Monday, June 20, 2005
Whither the Workshop?
A week or two ago, Steve mentioned that he was ceasing his workshopping activities on the major public forums and confining them (the activities) to the (semi-)private workshops of Haven and three candles. I think that was a wise decision on his part, and I'm going to be following his lead at least partway. I've been going through a long disillusionment with the workshopping process, both locally and online, and several recent events have brought it to a head. I'll keep using three candles, which I recommend highly if you're serious about your craft and don't have a good workshop outlet right now, and I'll probably be returning to posting at Haven, which was a similar sort of place when I was there last. I'll keep posting my metrical attempts at the Eratosphere Deep End, but I think that'll about sum up my public forum workshopping.
First of all, I can't stand what goes on in many of the workshops at the big public forums. Too many people with a 1-2-3 algorithm approach to poetry, too much personal infighting (yes, I've been involved in some of that), too many lazy critiquers scoring near-free rides for their own poems, too much nice-nice to work that doesn't deserve it (though it's nothing compared to your average local workshop), and too many cocky beginners waltzing in with their journal entries or "experiments" that were passe with Modernism, then pissing all over anyone who tries to help. I'm too close to getting into a tangential rant about specific workshops, so I'll just drop it there.
Most in-person workshops don't really get it done for me either, though there's at least hope there. The ideal sort of group (for me) is about four to eight people, all of whom you respect and trust both as people and as poets. Of course, that's damn hard to get. I keep going to my current local group because there are a couple people who fit this bill very nicely (and I do like all the people in the workshop), but there are still a few who are really at odds with what I'd like to do poetically, and two of the people I very much respect poetically are also quite reserved with their opinions.
The thing that really highlighted the failures of these other workshops for me was the three-day session with Mark Jarman at West Chester. Though I didn't know any of the other people going in, it quickly became evident that they all knew a lot about poetry, and the workshop as a whole, especially with such a strong leader, struck a good balance between teasing out the strengths of a poem and identifying what needed to change, all without ignoring what the poet's intent was versus what the readers' biases were, and without being harsh to the poet. If I can get into more of that sort of situation, I'll be happy.
Since so few poets live in towns where they can actually get into that sort of local group, I think truly private online forums or e-mail lists that are unmoderated but that have an "owner" or coordinator and some sort of screening process to join could be the closest thing to an ideal solution for many of us.
Outside the question of how good or bad workshopping is in general, which seems like a debate for another day, what do you feel are the best and worst workshop situations, either face-to-face or online? In the meantime, maybe I'll see you at Haven or three candles.
First of all, I can't stand what goes on in many of the workshops at the big public forums. Too many people with a 1-2-3 algorithm approach to poetry, too much personal infighting (yes, I've been involved in some of that), too many lazy critiquers scoring near-free rides for their own poems, too much nice-nice to work that doesn't deserve it (though it's nothing compared to your average local workshop), and too many cocky beginners waltzing in with their journal entries or "experiments" that were passe with Modernism, then pissing all over anyone who tries to help. I'm too close to getting into a tangential rant about specific workshops, so I'll just drop it there.
Most in-person workshops don't really get it done for me either, though there's at least hope there. The ideal sort of group (for me) is about four to eight people, all of whom you respect and trust both as people and as poets. Of course, that's damn hard to get. I keep going to my current local group because there are a couple people who fit this bill very nicely (and I do like all the people in the workshop), but there are still a few who are really at odds with what I'd like to do poetically, and two of the people I very much respect poetically are also quite reserved with their opinions.
The thing that really highlighted the failures of these other workshops for me was the three-day session with Mark Jarman at West Chester. Though I didn't know any of the other people going in, it quickly became evident that they all knew a lot about poetry, and the workshop as a whole, especially with such a strong leader, struck a good balance between teasing out the strengths of a poem and identifying what needed to change, all without ignoring what the poet's intent was versus what the readers' biases were, and without being harsh to the poet. If I can get into more of that sort of situation, I'll be happy.
Since so few poets live in towns where they can actually get into that sort of local group, I think truly private online forums or e-mail lists that are unmoderated but that have an "owner" or coordinator and some sort of screening process to join could be the closest thing to an ideal solution for many of us.
Outside the question of how good or bad workshopping is in general, which seems like a debate for another day, what do you feel are the best and worst workshop situations, either face-to-face or online? In the meantime, maybe I'll see you at Haven or three candles.
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They are all horrible. As someone said long ago... The idea is asinine to begin with ...no way the "Other Ten Percent" have anything to do with this.
Though actually it's one tenth of one percent with the figure lower now.
Bad from the start...an artist knows this.
Though actually it's one tenth of one percent with the figure lower now.
Bad from the start...an artist knows this.
I don't know that the whole workshop process is flawed, but for me, workshopping works only when two or three really dedicated writers are present.
I find online critiquing vacuous, precisely for the reasons you site.
I'll be posting something over at Muse of Fire soon about workshopping and the nature of writing.
I agree, by the way, with what you said about Mark. A good, strong leader always makes a workshop go well.
Again, I disagree completely with "Lon Silliman" (above). Artist does't equal self-centered. For good or ill, if it goes to a public audience, art is public, period. The problem is choosing which public . . .
I find online critiquing vacuous, precisely for the reasons you site.
I'll be posting something over at Muse of Fire soon about workshopping and the nature of writing.
I agree, by the way, with what you said about Mark. A good, strong leader always makes a workshop go well.
Again, I disagree completely with "Lon Silliman" (above). Artist does't equal self-centered. For good or ill, if it goes to a public audience, art is public, period. The problem is choosing which public . . .
No, art is put before the public. It is not public. Otherwise the public would be creating art and the reader writing. Every artist is self centered in the sense that the work wouldn't exist without the artist and, of course, everything that went before. See Eliot -- the dead are who we are.
And the problems with workshopping are so manifold that even if it is conceded in the vague sense intended that art is public it is still rather absurd. It's a fashion. It's a way of connecting with a reader for the lonely poet. It's a way to be part of a club. But poets have never produced poems of any worth by "workshopping." Its funny and sad. Human all to human.
Of course, hanging around, being influenced by other poets often creates something...but workshopping?
And the problems with workshopping are so manifold that even if it is conceded in the vague sense intended that art is public it is still rather absurd. It's a fashion. It's a way of connecting with a reader for the lonely poet. It's a way to be part of a club. But poets have never produced poems of any worth by "workshopping." Its funny and sad. Human all to human.
Of course, hanging around, being influenced by other poets often creates something...but workshopping?
I don't think that any decent poet take recommendations from workshops wholesale. I've tried things on for size from time to time, but most poets I know just vet responses to see where areas are weak. There's no real difference between that and writing letters about poems back and forth. Robert Bly once said that no poem was ever written alone. If one is laboring under the illusion that poems are produced in community then that person / poet doesn't understand the true focus of a workshop.
I agree with Steve about the way to approach a workshop being to listen to the right participants (all of them in a good workshop) to get an idea of where the poem could use work and what people are getting from the poem (perhaps the most important function). Applying all the advice of the workshop to your poem would frequently be impossible anyway, since you'll often get contradictory advice.
And both editing and circles of friends, key aspects of the good workshop, have helped make great works out of lesser ones. Think of Pound's editing of The Wasteland, for example, or the Romantics with their coffee-house salons.
And both editing and circles of friends, key aspects of the good workshop, have helped make great works out of lesser ones. Think of Pound's editing of The Wasteland, for example, or the Romantics with their coffee-house salons.
Lon Silliman said:
But poets have never produced poems of any worth by "workshopping."
Hogwash.
Good poetry comes out of workshops all the time. Again, it's not the workshop that is the problem; the way they are run is the issue and what help they can provide (if any) is the issue.
But poets have never produced poems of any worth by "workshopping."
Hogwash.
Good poetry comes out of workshops all the time. Again, it's not the workshop that is the problem; the way they are run is the issue and what help they can provide (if any) is the issue.
There are not many Pounds or Eliots. And what Romantics workshopped at their coffe house salons? I'd like to know -- spent a lot of time with them and that really didn't go on.
I don't know of a good poem that went through the workshop process.
Where?
I don't know of a good poem that went through the workshop process.
Where?
In response to the assertion that workshops are like poets corresponding with each other (who ate the plums?)
Oh, then where is this ideal workshop that is no different than poets exchanging letters with one another…and what poets are we talking about? Is there somewhere an ideal epistolary correspondence between poets that led to the production of great poems? And if so is there somewhere an ideal workshop that worked the ways these letters are claimed to work?
Certainly on-line and in the shippy locations at various retreats I’m not aware of any that move beyond the usual schtick. If they resemble any ideal poetic correspondence they resemble a correspondence between Arbuthnot and his peers. The intellectual and artistic level seems to be very low when measured against the standard that requires that a real poem come out of it all.
Or, to put it another way – for any literature to be produced the intellectual and artistic level required is, in any case, not available to many. I’m just following Sturgeon’s law here, of course. And the consequence of that is that if 99% or whatever greater number you want is crap, the likelihood that a gathering of poets to improve each other’s poetry is almost certain to be immersed in the mediocre. Then factor in all of the human all to human: posing, pretension, flattery, overweening sincerity, attempts at dominance, pack behavior and so on and you have the Internet Poetry workshop. Move it all to some rural location or the basement of a coffeehouse – more of the same.
The workshop – when it is placed within the history of what poets have done and how they have behaved over the centuries – is an anomaly. Very American. The closest institution might be painters apprenticing themselves, so and so the student of so and so. But, of course, these programs existed so that the master might live or because the King/Pope wanted to be sure someone was around to paint the portrait of his little dog/him blessing the masses. An invention or a requirement of capital.
The MFA program, whatever its beginnings in American Idealism, is also the creature of capital. It exists to provide a living to those conducting them. Same for the shippy workshops by the sea. And, of course, these workshops also serve a social function – a function that might just as well be performed at a summer camp or young poet’s home or some venue for aspiring poets to get together and so on. Wonderful. But when more than one poet gets together to “workshop” their poems the chance that they get anything done that actually helps create a poem diminishes with every silly requirement, every instance of structure, every instance of the natural will to power and every attendee/ participant who is not a real poet.
It’s been asserted that the workshop participant can just take what he wants and leave the rest behind. That’s not how it works in reality. Usually the person asserting this is the dominant male (male or female) and, naturally this is his perspective since to think this is a natural consequence of dominance. What usually happens is that cliques form. Persons outside the clique make their moves. Other persons break away! And so it goes. And, let’s say a poet has a sense of himself – only to find that by the by others say nay to this and that. What usually happens? The strong poet hits the road. The weak poet truckles and simpers. How has it ever been anything other than thus – or is there not such a thing as politics?
The way the whole thing is structures is doomed to fail. It’s as if someone insists the PS67 is actually the SummerHill Academy for Platonic and Kindly Essences. Sure it looks that way if you are someone who thinks of yourself as such but the reality is that all the PS67 stuff is going on. How can it be prevented?
All done in the belief that someone who doesn’t know how to fix his “art” so that it becomes art will be enlightened by workshopping. Seems like something that should be advertised along with Chia pets and ab machines. The best that can be expected is that someone who can write a poem gets pissed off enough to go his own way. Shelley and Byron patronized Keats. Keats just kept on keeping on.
Instead it does and would work to throw out the whole idea that a bunch of poets are going to get together and solemnly critique each other’s work and designate some angel to find a group of people that have the mojo and let them get together so that thyey don’t feel alone yet alone and drink and say “Damn fine” and sometime say what they really like about this poem or that poem. Good art might not be produced but it’s a hell of a lot more humane and nothing like as ridiculous.
Poets workshop because it’s a way of getting together with other poets. Getting readers! Wonderful. But it’s as if the only way it is imagined that people can get together is to go to a bar, critique each others attire, have a fistfight and then sulk away home or skip all the way home depending on how things turned out for you.
Oh, then where is this ideal workshop that is no different than poets exchanging letters with one another…and what poets are we talking about? Is there somewhere an ideal epistolary correspondence between poets that led to the production of great poems? And if so is there somewhere an ideal workshop that worked the ways these letters are claimed to work?
Certainly on-line and in the shippy locations at various retreats I’m not aware of any that move beyond the usual schtick. If they resemble any ideal poetic correspondence they resemble a correspondence between Arbuthnot and his peers. The intellectual and artistic level seems to be very low when measured against the standard that requires that a real poem come out of it all.
Or, to put it another way – for any literature to be produced the intellectual and artistic level required is, in any case, not available to many. I’m just following Sturgeon’s law here, of course. And the consequence of that is that if 99% or whatever greater number you want is crap, the likelihood that a gathering of poets to improve each other’s poetry is almost certain to be immersed in the mediocre. Then factor in all of the human all to human: posing, pretension, flattery, overweening sincerity, attempts at dominance, pack behavior and so on and you have the Internet Poetry workshop. Move it all to some rural location or the basement of a coffeehouse – more of the same.
The workshop – when it is placed within the history of what poets have done and how they have behaved over the centuries – is an anomaly. Very American. The closest institution might be painters apprenticing themselves, so and so the student of so and so. But, of course, these programs existed so that the master might live or because the King/Pope wanted to be sure someone was around to paint the portrait of his little dog/him blessing the masses. An invention or a requirement of capital.
The MFA program, whatever its beginnings in American Idealism, is also the creature of capital. It exists to provide a living to those conducting them. Same for the shippy workshops by the sea. And, of course, these workshops also serve a social function – a function that might just as well be performed at a summer camp or young poet’s home or some venue for aspiring poets to get together and so on. Wonderful. But when more than one poet gets together to “workshop” their poems the chance that they get anything done that actually helps create a poem diminishes with every silly requirement, every instance of structure, every instance of the natural will to power and every attendee/ participant who is not a real poet.
It’s been asserted that the workshop participant can just take what he wants and leave the rest behind. That’s not how it works in reality. Usually the person asserting this is the dominant male (male or female) and, naturally this is his perspective since to think this is a natural consequence of dominance. What usually happens is that cliques form. Persons outside the clique make their moves. Other persons break away! And so it goes. And, let’s say a poet has a sense of himself – only to find that by the by others say nay to this and that. What usually happens? The strong poet hits the road. The weak poet truckles and simpers. How has it ever been anything other than thus – or is there not such a thing as politics?
The way the whole thing is structures is doomed to fail. It’s as if someone insists the PS67 is actually the SummerHill Academy for Platonic and Kindly Essences. Sure it looks that way if you are someone who thinks of yourself as such but the reality is that all the PS67 stuff is going on. How can it be prevented?
All done in the belief that someone who doesn’t know how to fix his “art” so that it becomes art will be enlightened by workshopping. Seems like something that should be advertised along with Chia pets and ab machines. The best that can be expected is that someone who can write a poem gets pissed off enough to go his own way. Shelley and Byron patronized Keats. Keats just kept on keeping on.
Instead it does and would work to throw out the whole idea that a bunch of poets are going to get together and solemnly critique each other’s work and designate some angel to find a group of people that have the mojo and let them get together so that thyey don’t feel alone yet alone and drink and say “Damn fine” and sometime say what they really like about this poem or that poem. Good art might not be produced but it’s a hell of a lot more humane and nothing like as ridiculous.
Poets workshop because it’s a way of getting together with other poets. Getting readers! Wonderful. But it’s as if the only way it is imagined that people can get together is to go to a bar, critique each others attire, have a fistfight and then sulk away home or skip all the way home depending on how things turned out for you.
You mean you don't know of a good poem that got editing help from another poet?
Even if you're defining "workshop" more narrowly, I can think of dozens of good poems that I personally know went through a workshop, no matter how little they changed while there, and I'm sure there are thousands more poems I've liked that went through a workshop process.
At this point, if you're going to be posting essay-length responses, please take it to your own blog. If you can keep it to a couple paragraphs, please feel free to continue here.
Even if you're defining "workshop" more narrowly, I can think of dozens of good poems that I personally know went through a workshop, no matter how little they changed while there, and I'm sure there are thousands more poems I've liked that went through a workshop process.
At this point, if you're going to be posting essay-length responses, please take it to your own blog. If you can keep it to a couple paragraphs, please feel free to continue here.
I hear ya, Steven. I think the ideal, for me, is someone who is familiar with your style, accepts your style as uniquely yours and doesn't want to change you to fit their ideal. I'm not claiming to have written any "great" poems, but it does help me when someone reads it and tells me what works and what doesn't--without stepping on my very sensitive poetic toes! There are a few people that I trust to do this--Steve Mueske is one of them. I'm not a product of Kerouac's first thought, best thought. I have to revise my poems. Sometimes they're not worth revising and i revise them anyways.
Well, one posts essay like responses simply to be scrupulous – anticipating and putting to rest the usual easy responses. It’s simply a forlorn gesture that begins in the hope that intellectual seriousness is intended. But I will continue on my blog after this little paragraph!
Yes, that white stuff is the general snow falling on the living and the dead. I can only go with what I know, of course. The analysis above accurate. It is difficult to see an outside, I know, and it didn’t work when those few tried to levitate the Pentagon and make it disappear. But what one sees is not the 1% alluded to here but a usual sameness.
What I know a la the workshop is, first of all the on-line workshop. Really quite absurd and unserious and middlebrow. Then the various writing workshops by the lake where one comes away determined to “put more of my body” in one’s poems or enchanted with the discussion about whether one should be more Dionysian or Apollonian.
All this at a really low level that can’t get close to anything to do with poetry really. But one is “out in the world.” Yes, exactly. And as to trusting someone to tell YOU what doesn’t work – think of the 10% or the realistically much smaller figure.
In the words of Dirty Harry. “Do you feel lucky…?”
Yes, that white stuff is the general snow falling on the living and the dead. I can only go with what I know, of course. The analysis above accurate. It is difficult to see an outside, I know, and it didn’t work when those few tried to levitate the Pentagon and make it disappear. But what one sees is not the 1% alluded to here but a usual sameness.
What I know a la the workshop is, first of all the on-line workshop. Really quite absurd and unserious and middlebrow. Then the various writing workshops by the lake where one comes away determined to “put more of my body” in one’s poems or enchanted with the discussion about whether one should be more Dionysian or Apollonian.
All this at a really low level that can’t get close to anything to do with poetry really. But one is “out in the world.” Yes, exactly. And as to trusting someone to tell YOU what doesn’t work – think of the 10% or the realistically much smaller figure.
In the words of Dirty Harry. “Do you feel lucky…?”
Joe:
I think if you were being scrupulous, you would have actually included evidence in your essay.
Steve
I think if you were being scrupulous, you would have actually included evidence in your essay.
Steve
The problem is, Joe, you don't really want to further poetry at all. All you want is a megaphone and to type reams words about the way things really are. It gets really tiresome hearing you reiterate words I've said to friends about my own work. Yes, I've said I wanted more body in my work, and I truly believe it. I also find the the duality you speak of fascinating. If you don't, frankly, who gives a shit? You're a fucking nobody poet just like the rest of us. The difference is, you seem to think otherwise.
Okay, let's assume that anything productive has been said by now. I'll be deleting further comments in this vein and turning off comments entirely if I have to. If you do want to continue, I'm sure there are plenty of places to do so.
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