EXTRA INFO


Just a bit more on the poetry we'll be sharing:

This is not the usual workshop, per se. I mean, it is in that we
will be sharing and then discussing your poetry. The emphasis
here is on the discussion side of things. But I don't want
the poems to be offered up silently in order that we each judge
them line by line, as instructive as that can be. The fact that
we are using new poems along with old poems is telling. I
expect, to some degree, you've had some sort of workshop
experience with many of the poems you will be including. So
it follows you should have something to say about the poems
you are including. I really think it is important that a poet be
able to articulate something about his or her work, about the
process, about the "subject." (The content, etc). About the
speaker of the poems, your emerging persona. "What is going
on with this group of poems?" is a question I'll be asking.
Understand that I KNOW you don't, to some degree, know
WHAT the hell is going on. There's a lot of intuition at
work in these poems, and cues from other poets, other works
of art. My point is that I'd like this question to be a sort
of focus for all of us. Tell us, simply, how you got to where
you are (with four or five poems to show in class), even if it's
just some manner of casting about in the dark based on some
far flung notions that happened to be streaming by as you sat
down to put pen to paper (maybe you read something, or
watched a movie, or had an intense or dark personal moment).
Who influenced you? What is happening there on the page
that is so engaging for you (and many of these poems make
the poets in this class appear as if they are indeed engaged
during the process of writing)? I won't be writing a ton on
poems as much as trying to come to some agreement about
the arc a group of poems seems to be promising the reader,
and that arc could be buried in a festering undergirding of
potential. What I'd like most from you is several readings
of the poems, enough that you can connect with the poet on
an intuitive level. But not being locked into the subjectivity
of the all-encompassing consciousness that is formulating
a given group of poems allows us to collaborate, so to speak,
with that consciousness / poet. Imagine where these poems
are going next (is there an inherent inevitability?) based on
where they have gone so far. So I want a lot of talk. Let's
help everyone generate more work. What is each poet doing
right (and what maybe a little less right)? By identifying
this the poet can do more of that "right" thing . . .