The Writing Life: December 2007 Archives

The plan was to workshop our poems today. I took No Sense (I edited it slightly and just posted the results). We did mine very near the end of class and only had, literally, two minutes to read it and respond to it. We spent too long yammering over everyone else's poems.

I had to smile. I know everyone who has been in a workshop knows that one guy (or gal) that smiles at everyone's confusion and exclaims, rather arrogantly, that they intended for it to be that way.

I was that guy today. Only I wasn't that guy. Well...it's sorta...complicated.

Here's the thing: I expect you to come to my work with a little background. If I make a statement like: "An idea. / Political, religious, or otherwise" I expect you to think of an idea. I'm not going to give it to you. I don't give handouts because I don't expect (or want, for that matter) that from the work I go to. I expect you to bring your baggage, your knowledge (or somebody else's for that matter...but some knowledge, got by hook or crook, if need be, but knowledge nonetheless), your prejudices, your wisdom and your short-sightedness. I expect you to bring those things with you because you'll be keeping me company. I have all those too.

The main thing that seemed to detract from this poem was that you had to think about it. That the concepts were abstract (guilty) and that there wasn't a concrete image to go with each abstract idea (guilty). That for the poem to work, the reader had to bring their own stuff to it, apply it to the poem, test it, and see if it's true (guilty).

Which was the whole idea. So on that level, I say: [licks finger and marks a point in the air] "score." But I understand the other side, too. I understand that a poem often must contain within itself the path to get the reader to the same place you are--without making assumptions about the reader, their background, or what they bring to the poem. "No Sense" is a map without street markings. You have to know where you are already before you can use the map to get where I'm taking you.

Is there, or is there not an idea, political or religious, worth killing for?

Is there, or is there not an idea, political or religious, worth buying?

Is there, or is there not an idea, political or religious, worth putting faith in?

Should you, or should you not give up on that idea because "a man's got to do something?"

I can't answer that and neither can the poem. In the end, the only way for this poem to work is if the reader brings themselves wholly into the work and applies their own ideas. That was the point. That was the intent. On that score, I think I was successful.

I don't expect you to come to my work empty-handed and I won't leave you that way.