Poetry Workshop was frustrating last night. The first week I felt content to let them pull my offering apart, because I felt that they were doing so with some degree of integrity, and that they did so in the spirit of actually understanding what the overarching point of my poem was. Last night, I did not feel that same acknowledgment of the spirit of the piece--they were just as kind and gentle in wording, but completely daft in their comments. It is workshop protocol for the author not to speak during the critique of her work, and I see the value in that, but during class last night, I wanted to shout "you are totally missing the point! You don't understand my work at all..." If you've ever seen "Annie Hall," there's a scene in which Alvy and Annie are at the movies and some pretentious fool is waxing on about the work of the director of the film. In an Allenesque moment, the director, long dead in actuality, is standing behind this fool and eventually says to him "you know nothing of my work..."

I have noticed that my fellow work shoppees very often misinterpret what I consider to be very basic details. They are so literal minded, especially about the presence of passing time, or the way it passes in a poem. Last night, with the exception of one person, they were stopped by the lack of a title on my poem. Hey, look, I studied under Lucille Clifton, who does not always title her work. It's called innovation, punks! Sometimes the poem does not want a title!

I can understand why my other prof (20th Century World Lit) is so anti-workshop. It's kind of interesting to be taking these two classes at the same time. I typically love the workshop premise, but I did feel for about five minutes last night that it had outlived its usefulness.