Wellesley College Writing Program: Faculty

There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer's estimation of a work in progress and its actual quality.
-Annie Dillard

Writing Program Faculty

Jeannine Johnson
Visiting Lecturer
Clapp Library 315
jjohnso2@wellesley.edu
781.283.2579

I received a B.A. from Haverford College and a Ph.D. from Yale University, both in English. My scholarly interests lie in poetry (especially post-1945 and Romantic), literary traditions, and literature, image, and technology. Last year, I published my first book, Why Write Poetry? Modern Poets Defending Their Art (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), and I’m currently working on an article on ekphrasis.

As a writer, I share in both of the following sentiments:

“I don’t like writing. I like having written.”
—Dorothy Parker

“Lord,
teach me to
write so well,
that I shall no
longer want to.”
—“A Poet’s Prayer,” W.H. Auden

As Parker suggests, the work of writing is sometimes difficult, perhaps even unpleasant, but it is work that can lead to great satisfaction. And even if that satisfaction in writing is incomplete—Auden confirms that the final product will always fall short of perfection—the process of writing can be alluring, engaging, enthralling, something to which we are happily compelled to return again and again. As a teacher of writing, I encourage students to meet these challenges, and to cultivate the desire, to borrow from Wallace Stevens, to get “the world right” in words.

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Lynne Viti and Wini Wood
Wellesley College Writing Program
Created by: Karyn Lu '01
Date Created: June 29, 2000
Expires: July 31, 2009