Workshop Wednesday: Post a poem/story/writing-thing and get feedback!
So I was talking to @cadadr in this thread about starting a workshop on Tildes, and since today makes for an alliterative title, I thought I'd start one now.
What's a workshop?
Basically, a workshop is when you have a bunch of people with poems or stories they've written, and everyone gets together, reads everyone's work, and comments on it, sharing what they got out of it and what the author could do to improve the work for publication. I used to do a lot of them in college, and I've missed the dynamic since graduating. I thought others might also be interested, so here goes nothing.
How this'll work (for now, anyway)
Each week, I'll post a "Workshop Wednesday" post. If you have a poem or (short) story you'd like workshopped, post that as a top comment. Then, read others' top comments and reply with what works/doesn't work/questions you have/ideas you have for the piece that could make it better. If you post some writing, try to comment on at least two other people's pieces as well -- we're here to help each other improve.
Going forward
Since this is the first one, obviously we can change the format or do something else. Please start meta-discussions with the word [META] so that we know it's not a poem you're trying to workshop!
I'm excited. Let's do this!
I'll start. Here's one I wrote a little while ago:
Make-ahead steel-cut oat-meal
We begin storing all of our food in jars, a callback
to a time before plastic, when the world was simpler,
or at least we think so, we whisper to ourselves
as we spoon the oats out of the pot, spill half
on the floor, stomp at the dog come to lick up the leavings.
The truth might be more complicated, but we can’t see it.
It hovers around us at the edge of our perception:
an anxious or over-proud parent, we’re not sure which.
But the truth has read about the dangers of BPA, about landfills
and recycling, about petroleum, silica, rubber, and glass.
The truth knows that in the short term, none of it matters,
nor does it in the long term. It’s the medium term, the term
of human lives, that quibbles and pulls and beats at meaning
like a fly hovering around a porchlight. The truth knows
the world is a bell, rung only once, fading to silence.
Our over consumption of plastic has been on my mind lately and I have to say you did a phenomenal job voicing it. Your last five lines are some of my favorite that emphasize why we should be concerned and the line "the world is a bell, rung only once, fading to silence" really resonated with me.
Thank you! I'm worried about the personifying of the truth, that it maybe doesn't come through. Thanks for showing me the poem is about plastic consumption -- I think I'd written it so long ago I'd forgotten, lol.
I like to browse my stuff from earlier, especially less direct stuff, then discovering that I barely recall what I really meant while composing, and reinterpreting it when reading again, at times as if it did not ever belong to me, and possibly attaching to it meanings I never thought of back then. It is kind of like rediscovering yourself, and seeing how your life, your thoughts have developed in the mean time.
Yes! I think I'm going to start doing that now I have a good backlog somewhere easy-to-look-at. And I think I'm going to start submitting those revised poems, too. Yes yes yes!
EDIT: this is a fluff comment. I'm just jazzed :)
While I do like the part about plastic, I love the echoing plasticity of the feelings. The want to make a difference, the helpless feeling of scale, and the desire to continue in the face of indifference. The echo of the world turning.
The ending line is perfect, but what really sets it up is this:
Nicely done!
Thank you! I think I want to polish this up and shop it around to magazines, see if I can get it published.
Here's one from a long while ago when I was trying to make sense of my divorce. It's a little rough, and I'd like to know what parts are too jumbled. Although I have to admit that my feelings were very jumbled at the time! XD
What a strange sort of scalpel that was.
Three words, four syllables, “Maybe we should.”
The snap of the cut may have been behind my ears,
so I didn’t realize ‘til later that I was waving
a stump. You would think that the answer to
“If I didn’t love you, I would leave,”
might have carved out my heart; or liver, or tripes.
Something a little more romantic, or clichéd.
Anything but this prosaic, fumbled,
one handed clutch for my dropped feelings.
And really, I’m doing quite well.
Sleeping at night, cheerful at work-
but
I think I know why people chafe
where they were amputated.
The images here are really strong, and I like the kind of detached (no pun intended!) tone. It's analytical, like you're looking over your own shoulder at your feelings, which I think really works.
The first two lines are really rhythmic too: "what a STRANGE sort of SCALpel that WAS. / THREE WORDS, FOUR SYLLables, 'MAYbe we SHOULD'". It makes me think the rest will be in that kind of dactylic meter too, but then it's not -- maybe think about rewriting for meter? Maybe not.
In addition, I'm not exactly sure what "The snap of the cut" is referring to, or what exactly was excised from the speaker. Maybe make that more clear? Is it your feelings? That's where a title could clear up the confusion easily.
But I think this is a great start on a poem, the last two lines are also good.
This is a random one from my Notes that has never been shared:
This old shovel
Cuts the green moss carpet
In a perfect circle
This old shovel
With chipped spade
Strikes another rock
This old shovel
With electrical tape handle
Tears callused skin
This old shovel
Rests tired backs
In their final home
This old shovel
Oh, that's cool! I like how the repetition of "this old shovel" builds the image into a clearer focus, from a kind of neutral digging image gradually to the grave burial. I also think the line breaks are pretty spot-on: each stanza's meter is slightly different but they all work together, and it doesn't feel repetitive at any point (which it could if, say, each third line started with a verb or something).
Now that I'm looking at it, the second and third stanzas are pretty similar to each other -- they each have "with" a feature of the shovel, [doing] something to an object. I'm also a little curious whose calloused skin is holding the shovel; I'm assuming it's the speaker, but that could maybe be clarified.
I'm also not sure about ending on "This old shovel" by itself. I think the kind of twist of "Rests tired backs / In their final home" is a good image to end on, actually. Overall though, this is solid!
Actually that ending is a nice trick. It gives a discomforting unendedness, openness to the composition, leaving you searching for more b/c the abrupt break in the pattern (which is neatly established beforehand BTW) and inevitably leading you to imagine what comes after. Further, it emphasises the unobservability, unknowableness of what happens to the deceased after that, and makes a nice metaphor to that feeling of an abrupt end, an incomplete life when one observes or learns of someone dying/having dead. How life is repetitive, and how things go on, almost unaffected, after every death.
I also like how the author used adjectives "callous" and "circular", which suggest the cycle of life, being born, living, and passing on, and new people being born and so on, incessantly, and our indifference to this marvel/horror which happens constantly to us and around us, and our ignorance of the enormity of these events unless they happen to us.
(I do tend to overread a bit, but I love it when I can get so close to a poem that I can "rewrite" and "rewire" it subjectively like this.)
cc @ChickenPit
Really appreciate the clear feedback @acdw @cadadr
Here’s another go:
This old shovel
Cuts green moss carpet
In a perfect circle
This old shovel
Rusty chipped spade
Strikes another rock
This old shovel
Black electric tape handle
Tears callused skin
This old shovel
Rests tired backs
In their final home
This old shovel
This is nice! -- it's more viscerally image-y now, with the "with"s and "the"s taken out. Almost sounds like a haiku to me, or a series of them.
Here's one I wrote for a creative writing class:
Darkness shrouds the shore
Silence; from the East a voice
Fills the sky with hope.
Rays of life ascend
Casts warmth on all witnesses.
The truth of being.
Pitter patter splash--
Diving heron drops quickly
Victorious with meal.
Tiny soldiers march on
The shore. Bright and fluorescent
Plastic Invaders.
The images of an Eastern voice, the witnesses, and the tiny soldiers are all really interesting images, but I'm having trouble seeing how they all relate to each other. I think the voice is the sun casting its "rays of life," and the witnesses are either the heron/wildlife or the bits of plastic in the last stanza, but I'm not sure which. I think the "plastic invaders" could be brought into the poem earlier as well, since that's where the tension in the poem seems to be -- between the warmth and life of the sun, nature, the heron, and the plastic invaders. I think the poem could be expanded and that'd be really interesting!
Thanks I'll keep at it!
This is one I wrote a few weeks earlier. I want to write more in English, and maybe this recurring thread will motivate me to do so. Thank you for starting it!
I feel like words
I feel like words
and I feel like birds,
pending on my toes
at the tip of a parting
irreversible and inexpressable.
I will fly away
into a novel day.
My sound will not be heard
if I fall, yet I shall flap
my wings, loud and strongly,
in the vague aether that is freedom.
I'm really interested in your last line: "freedom," at least in the US (where I live), is spoken about in such a concrete way, even though it isn't much more than a "vague aether," as you put it. I also like that the wings can flap loudly in such vaguery, it's an interesting tension that I think borders on irony.
My one suggestion would be that you could make more of the "My sound will not be heard / if I fall" bit -- it's the only kind of tension in the narrative of the poem. What sound? Just the flapping, or is there something else, another noise, maybe the words you're about to speak? I like the double meaning of "I feel like words": it can mean that you feel like the things, words, or it can mean that you feel like [making/speaking/listening to] words, which the second meaning could play into that sound image.
I like how different our approaches to poetry is: for you, it is something you can revise and improve; for me, it's kind of a revelation from within my subconscious, once it is out there, it remains the way it was conceived (tho I fix typos and truly problematic passages sometimes). I have been trying to acquire an approach similar to yours, learning to actually do the retouches, but I'm learning a bit slowly :)
I have never thought of the second meaning, but I love that there was that possibility of interpretation there. The meaning I intended was different: a simile to "a parting / irreversible and inexpressable". Maybe using a colon instead of a comma can help emphasise that?
This one was a bit too personal, and I'm too amateurish in using English for literature, so I'll try to explain it a bit. Anyone who doesn't like an author giving spoilers about their own work might want to avoid the paragraphs below.
The whole thing is about a big, positive change happening in (my) life, taking a big step, or even a jump, towards a better, more independent living. But there is the chance of failure, and the bigger the jump the bigger the failure wil be; and once failure happens, people will not notice me in it, my pretext, my excuses: I'll fail alone, the sound of my fall wil fall on deaf ears. But I shall try nonetheless.
Freedom is more like personal independence here (and by here I mean here in my brain, because re-reading it, it's obvious that the meaning I intended is not really clear), it is about standing on my two feet, which is a new experience for me, that I'll have to explore and define.
In some poems, like this one, I deliberately try to avoid all tension in order to fabricate a sense of resolution and transcendence, at times as a representation of the philosophical / emotional irresolution about the subject matter.
Thanks for the appreciation! I must admit, with my own poetry I tend to write it and leave it -- it's easier to look at others' work as something that can be taken apart and put back together than it is my own. I'm trying to get better too :) And maybe a colon could work to emphasize your meaning with the simile!
As far as explaining, no problems here! I picked up on a lot of what you're saying the poem was about. And there's a lot to be said about poetry that's just about feeling good, or about overcoming something hard. I think it'd be cool to read a poem where you're figuring out ("exploring and defining") the new experiences you're having about being more independent.
I have some in Turkish, my mother tongue (which I'll probably start trying to get published pseudonymously (why)), but I don't think I have any in English. I will try to write one and share here in the coming weeks.
This is off topic but I feel like saying it and I'll take the liberty to say it: thanks a lot for starting this! With my literary and scholarly aspirations I'm the odd kid in a family of merchants, and I've never really had friends or even acquaintances that share my interests IRL. Add to that my secretiveness about my work, it's mostly been a lonely affair in that regard. But here on Tildes, the recurring threads over at ~books and now this one here is really helping with that, even tho I'm not really able to participate more elaborately b/c some life issues keeping me busy. But really, thank you and the Tildes community!
Hey no problem! I know how hard it can be to share something you've written -- it's scary to throw it out there for other people to look at and criticize, and that's coming from someone who went to school for writing and had that community. I'm glad that we have this community to support each others' writing, it feels good to talk about it again!
I love love love this opening. Such strong imagery~
An Icarus at the beginning of their leap. The feathers are words flying from the tip of the tongue. The energy of the thoughts and actions rush ahead, unable to be stopped or recalled. Who knows the end~
Thank you so much!
virtually all my writing is esoteric and done for myself so there might be some limit to what takes people can give here, but i shall offer up this one which is probably the least esoteric of the (refined) lot because it's the one that i think currently holds up the most:
incidentally i might have posted this at some point in the past, but i'm too lazy to go back and find out.
Interesting -- I like how the poem begins with the idea that time rhymes, it makes me think of that quote about how history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. I'm curious about the dragon in the poem and why he fears time; is it only because of the fable(s?) that dragons can die, and have? Is he really afraid of death? What was the fabled dragon able to do? Why is "a dragon" emphasized in the fourth-to-last line, are all dragons afraid of time? Who's the poem about, after it all --- dragons, or a dragon, or dragons as allegory to something else? I think if you made those points clearer, you could have a much stronger poem. But I like the idea of a dragon being afraid, since they're usually written as fierce and enigmatic and not afraid.
A few from the vault, excerpted from a Day of Observance and Unconventional Haikus a couple years back:
Joints crack
Muscles torn
Stand up
Gargling
Tight abdomen
Poop
Water surge
Beat of drum
Snowy peaks
Unroll mat
Open heart
Listen
Striped feathers
Sings love song
Blue throat
Fresh and clean
A thrown fit for a king
Splatter
Hey, thanks for posting! Feel free to post this in the new Writing Workshop thread as well, but I'll comment on your poem here:
This poem is very visceral in its descriptions! It's really interesting how it starts violent and slows way down with "Unroll mat / Open heart / Listen," then comes back to the violence with the last line. That being said, I'm not totally sure what this poem is about -- is it about pooping, then doing yoga? Or doing yoga while sick? Or is it just an exploration of the sounds the mouth can make? Whatever it is, it's got a humor working through it that's kind of nice.