Checklist Opinion and The Way We Express Ourselves

Like a lot of you guys, I too am frustrated with the workshop checklist. It tends to be a bit constraining and limits my feedback to an extent, and some of the questions ask things that the writer already knows about his or her poem. However, it is certainly a very helpful guide that can aid us in analyzing the poem and I do think it is a catalyst for creating critiques on one another’s work. For me, the best way to workshop someone’s poem is to read his or her poem in its entirety, and then work through each stanza. I usually identify images or lines that I enjoy or find particularly powerful/effective, and then I look for parts that could potentially be improved or revised. I like to write all my comments on the same page as the poem because it’s probably easier for the writer to read it over and find the exact spot in the poem where I am commenting on.

In my Early British Literature class, we started reading lyric poetry (beginning with Sir Thomas Wyatt and ending with John Donne). Something I find particularly interesting is the metamorphosis of the way people portray their feelings in poetry throughout history. In these Renaissance works, poets are much more composed with their thoughts and their poetry’s structure and language is very proper. This is because 16th century English society was very prim and it was considered noble to ponder your feelings for a sufficient amount of time before adequately expressing them. Today, if writers (or anyone for that matter) were to express themselves in a way that is formal, their emotions may seem not genuine and planned out. Although these works have a profound influence in English literature, I feel myself more able to relate to more contemporary poems of today—poems that do not hold back on emotion and feeling. I am not saying Thomas Wyatt, Shakespeare, or any of the Renaissance poets did not express genuine feelings, but their ways for expressing emotion are much different than my own. I find my best work comes after I just “write my heart out” (not to sound cliché or anything)—meaning, I just pour out whatever words I believe capture my state of being or feelings in that particular moment. It will certainly be interesting to see what will be considered "acceptable" in terms of portraying emotion in poetry in future years.