Poetry Workshop

Cindy Miller, Poetry workshop

Reflection on workshop

 

               I have always been someone who writes, so naturally, poems were in my list of things I did.  Now, I don’t know how good I was or anything, but I tried.  If the poem is supposed to rhyme, I can make it rhyme.  And if it’s not, then that doesn’t matter.  Now, I do not believe that my particular strength lies in poems.  I’m more of a story person.  But, poems and songs are sometimes a release for me.  Personally, that’s my favorite way to write poems.  I like to rhyme, but I know that isn’t necessary.   I like that the workshop kind of forces you to look at certain poems in a certain way.  But unlike grade school/or high school, you don’t get chided because you stink at writing a particular kind of poem.  You go back and revise it the best you can, and when you choose poems to review, you pick a different poem.  Poems, mostly, are in the eye of the beholder.  Not everyone likes the same thing.  Some people only like poems that rhyme.  Some hate end rhyme.  But that’s why we have so many different poets and writers. 

               I really like having the critiques because other people actually get to read your poem and look at it.  They make their own meanings out of it, but in the end, you get to tell them what you were thinking.  They get to correct you, and ask you questions about your work.  Usually, no one is too judgmental—as far as in critiquing you, and that’s because they know that they have to be critiqued too.  Critiques force you to think about the poem. 

               I have learned a lot about different techniques, as far as writing poems.  It doesn’t always have to be the same, and different techniques can really brighten up the poem. I know I will use the things I learned.

               I am not the kind of person who likes to overthink poems.  Sometimes in a poetry class, you’re forced to do that, which is probably good.  I don’t enjoy it, but I can do it. 

               Overall, I find it easier to pick my own topic for an exercise.  It’s too hard to get a topic and write about it.  Usually, you’re supposed to know something about what you’re writing.  I write about things I know, or things that everybody kind of knows.  Sometimes ideas are easier to write about than things. 

               One of the things I didn’t like about being in a poetry workshop is that sometimes it’s hard to think of ideas, but you have to and sometimes your poem isn’t as good because of it… But usually it’s pretty fair. 

               I found that I’m not someone who likes to write poems with strong metaphors.  I like to allude to things, sometimes using similes, but metaphors, to me, are a pain.   They take too long to come up with, and sometimes they only appeal to you or a general audience.  I find it hard to use images and sense data in my poems together sometimes.  But other times, I think it’s hard when I just have to do one of them.   It just depends.  I think this course has kind of helped me in that way.  Now, I can at least make something up in the guidelines, and then try to make it better even though it isn’t really my strength. 

               I think I include too many details in some instances and not enough in others.   In my poem that was originally not done right, which was the scent poem, I accidentally did both the scents and the images, so I had to go back and re-do it.  I find it hard to keep on describing things, because, personally, it annoys me to read something with a lot of description.  I’m like, “Give me dialogue, give me the run-down on what’s happening in the scene.  I don’t need fourteen lines about the yellow chair.” But that’s my opinion.

               As far as reading poems, I can appreciate things for what they are.  All the poems we read as a class, like the critiques, I enjoyed.  I usually saw what the poet was meaning to do with the poem, and besides a few minor things, I didn’t have an issue with it.  Now, there are classic examples of good poetry, and of bad, but I try to take the poem and the poet for what they are, and not try to make it something it isn’t. Sometimes I tell people that I like the poem as is—but if they were to write another version, it might be a “better poem”. 

               While the poem about the starving girl was good, I thought it was strange how it’s talking about poverty, and then it starts talking about puberty.  I didn’t really like that.  I liked the William Carlos Williams poem, the one we wrote the “Dedication to a Plot of Ground” poem about.   It was a cool little story and I liked it.  It was interesting, and even though you had to think about some of the lines to get what he meant and how it pertained to the story, it wasn’t too hard to understand, and it stayed on topic.  We are reading it as a funeral of some kind, and so it summed up the person’s life in a nice little gift-wrapping, which is the poem.  I thought that was cool.  And that’s probably why the version of the story that I wrote is one of my favorites.