Poetry
I finally presented one of my poems to be work-shopped in poetry class today. In that class, we submit poems, and then read them to the class (who all have copies of your poem) who then help you improve upon your writing. Since I came late, it's taken 'till today to get one of mine read.
Not that I was looking forward to having it read. I've made a lot of progress with speaking and such, but it's still a personal work, it's not easy to share. The class has who you'd typically expect in a poetry class: there are the butterfly and rainbow writers, typical angsty poets, and those who could only fit this class in their schedule. People had general ideas about what kind of writers each of them were; as I came late, all eyes were on me. They were interested in what kind of writer I was going to turn out to be.
I was going to stay away from something about Katrina; most expected it, and so typically I didn't want to. It took a while for me to find something I wanted to write about. I stayed away from my poetry idea list; I wanted this poem to be something new. And since I haven't written in a while, I didn't want to "waste" one of the poems on the list on something I couldn't be sure on the quality of. That and, I'm typically a very structured writer; I follow form carefully. And this class is designed to stretch our abilities, so we're given restrictions, the first being no rhyming. The poems submitted to work-shopping are supposed to be in a raw form, not a finished work.
Anyway, I finally got to my poem today. Usually after a reading there's a lot of discussion: I liked this, what did you mean by that, and so on. Is there some unwritten law that every time I say something it leaves people speechless? What the hell? Am I really that good or something? Should I be dropping everything and just become a writer? I dunno, I just didn't think I deserved all the praise I got for the reading. Especially since the purpose of the reading was to critique and comment. And apparently they loved the tone of voice I used when I read it. Sometimes I think the world just loves messing with me.
And I'm not gonna post the poem unless you can think of a good reason I should.
Edit: You know what, fine, I don't care, you can read my poem if you want. But you gotta get me to care enough to bother to post it. (In other words, you're still prolly not going to see it.)
Edit 2: Listen, my class said part of what they really liked about my poem, and part of what made it really good (right) was how I read it. And I'm certainly not going to read it to all of you.
Not that I was looking forward to having it read. I've made a lot of progress with speaking and such, but it's still a personal work, it's not easy to share. The class has who you'd typically expect in a poetry class: there are the butterfly and rainbow writers, typical angsty poets, and those who could only fit this class in their schedule. People had general ideas about what kind of writers each of them were; as I came late, all eyes were on me. They were interested in what kind of writer I was going to turn out to be.
I was going to stay away from something about Katrina; most expected it, and so typically I didn't want to. It took a while for me to find something I wanted to write about. I stayed away from my poetry idea list; I wanted this poem to be something new. And since I haven't written in a while, I didn't want to "waste" one of the poems on the list on something I couldn't be sure on the quality of. That and, I'm typically a very structured writer; I follow form carefully. And this class is designed to stretch our abilities, so we're given restrictions, the first being no rhyming. The poems submitted to work-shopping are supposed to be in a raw form, not a finished work.
Anyway, I finally got to my poem today. Usually after a reading there's a lot of discussion: I liked this, what did you mean by that, and so on. Is there some unwritten law that every time I say something it leaves people speechless? What the hell? Am I really that good or something? Should I be dropping everything and just become a writer? I dunno, I just didn't think I deserved all the praise I got for the reading. Especially since the purpose of the reading was to critique and comment. And apparently they loved the tone of voice I used when I read it. Sometimes I think the world just loves messing with me.
And I'm not gonna post the poem unless you can think of a good reason I should.
Edit: You know what, fine, I don't care, you can read my poem if you want. But you gotta get me to care enough to bother to post it. (In other words, you're still prolly not going to see it.)
Edit 2: Listen, my class said part of what they really liked about my poem, and part of what made it really good (right) was how I read it. And I'm certainly not going to read it to all of you.