ABSTRACT
The transition between creative and ‘received’ work is an easy one, and any teacher sensitive enough to obtain good creative work from a class will not need me to tell him how to follow it up. Indeed, the direct consolidation of this sort of work depends so much upon the class that I doubt very much whether any general principles can be laid down, other than those implicit in the last chapter. The only danger when the teacher attempts to equate creating with receiving is that a true balance seems impossible. The danger to much of the teaching is the intractability of the forty-minute period as a unit of effort. Speech, dramatic ability, and lack of self-consciousness on the part of one’s pupils, have a great bearing on the successful teaching of poetry. Good speech, in this context, does not necessarily mean a mastery of English syntax and pronunciation.
