Cross-Pollination

So, I'm in this fiction workshop--this invitation-based summer workshop--even though I am a poet. I decided to participate in this workshop because it was an honour to be asked, but also because my advisor is the facilitator, and I respect his sensibilities tremendously. After thinking it through it (being in the workshop) actually started to seem crucial to my thesis preparation.

I've let the poets that my literary community has to offer take a crack at my work and while it has been helpful, to an extent, the experience always left me feeling like a crucial piece of the discussion hadn't been had. Well, last night the fiction types had their first go-round of workshopping poems--and the difference in the two approaches was inspiring. I realized that I really like discussing poetry in the same way I like discussing fiction--the implications, the psychology, the language, not just the structures. Which is not to say that there was no cognizance of the fact that poems are different from fiction, but the line between the two last night was pleasantly blurred.

On other fronts: not that you would know it based on the frequency with which I still blog, but I have been reticent lately. I start to say a million things, but think better of it. There's no intrigue, no big news, but I have still felt the need to self-censor, to train against certain kinds of disclosure. It's an odd sort of conversational lethargy... I don't quite understand the impulse, but I acknowledge that I'm doing more internalizing lately. Maybe there'll be some sort of explanation later. Maybe not.