Works Cited

 Elbow, Peter. “Collage: Your Cheatin’ Art.” Writing On the Edge 9.1 (1998): 26-40. Print.

In this article “Collage: Your Cheatin’ Art.” the author, Peter Elbow, describes the structure and benefits of writing collages.

   Peter Elbow begins his discussion by describing additional sources on the topic of collages. He then uses the description of a TV documentary on cancer as an example of a collage. Elbow states that disjointness, disorganization and putting ideas that “sort of go together” are the properties used to create collages. He next details the methods used to create collages. He goes on to describe the characteristics of a narrative collage. Narrative collages, flatten time and space by eliminating boundaries. He then describes the structural features used to make a collage. The first are dingbats which are markers used for separation. Next are blips or bits of information and the Elbow goes into a detailed discussion about crots, bits or fragments. The result of this structure, he states, forces readers to jump between ideas or events. Another feature of this structure and its flatness the author mentions, is the equality of ideas. He states crots are not a new idea and are featured in many other different disciplines. He ends his discussion about what crots are by mentioning the similarities between crots and blocks of writing and/or aphorisms. He next discusses the uses of crots. Crots can be used to generate ideas and help poor writers produce good works by eliminating the need for transitions, organization and the for trying to figure out what to say. He next describes the properties of hypotaxis and parataxis. Parataxis features words and phrases which are not subordinate or coordinate to each other. Parataxis strengthens the interdependence between events by eliminating clauses. The content states what happened, without implications. Next Elbow mentions the power of silence in describing the principle of negativity or a sense. He states silence gives the reader the opportunity to speculate, fill in the spaces and think. He the describes types of writing and their features relative to decreasing degree of explicitness, unity, focus, connectivity and linearity. He states the problem with well-constructed essays as being the tendency of the mind to disconnect. He states this doesn’t happen with no topic collages because of the minds innate need to make order and connect. He next describes the features of Syntactic Maturity with primary inference that Syntactic Maturity is a move from parataxis to hypotaxis. He argues for the inclusion of parataxis in pedagogy. He describes the importance of parataxis and collages as encouraging sophisticated thinking and even though it's considered easy and lazy, it can result in good and interesting writing among students. He cites Richard Haswell’s study as evidence to his assertion. He describes the characteristics and strengths of grammar B and states that grammar B used in conjunction with grammar A adds flexibility and increased capability. He states that grammar A may impede writing but grammar B allows for added freedom to explore dissimilar ideas. He ends by stating that it is easier to bridge the gap between ideas and composition using grammar B than A. He by emphasizing the ideas behind collages and the methods of cheating to write better essays.