Dickinson’s—literally. It came from her 11)homestead in Amherst, Mass., and soon it will have a new home in this courtyard. McQuillan has been calling authors’ homesteads all summer, asking for clippings to add to this literary garden.
McQuillan: We’re talking 12)bigwigs of American literature—Poe, Fitzgerald, Whitman, Dickinson, I mean, Vonnegut.
Kruth: Jennifer McQuillan wants her students to see just what authors saw in their backyards that inspired their writing. That’s hard to do inside the windowless classroom where she’s taught for the last 16 years, so McQuillan gets her students outside as much as possible. Senior Jack Berkey says he still thinks about the 13)transcendentalist authors he read in her class, like Thoreau and Emerson.
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/fkyk/fkyk201511/fkyk20151115-2-l.jpg)
Jack Berkey: We got to go outside in, like, the cold of winter, walk around the woods. When we went out there, it wasn’t like, oh, go walk this way. It was kind of like just go in the woods and do whatever you want, which was kind of what the authors wanted you to do was just to find yourself. Kruth: Even just working on the garden today, shoveling dirt and rocks, is jogging some students’ memories.
Ilyssa Brunhild: I thought about the pear tree from Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Kruth: That’s Ilyssa Brunhild, a junior.
Brunhild: Growing up, it kind of symbolized, and I like that for, like, students who are looking to grow through literature, and it’s, like, all symbolic with the plants and you know. (laughter)
Kruth: There will eventually be a pear tree here, but it won’t come from author Zora Neale Hurston’s homestead because her Florida homestead no longer exists. McQuillan says that’s unfortunately become a common thread as she tries to track down homesteads for female authors.
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/fkyk/fkyk201511/fkyk20151115-3-l.jpg)
McQuillan: They have less access to, you know, generations with money that can preserve homesteads. What this garden has done has also opened up questions about whose 14)legacies do we preserve, whose memories? You know, who has the money to preserve those memories?
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/fkyk/fkyk201511/fkyk20151115-4-l.jpg)
Kruth: It’s also raised another question—how do you get 15)wisteria to thrive from clippings that traveled from the Mark Twain house in Hartford, Conn., or a rosebush to grow from a cutting from William Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Miss.? McQuillan is up for the challenge.
McQuillan: There’s all these moments in literature where nature is this force to be 16)reckoned with no matter how carefully you try to contain it or cultivate it, but you have to try. I think you have to try, and I think this is just such a novel way of getting them involved.
Kruth: Pun, of course, very much intended.
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/fkyk/fkyk201511/fkyk20151115-5-l.jpg)
史蒂夫·英斯基普(主持人):我是史蒂夫·英斯基普,今天给大家带来一位英语教师的故事,她希望找到一种可以让人喜欢上文学的方法。下面是来自密歇根州电台丽贝卡·克鲁斯的报道。
丽贝卡·克鲁斯(撰稿人):到西布鲁菲尔德高中的另一边基本上可以从这个庭院抄近路过去。这里有一片草地,几块光秃秃的土地和一些野餐用的桌子散落在周围,看上去这里没有哪一点可能激发人吟诗作词的兴致。另一边,一群学生正用手推车装满泥炭砾石,将它们倒在一片空地上,希望来年这个时候,这个地方可以多一丝生气。
悉尼·琼斯:一些人也许不知道这是,你知道,一座文学花园,但是也许他们只是喜欢这里的色彩。
克鲁斯:那是17岁的悉尼·琼斯,没错,有时候玫瑰就只是玫瑰,但在这座花园里不是。美国文学教师詹妮弗·麦克奎琳正拿着一个装满泥土的陶罐。黄花菜褐绿色的芽儿正破土而出呢。
詹妮弗·麦克奎琳:每天早上起来,我就给它拍照,测量它的生长状况。实际上,那是我女儿艾米莉的一项工作,是她做的测量,而我们也很高兴看到它一点点地成长。
克鲁斯:严格来说,这黄花菜是艾米莉·狄金森的。它来自狄金森位于马萨诸塞州阿默斯特镇的住所,但很快地,它将在这座庭院里有一个新家。整个夏天,麦克奎琳已经给很多作家的住所打了电话,问他们要一些剪枝,添加到这座文学花园里。
麦克奎琳:我们说的是美国文学巨匠,比如爱伦·坡、菲茨杰拉德、惠特曼、狄金森,我的意思是,冯内古特。
克鲁斯:詹妮弗·麦克奎琳希望她的学生可以看到作家们的后花园里激发他们写作灵感的东西。这是在无窗的教室里很难办到的,而她已经那样教了16年,所以麦克奎琳让她的学生尽可能多地出去户外。毕业班学生杰克·伯奇说,他现在仍旧会想起在麦克奎琳的课堂上读到的超验主义作家的作品,比如梭罗和爱默生。
杰克·伯奇:我们会去到户外,比如,在寒冷的冬天,在森林里四处转悠。当我们到达那里,并不是像这样“哦,走这条路。”而只是走进森林,做我们想做的事情,就像是作家们希望你做的那样,只是发现自己。
克鲁斯:就算只是像今天这样在花园里铲土搬石,也能唤起一些学生的记忆。
伊莉莎·布伦希尔德:我想到了《凝望上帝》里的那棵梨树。
克鲁斯:那是伊莉莎·布伦希尔德,一个三年级的学生。
布伦希尔德:它就像一种成长的象征,我喜欢(那种形式)是因为,比如说,那些期望从文学的殿堂中成长起来的学生,就和这些植物一样都是极具象征意义的,你知道。(笑声)
克鲁斯:最后这里也会有一棵梨树,但它不是来自于作家佐拉·尼尔·赫斯顿的住所,因为她佛罗里达的住所已经不存在了。麦克奎琳说,当她想要寻找女性作家的住所时,不幸的是,很多都是相同的境况。
麦克奎琳:你知道,很少有办法可以世世代代都有钱去保护这些住所。这座花园现在所做的也引发了一个问题:我们保护的是谁的遗产,谁的记忆?你知道,谁有足够的资金去保护那些记忆?
克鲁斯:同时,另一个问题也产生了:怎样能让来自马克·吐温位于康涅狄格州哈特福德的住所的紫藤剪枝繁茂生长,或来自威廉·福克纳位于密西西比州牛津的住所的一段玫瑰剪枝成长为玫瑰花丛?麦克奎琳正准备迎接挑战。
麦克奎琳:在文学作品中,都有这样的时刻,在那时不管你想要多么细心地包容它或照料它,自然的力量都是无法估量,不能忽视的,但你不得不去尝试。我认为你必须去尝试,这也是让他们全情投入的一种新奇的方式。
克鲁斯:明显是双关语。(注:上文中的novel有小说和新奇的两个含义,在这里都有体现。这种教授文学的方法很新颖。)
![](https://www.soolun.com/img/pic.php?url=http://img.resource.qikan.cn/qkimages/fkyk/fkyk201511/fkyk20151115-6-l.jpg)