Living in a Sandcastle

I did ask a good friend to help me with this assignment. Not because I wanted a favorable response, but because that is who you ask to bail you out when a deadline has slipped up on you. This is #5 or #6 on the Friend Requirements List. She also has more experience of me in a workshop setting than anyone else on campus, and I can trust her to be honest. In fact, I told her not to pull any punches. And she didn't. I felt every one. Her response is copied here, in its entirety.


shel's role in poetry workshops:
instigator. advice-giver. expansionist interpreter. shel likes to say what seems interesting, what it makes her think of, or how there might be additional meanings present that we aren't privy to. for the most part, you can't get her to shut up - she always has something to say. most of the time her comments are helpful, but sometimes the advice-giving (in relation to the advice-taking) is a little steeply skewed. her strongest quality in the workshop is attention to intention - if somebody's throwing shit on a page & calling it golden, she calls them out. that said, she also recognizes the good when it's there & isn't afraid to speak up on its behalf, no matter how outnumbered her opinion might be. sometimes her inarticulate verbal carousels spark really interesting ideas that folks hadn't even thought to think of. sometimes, too, she's too articulate for her own good. best of all, she isn't afraid.


"Inarticulate verbal carousels." Wow. That's a gem. Have poet friends, this is what you get. An answer like an X-Acto knife. Handy, precise, and capable of slicing you a thousand times before you feel it - look around and you're on your knees, bleeding in the street. Let's start from the top though, pull off the pieces of skin and compare them to the appendages I thought I had.

Instigator, I knew that. Never with malice, though often inappropriate. I've been shy, if you can believe it. I read body language. I study faces. I guess at wishes. Sometimes I'm wrong. One of the adjunct professors in the English department spoke in a pedagogy class I had last semester. She said she never calls on people, that she was painfully shy and believes it to be rude, or aggressive, to require someone to speak who has not indicated the desire to. And there is validity there, I'm sure. But I think there's some room for good-natured shell-yanking.

How does one coax growth from a student if you do not require her to stretch herself beyond what is comfortable? I was the shy that coaxing and support would have helped; one who just wanted to know if it was safe to come out (Apparently I am no longer concerned with safety - it's all or nothing). It is often the quiet people who have something profound to say (having had all that observation time to think it up), and I happen to think it is rude to keep that profundity to oneself. If we all chose the role of silent observer, we'd be paying to sit and stare at each other. We're smart, it might as well be interesting. On the other hand, if we all took my tact, no one would be able to hear themselves think. Will and discipline must certainly cross paths at place I have not made it to yet.

I am guilty of thinking I know what is best (luckily this is tempered by having a genuine interest in other people and what they think, and the flexibility to adopt fresh opinion), which brings us to the next admonition: advice-giver. Oh. Yeah. I do that. Sorry. Funny the tight-rope that is. No one is happy about unsolicited advice. But then, just being in a workshop is soliciting advice, no? The reviewer says my effort is slanted toward the giving rather than the receiving of advice. Maybe I've misinterpreted this comment, since I often incorporate into my work the advice she gives me. Maybe she meant I give more advice than people wish to receive. That is certainly possible. I have to remember to reduce the volume of my comments, since there is a threshold of tolerance when it comes to absorbing information.

It is definitely easier to talk about writing than to write. It is easy to forget this while wielding a pen over someone's work. It would be good to remember what I am looking for when I submit a piece, and also that everyone is not me and may be looking for something different. If I like the piece I am submitting, I want to see if my colleagues "got" it, if they found all of the diamonds and landmines I laid for them. If I am not happy with it, I am looking for direction, for something they see that I don't that might shape the piece. Because I choose words for their facets, for the different reflections they might make on the words around them, I am always looking for what "else" might be meant by a piece. I am enthralled by the perfectness of poetry (and all that is poetry), in that the writer need not have intended each of the meanings that show up. This is one area in which I think workshops have valuable potential, exposing the subconscious flurries of a writer to herself, showing themes she may not have consciously mandated, revealing beckoning threads.

Seven paragraphs in and we are to the point where I talk about talking too much. I have asked my friends to sit beside me and kick me under the table when i need to shut up. By the time they obliged, I had forgotten the request and nearly said out loud "Why'd you kick me?!" I'm not sure what the reviewer means by "shel likes to say what seems interesting." Does she mean I like to comment on what I find interesting, or that I try to say things that might sound interesting to the class? The truth there probably has no distinction. I am also aware of my tendency toward comic relief. This is a reflex, though that's no excuse. Sometimes it's not comic nor is it relief, and I'm a little old to be disrupting class. I have to find a balance.

It is true that I am not afraid to speak my mind. I do so as example to others, for the sake of the participants as well as the principle. So often in workshops people back down from what they've offered because someone else disagrees. I want to shout out "Stand your ground!" Not for the sake of ground-standing, but to explore the topic. To find validity in the point in the face of opposing force. I feel like the space in between opinions is where solutions are found.

I whirl around, I pause, I twirl my hands in the air to beg a word from my rattled vocabulary. I thank you all for your patience when I speak. I don't know what "too articulate for her own good" means, I certainly don't feel it here. My thoughts are torn between viewing this exchange as participant and as facilitator. After our discussion last week, I began to think that two sets of comments should be given in workshop, one as reader, and one from a writer's perspective. To define the hat from under which one is speaking would help to frame the comments, making them more effective.

I made notes on everyone's self-defined role. This insider perspective is invaluable. What becomes clear is that one must know herself to be effective, likely true for any situation. I have to acknowledge my tendency to want to take care of things, to fix it, when perhaps nothing is broken, just working itself out. That the class benefits from my silence as much as my speech, that I have to find my role and play it, so that others can play theirs. Just as I am getting a handle on what it is I do, and what I should be doing, how to be of value by valuing all contributions, the trial is ending. The sand shifts. Armed only with a fledgling understanding of group dynamics (and that minor in sociology), I'm hoping to be hired to manage a group and produce some benefit?!? The tide is coming in.