thank you to dennis for the poem and the author's "name." it's great.

I finally have The Poethical Wager, which I had ordered since before Christmas at UC press on Bancroft. Extremely satisfied to finally have it!


This week, a non-poet friend of mine asked me about what people do in poetry workshop, and how do people teach poetry workshop. And how we get grades. My answer, she thought, wasn't at all adequate.

This becomes somewhat a pedagogical question to me. Where can we find out more about it? (Juliana?) The more I think of it, the more abstract this gets in my head. So, if you guys can help de-abstract it, please do.

I think workshop is the place where we are granted attention of a group of engaged audience (and give it too). Essentially, that should be all there is to it. But then workshop can really shape your work if you kinna let that happen. (That has happened to me before!) So we could end up with all the generic "workshop poems" which, sadly, sometimes get praised institutionally. On the other hand, if you don't let workshop have any effect on you at all, why going to workshop? There has to be a balance. Nonetheless, given the fact that merit of work is gained partly through publication and prizes, and in most cases, students get grade from workshop, the balance can be easily tilted.

Just for fun, (and b/c I dream to teach in the future...) let's try describing YOUR perfect workshop. Who's in??