"I tell four four-year-olds that I am writing a poem of what ever they say. When one makes a statement like 'you are 1,006' or 'I am a 'W'..."

"I write it slowly and read it outloud as I’m writing it. Then I read it outloud to make sure I have it right. The four K kids love to see handwriting come out of my hand. They are interested in how writing can save something in a way that allows it to be said and read repeatedy, exactly, multiple times...." 

This is the brilliant comics artist Lynda Barry:

 

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ADDED: If you like that, I highly recommend the book "Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry" by Kenneth Koch. (That's an Amazon link, so I earn a commission if you use it.)

Students these days "don’t have a big relationship to their hands. I’ve had to show them how to cut a circle out of paper...."

"You keep the scissors there and you move the paper like this, and they’re like, 'What?' There’s so much dexterity that they, by and large, do not have.... [They] start keyboarding in kindergarten. Handwriting, that thing that we think is no big deal, there’s so much dexterity in it. Not just in the hand you’re writing with, but the nondominant hand is always in action, moving the paper, paying attention. I mean, there’s a reason people gesture while they talk. If somebody is trying to explain something complicated, and they have to sit on their hands, it’s much harder for them to explain it.... [With a phone] you’re no longer where you are. You’re no longer in the room. You’re no longer anywhere. The opportunities to have an interaction with the things around you are taken away. I just see the world as richer without the phone.... So something that closes you off to the world that you’re in — I mean, I could be on TikTok all night long. I keep deleting that app because I love it so much. But something that takes you out of your environment, you pay a high price...."

Says Lynda Barry, quoted in "A Genius Cartoonist Believes Child’s Play Is Anything But Frivolous" (NYT). Barry is a professor of "interdisciplinary creativity" at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.

"Write your life in terms of ten cars from your past. Are you inside or outside the car? Where are you sitting? Who else is there? What's to your right and to your left? Where are you going?"

A writing prompt from Lynda Barry, quoted in "UW-Madison profs Lynda Barry and Andrea Dutton win $625,000 MacArthur 'genius' award" (at the subreddit r/Wisconsin).

"You think L.A. is Hell, this awful place of corruption and anti-creativity, and when I look at Wisconsin..." said Matt Groening...

... to Lynda Barry (who teaches at the University of Wisconsin), and she said: "It’s its own kind of Hell... colder than Scott Walker’s tit... When I look at your place in Malibu, and you can see the ocean, I just think, I’d rather die than live here."

Groening and Barry, cartoonists who have known each other for a long time, were doing an appearance together in a bookstore in NYC, where, I presume, the audience looks down on both Wisconsin and Malibu.

The comics artist Lynda Barry joins the University of Wisconsin faculty as an assistant professor of interdisciplinary creativity.

Interdisciplinary creativity.

"I was an idiot. I was in the wrong. About the breakup. About the haircut story."

"About so many things with her. Anything bad she says about me I can confirm."

Great, great, fabulous response to the revelation that the "worst boyfriend" in that hilarious Lynda Barry comic strip was, in fact, the beloved radio personality...