by Whitney Gray
This is going to sound overly dramatic, and I'm certainly playing it up a bit, but there's always a hint of truth in comedy.. right?
Well, today we had our first poetry workshop at good ol' UNCG.. and it was.. interesting. I really loved the pacing of the class. In three hours, we covered six poems out of the ten submitted. Each poem received a lot of time for reading and critiquing. At times, I struggled with the format of the workshop, because the poet is given no time to defend or clarify anything within the poem. (One friend pointed out that if you were reading a poem out of the canon, you wouldn't have the luxury of asking the poet. Point taken.) In previous workshops, we would discuss a poem, and then turn to the poet so that he or she could answer any questions, or to ask his or her own. It helped clear up some confusion for both the readers and the writers. We discussed this with our professor, who said we may turn to the poets in later classes, but for now, we will stick to the layout.
Another interesting part of the class was how the poems were ordered. Stuart Dischell implemented the method that however the poems were turned in, no matter the order, was the order that would be used in class. It just so happens this "random order" stacked all of the first year poets back-to-back and at the front of the pile. I didn't have the pleasure of going first, but being a part of the first group wasn't as intimidating as I had expected. I did, however, go last, and with only a few minutes remaining in class. I was worried that people would begin shuffling around, preparing to leave the course, but no one glanced at the clock and hinted that they were ready to leave. I received an equal amount of attention to my poem that the previous poets received. I appreciated the equality, as well as the pacing of the class allowing us to fit my poem into this session, rather than leave it to next week.
I will say, however, that the experience in the workshop was very tough. My classmates are far more trained that classmates I had in my undergrad workshops. People know exactly what they want to say, and how to say it. When they have any confusion or difficulty with a part of a poem, they say it. I'll admit, my poem wasn't the strongest, but I was very surprised to hear the reactions. My poem was read to be quite hilarious, when really, it was intended to have a very sarcastic, but not necessarily humorous tone. The misreading made it difficult for me to focus. Then, I had that moment every warned me of: The Moment of Self Doubt. I began noting on my poem--"is this poem a failure? What have I done wrong? How can I clarify?" Those notes didn't hold the real questions though. "Am I a failure? How did I get in this program? Do I really know how to write? Does everyone think I'm stupid?"
The feelings, thankfully, have passed, but that little bit of self doubt will always be in the back of my mind. I think this doubt will help drive me to write better poems and to focus on the things I value in poetry: precision, and above all else, clarity. I wrote about the importance of clarity in my Statement of Purpose, for Pete's sake! It was a good dose of reality, albeit difficult to swallow, but it can only help me.
