General

I guess like everybody, I've found the preparation for the workshop fascinating. Its an amazing way to reflect on one's own work, recognizing the similarities and differences in the work of others. Reading the poetry of my classmates, I feel like whether their work is biographical or pure fiction, it gives a little insight into the general system and flow of their thoughts, and even their perspective on the world. Critiquing is hard!! Some of the works are so completely different from my style that I don't really know where to begin, what with the style, rhythm, and mechanics.

Basically, some of the works I have very little reference upon which to ground them, and therefore am lost when it comes to judging and recommending changes. Psychologically, I like all the poems I've read- and agree totally with what others are saying, that the point of any poem is really just to get your reader to think about it in depth, whatever each person uses to enforce the contemplation. Its fun reading each piece, getting to the end, and thinking "holy.....where did THAT come from??". The levels of creativity are awesome, especially because, as far as I can tell, each of us have very different types of creativity. And now I'm just rambling. Am I making any kind of sense?


That said earlier (thank god, I figured out how to get my post back!!); I've never been someone who spends a lot of time pre-determining mechanics for my poetry, and my later alterations are generally minimal or non-existent. Workshopping today helped me a lot, and I'm really excited about the changes I was able to make to my poem based on the feedback from the group! Thank you for your advice!!